8 Marketing Metrics Worth Watching and 12 You Can Ignore
Most marketing reports are full of numbers that never pay anybody.
By Lance Wagner · Published · Last Updated
Which marketing metrics should a small business track?
Track cost per lead, cost per customer, lead to customer rate, lead response time, average sale, repeat purchase rate, reviews per month, and revenue from new customers. Ignore impressions, reach, followers and email opens unless you're using them to diagnose something specific.
A metric earns its place by changing a decision. If nothing would change based on the number, stop reporting it.
1Cost per lead
Your channel comparison number. Useful weekly, meaningless alone.
2Cost per customer
The one that decides whether you can afford to grow.
3Lead to customer rate
Separates a demand problem from a sales problem in one number.
4Lead response time
The most improvable number on this list, and usually the most neglected.
5Average sale
Small increases here fund everything else.
6Repeat purchase rate
The cheapest growth you have access to. Almost nobody watches it.
7Reviews per month
A leading indicator for local search and for whether the experience is any good.
8Revenue from new customers
Closes the loop between marketing activity and money in the bank.
9The twelve you can ignore
Impressions, reach, followers, likes, email opens, bounce rate on its own, time on site, ad platform engagements, click-through rate in isolation, keyword rankings for terms nobody searches, video views, and website hits.
None of these are useless in a diagnosis. All of them are useless as a headline.
10Check five weekly, twelve monthly
Weekly: leads, cost per lead, response time, new reviews, revenue from new customers.
Everything else can wait for the monthly review. Weekly attention to slow-moving numbers just creates panic.
The short version
- A metric earns its place by changing a decision.
- Five numbers weekly is enough for most small businesses.
- Repeat purchase rate is the most ignored profitable metric there is.
- Vanity metrics are fine for diagnosis, never for headlines.
Questions people ask
- What marketing metrics matter most for a small business?
- Cost per customer, lead to customer rate and lead response time. Those three explain most of what's going right or wrong.
- Is bounce rate a useful metric?
- Only as a diagnostic. A high bounce rate on a page that answers a question quickly can be perfectly healthy.
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