Marketers, and B2B marketers in particular, often face criticism for focusing on vanity metrics. Vanity metrics are numbers that are easily measurable and look good on paper but don’t directly correlate to business outcomes or provide actionable insights.
Let’s take a closer look at seven common vanity metrics, why they’re considered weak and what you can use to replace them.
Vanity metric No. 1: Website traffic (total page views/visitors)
Why it’s weak: More traffic sounds good, but it doesn’t tell you if the visitors are the right people, engaged or moving toward a conversion. Irrelevant traffic is, well, irrelevant.
Replacement metric: Website conversion rate (by traffic source and goal completion)
Why it’s stronger: Conversion metrics tell you what percentage of your website visitors are completing a desired action (e.g., filling out a form, downloading a resource, requesting a demo). You can identify which channels deliver high-quality, converting visitors by segmenting conversion by traffic source (organic search, paid ads, social media, referral).
Where to find conversion data: Google Analytics or other website analytics platforms. You’ll need to set up goals or conversions within these platforms.
Why it’s weak: A large follower count doesn’t necessarily translate to brand advocacy, engagement or sales. Many followers can be inactive, bots or simply not your target audience. “Likes” are a low-effort interaction and don’t indicate genuine interest.
Suggested replacement metric: Social media leads and conversions
Why they’re stronger: This metric focuses on how many leads or actual customers your social media efforts generate. For B2B, this might involve tracking form submissions from social ads, website visits from social media that lead to a demo request or downloads of gated content shared on social platforms.
Where to find them: Native social media analytics platforms (e.g., LinkedIn Analytics, X Analytics, Facebook Business Suite), Google Analytics (using proper UTM tagging for social campaigns), CRM systems (integrating social lead forms).
Vanity metric No. 3: Email open rate
Why it’s weak: A high open rate might seem positive, but it doesn’t guarantee engagement with the content or action. Many email servers and clients auto-open emails for security reasons, and users might open an email and immediately close it without reading or clicking.
Suggested replacement: Email click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate
Why they’re stronger: CTR tells you your audience found your content compelling enough to click on a link in the email. Measuring the conversion rate from those clicks (e.g., lead magnet download, webinar registration, sales inquiry) directly ties your email efforts to business outcomes.
Where to find them: Email marketing platforms (e.g., HubSpot, Mailchimp, Salesforce Marketing Cloud).
Vanity metric No. 4: Content downloads
Why it’s weak: The number of downloads doesn’t tell you if the content is read, if it’s resonating with the target audience or if it’s contributing to lead nurturing and sales. It tells you the content was downloaded, that’s all.
Suggested replacement metric: MQLs or SALs generated from content
Why they’re stronger: This focuses on the quality of leads generated from your content. An MQL is a lead deemed ready for further marketing nurturing, and an SAL is an MQL that the sales team has accepted as worthy of its time. This indicates that the content is attracting genuinely interested prospects who fit your ideal customer profile.
Where to find it: CRM systems (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot), Marketing Automation Platforms (e.g., Marketo, Pardot). These systems allow you to track a lead’s journey, including content downloads and subsequent actions that qualify them.
Vanity metric No. 5: Number of unqualified leads generated
Why it’s weak: Generating a large volume of leads without proper qualification can overwhelm sales teams with low-quality prospects, wasting time and resources. Not all leads are created equal.
Suggested replacement: Lead-to-opportunity conversion rate / opportunity-to-win rate
Why they’re stronger: These metrics measure the effectiveness of your lead generation efforts in producing actual sales opportunities and ultimately closed deals. The lead-to-opportunity rate shows how many of your generated leads progress to a sales opportunity, while the opportunity-to-win rate indicates how many of those opportunities become customers.
Where to find them: Your CRM system is essential for tracking the progression of leads through the sales pipeline.
Dig deeper: Build a winning marketing attribution framework
Vanity Metric No. 6: Impressions from ad campaigns
Why it’s weak: Impressions merely indicate how frequently your ad was displayed. It doesn’t tell you if anyone saw it, paid attention, or took action. It’s a measure of reach, not engagement or impact.
Suggested replacement: Cost per acquisition (CPA) / return on ad spend (ROAS)
Why they’re stronger: CPA tells you the average cost of acquiring a new customer through your advertising efforts, directly linking your ad spend to business outcomes. ROAS measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising, providing a clear picture of profitability.
Where to find them: Ad platform analytics (e.g., Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Facebook Ads Manager), integrated with CRM and sales data to calculate actual customer acquisition and revenue.
Vanity metric No. 7: Time on site / pages per visit
Why they’re weak: While seemingly indicative of engagement, a long time on a site could mean a user is struggling to find information, or they left the tab open. Many pages visited could indicate a user is lost, not necessarily engaged.
Suggested replacement metric: Bounce rate (for specific landing pages) / key user flow completion rate
Why they’re stronger: A high bounce rate on a critical landing page could suggest the content or messaging is failing to resonate with the audience, or the page isn’t guiding them to the next step. Tracking the completion rate of key user flows (e.g., visiting a product page –> adding to cart –> checkout) provides insight into how effectively your website is guiding users towards conversion.
Where to find them: Google Analytics, other website analytics platforms.
Dig deeper: A guide to attribution models in GA4