Vanity metrics vs. money metrics
Vanity metrics go up and to the right and change nothing about your business — impressions, reach, likes, raw traffic. They're not useless as diagnostics, but they're not the scoreboard. Money metrics tie activity to revenue, and they're what a report should lead with.
The metrics worth tracking
A handful of numbers tell you almost everything about whether marketing is working:
- Cost per lead (CPL) — what it costs to generate one lead. The first real efficiency number.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC) — what it costs to win an actual customer, not just a lead.
- Conversion rate — the percentage of traffic or leads that take the next step. Where landing pages and follow-up earn their keep.
- Close rate — the percentage of leads your sales process turns into customers. Marketing can't outrun a broken close rate.
- Return on ad spend (ROAS) — revenue produced per dollar of ad spend.
- Customer lifetime value (LTV) — what a customer is worth over the whole relationship, which is what you can really afford to spend to acquire one.
Closed-loop tracking is what makes it real
None of those numbers mean anything if you can't trace a sale back to the click that started it. Closed-loop tracking — from the ad, to the website, to the CRM, to the closed deal — is what turns "we got some leads" into "this campaign produced these customers at this cost."
Without it, you're optimizing on guesses. With it, you can confidently cut what doesn't work and scale what does — which is the entire point of spending on marketing in the first place.
What to review, and when
Not everything deserves weekly attention. A simple rhythm keeps you focused on signal over noise:
- Weekly: spend pacing, lead volume, and cost per lead — the early-warning numbers.
- Monthly: CAC, conversion rates, and channel performance — enough time to be meaningful.
- Quarterly: ROAS, LTV, and blended cost per lead across channels — the strategic picture.
Start measuring without a new tool
You don't need enterprise software to start. A disciplined spreadsheet that tracks spend, leads, and revenue by channel will tell you more than most dashboards — which is exactly why we built a free Marketing Metrics Dashboard you can download and use today.