What if the most useful marketing metric isn't a marketing metric at all?

A problem in growing businesses is that every part of marketing can have its own definition of success. Paid media talks about ROAS. SEO talks about traffic and rankings. Social talks about reach and engagement. Email talks about opens and clicks. Some channels can be linked to a cost of acquisition, and some can’t.

Then, at the end of the month, someone looks at sales and wonders why all those numbers don't seem to match up.

They often don't. 

Take attribution. A customer might see you on Instagram, search for you a few days later, read some reviews, visit your website twice, receive an email and then finally click a branded search ad before buying.

Last-click attribution gives the credit to that final click. All hail the Pay Per Click activity!

Did that click create the customer? Probably not. It may have just captured the intent that had already been created elsewhere. 

The same problem exists with vanity metrics.

If every channel is optimised against its own numbers, each can look successful while the overall customer journey gets more disjointed and foggier. Everyone is busy. Everyone has a dashboard that pulls something out as positive. Now it’s harder to align marketing effort with commercial value.

That doesn't mean channel metrics are useless. They are essential for managing activity in real time. They shouldn't be the metrics that determine where the next £ goes. 

Ask the team to answer this question. If we spend the next £1, what will it generate for the business? 

That moves the conversation to Marginal Customer Value.

What additional value will the next customer create? What happens if we increase investment here or here? What happens if we stop doing this? Are we creating new demand, or simply taking credit for demand that already existed?

It won't be the only metric you need, and it won't always be possible to measure precisely. But as an indication of growth performance, it gives marketing, commercial and finance a much more useful conversation to have.

It won’t be about which channel won, but where the next £ can create the most effective additional value.

Now that’s a conversation that a business owner and a finance team will be happy to have with marketing.