What Should We Really Be Measuring in 2025 Beyond Vanity Metrics?
- Brainz Magazine
- Jul 8
- 6 min read
Written by Brooke Heydon, Marketing Director
Brooke Heydon is the founder of Truene Creative, a marketing and branding agency based in Kent, UK. She specializes in brand strategy and digital communications, helping small businesses grow with clarity, confidence, and a touch of creative edge.
Vanity metrics get a bad reputation. They are often written off as meaningless or superficial. However, in truth, they play a valuable role in understanding how your brand or content is performing at a surface level; it is also important to look deeper.
Followers, likes, views, impressions - these metrics are not the villains of marketing. They are often the first indication that your message has been received. For small businesses, in particular, they can offer reassurance. They show signs of life. They provide early indicators that your content is resonating or, at the very least, being seen. That is not irrelevant. That is marketing doing its job in one of its earliest stages: visibility.
The practitioner in me knows how easy it is to celebrate a spike in reach or to report on a successful month of growth in social followers. These metrics are public, instant, and gratifying. The researcher in me knows how often these numbers are misread, misused, or misunderstood.
So, let’s unpack what vanity metrics actually are, why they still matter, and how to pair them with more meaningful measures that show progress and performance.
What counts as a vanity metric?
Vanity metrics typically include the following:
Followers or subscribers
Likes and reactions
Views and impressions
Comments and shares
Page views or profile visits
These metrics tell you how many people saw, interacted with, or acknowledged your content. What they do not tell you is what happened next. Did that person become a customer? Did they remember your brand? Did they take the action you were aiming for? That is where deeper metrics come in, but that doesn’t make the early ones irrelevant.
Think of vanity metrics as indicators of attention. They are helpful when interpreted correctly. If you have ever launched a new product, rebranded a business, or entered a new market, you will know how important those early signals can be. Are people noticing us? Are we visible in the right spaces? Is our content being acknowledged or ignored?
Vanity metrics give you those clues.
The value they offer
1. Audience validation
If your content gains significant reach, impressions, or engagement, that is a sign that your topic or approach has landed well with your audience. It provides a foundation to build upon.
2. Content testing
Vanity metrics are particularly helpful when comparing different types of content. Did a carousel post outperform a single image? Did a reel get more saves than a photo? These surface-level comparisons help you refine what works and what does not.
3. Platform health
A sudden drop in impressions or engagement can highlight technical issues, algorithm shifts, or scheduling problems. These metrics function like a pulse check.
4. Campaign momentum
For product launches or awareness campaigns, vanity metrics help you track momentum and gauge success. They can indicate whether a campaign is generating buzz, which is especially useful when working toward a long-term goal, such as event attendance or brand recognition.
5. Internal benchmarking
These metrics are easy to track over time, giving you consistent benchmarks. You can spot patterns, seasonal dips, or gradual improvements in visibility and reach.
None of this is meaningless. It simply becomes a problem when these numbers are treated as the final outcome rather than the first step in a broader customer journey.
What should you pair vanity metrics with?
If you want your data to tell a more comprehensive story, vanity metrics should always be paired with performance metrics. These include:
Conversion rates
The gold standard of performance metrics, conversion rates, shows how many people took a meaningful action after encountering your content. This action might be a purchase, an inquiry, a form submission, a brochure download, or a newsletter sign-up. Whatever the goal, conversion data tells you how well your content, offer, or landing page persuaded someone to act.
If a post reaches 10,000 people but only two convert, it highlights a gap between visibility and impact. High traffic with low conversion may suggest issues with messaging, user experience, or relevance. Monitoring this metric enables you to refine your approach based on what actually works rather than just what is visible.
Click-through rates
Click-through rate (CTR) measures the number of people who click a link in your content, such as a call-to-action button on a social post, an email link, or a paid ad. It is a simple but powerful indicator of interest. If people are clicking, your messaging is engaging enough to spark curiosity or intent.
Low CTRs often point to weak calls to action, misaligned messaging, or audience fatigue. A strong CTR, on the other hand, shows that your audience wants to know more and is willing to take the next step. It acts as a bridge between attention and conversion, offering insight into how well your content motivates response.
