Vanity metrics are great for making marketing reports look impressive. However, they lack real value because they can be easily manipulated and do not reflect the ‘real’ numbers or metrics that determine market success. But besides being a parameter with limited usefulness to measure success, vanity metrics also have some positive sides. Some vanity metrics could be advantageous at certain times and situations.
They Measure Non-Quantifiable Goals:
While vanity metrics do not show any direct connection to return on investments or revenue, they certainly reveal valuable information about brand awareness and how many people understood and appreciated the brand. The metric is apt for reflecting whether the content is interesting and relevant to the existing audiences and whether it can determine public sentiment towards the brand.
They Are Easily Available:
As vanity metrics are free for public use, they are readily accessible. Marketers enjoy working on vanity metrics as they are easy to obtain and require less time and effort. As vanity metrics can reveal the number of likes, followers, comments, etc. marketers can use these measures to show that marketing campaigns have an immediate impact.
They Optimize Marketing Campaigns:
Marketers can learn more about their target audiences by using vanity metrics. For instance, if they find that customer engagement is low and the impressions are high, they may immediately take action and correct their strategies to target the right set of audiences. On the contrary, they might have to expand their reach if they find the opposite. Marketers can use various test methods to improve messaging and increase the level of performance over time.
They Help In Restructuring Product Advertisement:
Using vanity metrics can be beneficial at times. Several followers are still required by a 20-year-old business to target a certain percentage of followers and get them converted into real customers. Sometimes, having a large audience can suggest that your brand is posting valuable, interesting, and helpful content on its social media page. It is great if a lot of people see your content and increase website traffic. Once you see an increasing number of unqualified leads, you can always restructure your marketing strategies to increase the volume of qualified leads.
Effective Use Of Vanity Metrics:
Using vanity metrics with other actionable metrics can help a marketer gain a comprehensive view of marketing effectiveness and business success. Vanity metrics can be used to assess qualitative factors like employee and customer feedback and to gain a balanced perspective on a business.
Using vanity metrics gives a marketer the motivation for continual improvement. An organization using vanity metrics can learn from every activity performed, improve digital content and optimize marketing strategies to achieve business goals.
While a company may not gain an in-depth insight into how it will operate based on the numbers acquired from vanity metrics, it can still highlight its large number of followers in its marketing material. In short, vanity metrics allow analyzing an organization’s audiences and overall popularity.
Awareness and visibility are important considerations and cannot be neglected. Although vanity metrics may not show tangible and direct impact but for any business that can have positive impact in certain situations. At the same time, it is important to have a balanced view and not be excessively focused only on vanity metrics to neglect of other performance metrics.
