Every business leader loves a good dashboard. Charts go up and to the right, and it feels like progress. The problem? Most companies are tracking the wrong things. They have teams obsessing over website traffic spikes, social likes, or email open rates—metrics that look shiny in a report but don’t actually increase revenue.

At &Marketing, we believe marketing metrics should do more than check a box. They should answer the only question that really matters: Is this helping the business grow? When you focus on the right numbers, you create clarity, alignment, and confidence in your decisions. When you don’t, you risk chasing vanity metrics while opportunities slip through the cracks.

What Are Marketing Metrics?

Let’s get the basics out of the way. Marketing metrics are simply data points that measure how your marketing efforts are performing. They tell you what’s happening, when, and (with the right context) why.

Here’s where most teams trip up: just because you can measure something doesn’t mean you should. The internet has made it possible to measure nearly everything from scroll depth, bounce rates, how long someone hovered over a button; but not all metrics are created equal.

The real power of marketing metrics is their ability to connect your day-to-day marketing activities to actual business outcomes. Think of them as the bridge between what your marketing team is doing and what your leadership team actually cares about: growth, revenue, and customer retention.

Without that bridge, metrics are just noisy distractions (and false ego strokes). With it, they become the foundation for smarter strategy, better decisions, and ultimately, more impact.

Marketing KPIs vs. Marketing Metrics: What’s the Difference?

If you only read one sentence in this section, let it be this one: all KPIs are metrics, but not all metrics are KPIs.

A metric is any number you can measure: website visits, email open rate, cost-per-click, you name it. A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is the select group of those numbers that actually matter for your specific goals. Think of it like this:

• Metric: Your website traffic went up 20% this month. Nice.
• KPI: The percentage of those visitors who became qualified leads. Now we’re talking.

The difference is focus. Metrics show activity. KPIs show progress against what you’re really trying to achieve.

Why does this distinction matter? Because too many dashboards treat everything like it’s equally important. It’s not. Tracking dozens of disconnected numbers might make you feel productive, but it rarely helps you make better decisions.

At &Marketing, we encourage clients to narrow down to a small, powerful set of KPIs tied directly to their strategy. That might mean aligning around:

• Cost to acquire a customer (CAC)
• Lifetime value of that customer (CLV)
• Conversion rate from lead → opportunity → closed deal
• Retention or renewal rates

When your KPIs ladder up to your business objectives, you stop drowning in data and start telling a clear story: is marketing driving growth, or not?

The Marketing Metrics You Think You Need (But Don’t)

Some of the most commonly reported marketing metrics are basically comfort food for executives. They look good in a slide deck, they make people feel like something’s happening, but they don’t actually prove marketing is working. In fact, according to Forbes, 41% of marketing KPIs are really vanity metrics. That’s a lot of energy spent reporting on things that don’t move the business forward.Here are the biggest offenders:

• Social Likes & Follows: A big follower count doesn’t mean you’re winning. Plenty of companies have 100K followers and no pipeline.
• Raw Impressions: So a million people could have seen your ad. Great. Did any of them actually take action?
• Email Open Rates: Thanks to Apple privacy updates, this one is almost useless. High opens don’t always equal high engagement.
• Pageviews: More traffic is only good if it’s the right traffic—people who are likely to buy, not just bots or window-shoppers.
  

Vanity metrics aren’t evil; they can be directional. But if you’re hanging your strategy on them, you’re wasting time. These numbers don’t connect to revenue, and that’s the ultimate test: does this metric show impact on growth, customer acquisition, or retention? If the answer is no, it’s probably just noise.

The sooner you stop chasing vanity metrics, the sooner you can focus on the ones that tell the real story of your marketing performance.

The Marketing Metrics That Actually Drive Growth

If vanity metrics are the empty calories of marketing, these are the protein. They show you not just activity, but impact—whether your marketing is pulling its weight in driving revenue and building customer relationships. Here are the categories worth paying attention to:

1. Pipeline & Revenue Impact

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): How much does it cost you to win a customer?
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): How much revenue do you make from that customer over time?
• Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate: How efficiently do leads become paying clients?
  

Why it matters: These metrics tie directly to profitability. They tell you whether your marketing is an investment or an expensive hobby.

2. Engagement Quality

• Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who take the next step (fill out a form, book a demo, buy the product).
• Time on Page / Content Engagement: Are people actually consuming your content or just bouncing?
• Content-Assisted Conversions: Which blogs, videos, or guides are showing up most often in successful sales journeys?

Why it matters: Engagement metrics reveal whether your message is landing with the right audience, not just any audience.

3. Channel Effectiveness

• Paid Search ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): Are your ads paying for themselves and then some?
• Organic Visibility & Rankings: Are you showing up when people search for what you sell?
• Email CTR by Segment: Which audiences are most responsive to your campaigns?
  

Why it matters: Not all channels are created equal. These metrics show you where to double down and where to stop pouring money down the drain.

4. Customer Retention

• Churn Rate: How many customers are leaving you and how fast?
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Would your customers recommend you, or warn their friends to run?
• Repeat Purchase Rate: Are buyers coming back for more, or was it one-and-done?
  

Why it matters: Retention is often cheaper than acquisition. If you’re not measuring how well you keep customers, you’re ignoring a huge lever for growth.

When you focus on these metrics, you stop reporting for the sake of reporting. You start connecting marketing activity to business outcomes. 

Building a Marketing Metrics Dashboard That Works

Here’s the trap most companies fall into: they cram every possible number into a dashboard and call it “reporting.” The result? A wall of charts no one reads and no one trusts. A good marketing dashboard values clarity over volume. It should show you the handful of KPIs that matter most, and it should make the story obvious at a glance. Here’s how to do it:

1. Group Metrics by Funnel Stage
   • Awareness: Organic visibility, ad reach, new users.
   • Consideration: Engagement rates, content-assisted conversions, demo requests.
   • Decision/Retention: CAC, CLV, churn rate, renewal rates.
2. Limit the Noise
   • If it doesn’t tie to growth or retention, it probably doesn’t belong on the dashboard. Keep the vanity metrics in the background for reference, not the spotlight.
3. Show Trends, Not Just Snapshots
   • One month of data doesn’t tell a story. Show how your KPIs are moving over time (quarterly at most) so you can actually see the impact of campaigns, investments, or pivots.
4. Tell the Story
   • Numbers on a screen aren’t enough. Your reporting should answer: What’s happening? Why is it happening? What should we do next?

At &Marketing, we like to say: the best dashboards don’t just report, they direct. If your dashboard isn’t helping you make smarter decisions, it’s not doing its job.

Marketing Metrics FAQ

A few extra questions we hear all the time:

At the end of the day, marketing metrics should tell you a story about growth. If your dashboard is full of noise (aka empty calories), you aren’t getting the clarity you need to make smart decisions. The companies that win aren’t the ones tracking the most metrics. They’re the ones tracking the right metrics, connecting them to business outcomes, and acting on what the data is actually saying.

So here’s the challenge: take a hard look at your current reporting. Are you measuring activity, or are you measuring impact? If you’re ready to stop chasing vanity metrics and start tracking what really matters, let’s talk.