Cost per lead or cost per acquisition
If you are running paid ads, cost per lead or cost per acquisition is one of the most important metrics to track. It tells you how efficiently your campaign is converting attention into action. A high number of impressions might look impressive at first glance, but if those views are not leading to meaningful conversions, the campaign is underperforming.
When the cost to acquire a single customer starts to outweigh their value to your business, it becomes a signal that the strategy needs refining. This could mean adjusting your targeting, reworking the creative, or improving the user journey after the click. The aim is not simply to be seen but to drive action at a sustainable cost. Paid campaigns are only effective when visibility results in outcomes that move the business forward.
Time on the page or session duration
These metrics show how long visitors are engaging with your content. If users spend several minutes exploring your website and click through to more than one page, it signals relevance and interest. If most visitors leave without exploring further, it contributes to a high bounce rate, which may suggest that the page did not meet their expectations or that the call to action was unclear.
Return visits or repeat customers
In service-led or product-based businesses, repeat customers are often a stronger indicator of brand health than reach or first-time engagement. While visibility matters, long-term performance is reflected in customer behavior over time.
Repeat custom suggests satisfaction, trust, and a reliable experience. It means your product or service delivered enough value for someone to return without being re-targeted or reminded, which signals a genuine connection, not just a well-timed ad.
If people are choosing you again, your brand has likely earned a place in their routine. High retention, paired with positive sentiment, points to a credible and dependable offer. These customers often spend more, refer others, and provide valuable feedback through their choices, making them a key metric for any marketing strategy.
Lead quality
Not all inquiries are of equal value. A spike in engagement may generate more leads, but quantity does not always equate to quality. What truly matters is how closely those leads match your ideal customer profile.
High-quality leads are those who are ready to buy, have a clear need for your product or service, and align with your pricing, values, or niche. They are the ones who are more likely to convert, stay loyal, and refer others. On the other hand, low-quality leads may enquire out of curiosity without a genuine intention to follow through, which can drain time and resources.
By focusing on lead quality, you shift the conversation from numbers to relevance. This is particularly important for small businesses, where capacity is limited, and each opportunity counts. Tracking where your best leads come from and which messages attract them helps shape smarter campaigns with a better return on effort.
How to use vanity metrics in a smarter way
The key is interpretation. Here are some simple ways to make vanity metrics work harder for you:
Use them as a starting point, not a conclusion
Track them alongside deeper metrics to understand the whole customer journey
Pay attention to trends over time rather than individual spikes
Compare content types and formats to guide creative direction
Use engagement data to inform what to create more of
Always ask: What happened after this metric increased? That is where insight lives.
At my agency, vanity metrics are included in most reports. But they are always placed in context.
If a post has great reach, we examine how much traffic it generates on the site. If engagement is up, we ask what kind. Are people commenting to ask questions or just tagging a friend with no follow-up? If social followers increase, we check if inquiries also rise. If they do not, it prompts a conversation about how to improve the journey beyond the platform.
Vanity metrics are helpful, but only when read through the lens of purpose. They are signals, not proof.
Final thoughts
You do not need to avoid vanity metrics. You just need to understand them. They are helpful, accessible, and informative when used properly. They help you spot patterns, test ideas, and measure early traction.
Marketing is not just about conversion. It is about connection. If people are stopping to like, save, or share, that is a form of connection worth paying attention to. But that connection needs to go somewhere. It needs to support a broader strategy that leads to growth, retention, or revenue.
So, the next time you see a spike in impressions or a boost in likes, do not dismiss it. Do not celebrate it blindly, either. Look at what it tells you, and then ask what comes next. That is how you make data useful. That is how you make marketing better.
Read more from Brooke Heydon
Brooke Heydon, Marketing Director
Brooke Heydon is a brand strategist and marketing communications expert, and the founder of Truene Creative, a specialist agency based in Kent, UK. With over a decade of experience and a First-Class Honours degree in Journalism, she helps businesses grow through clear messaging, bold identity, and strategic execution. Her work spans brand development, content strategy, and multi-platform marketing, with a focus on supporting small businesses. Brooke has recently applied to undertake a PhD exploring how micro and small enterprises build brand credibility in digital spaces, a subject shaped by her own hands-on agency experience.
