Vanity metrics are data points like impressions, subscriber numbers and downloads. They are easy to manipulate; and often, when they standalone, they provide little value.
To many CMOs, vanity metrics are dead.
But experiential marketers aren't mourning the loss of these once-popular quantifiers. Instead, they're concentrating on new ways to measure their campaigns — more actionable metrics that provide them with valuable intelligence about their customers.
This was one of the hot topics at the recent Experiential Marketing Summit, which took place earlier this year. Experiential's biggest movers and shakers flocked to San Francisco for three days of inspirational insights and hot-button discussion.
And when it came to vanity metrics, the consensus was clear: It's time to let them rest in peace.
Vanity metrics once served a purpose. They provided experiential marketers with fairly decent insights into their campaigns — things like the number of people who visited their event registration site or attended an activation. But as consumer expectations and applications for more sophisticated measurement evolved, these performance indicators simply weren't enough.
The demise of vanity metrics isn't hype, it's a reality — and it's one that will shape your event marketing career over the next five years. That's according to experiential and event marketing company Freeman, whose team of designers, strategists and experts attended the Experiential Marketing Summit.
They say there's been a "diminishment of hard-to-gauge vanity metrics like impressions" in a recent article and new methods of measurement now dominate the experiential space.
"Metrics like impressions still have a place, of course," they note. "But their ranking is in proper context. Every brand creates its own custom metrics (i.e., performance dashboard). The go-forward change, however, will be in the weighting of vanity metrics vs. ROI metrics across the event portfolio."
If vanity metrics are no longer important, where should you focus your efforts?
Concentrate on actionable metrics, instead. These include things like active users — the number of people who actually engage with your website and use your services, and if this is your target audience or not. Tracking detailed metric like this is far more useful than measuring something like total users, which doesn't provide you with the full picture of how people interact with your brand.
"Facebook is a great example of a company that focuses on the right numbers," says TechCrunch. "Even in its college-only days, it would always talk about daily active users (the users who come back every day) and how fast it took them to take over a particular campus."
Other actionable metrics you need to track include:
These key performance indicators help you track customers before, during and after your live events — auto shows, trade shows, ride and drive events, and the like.
The latest software can help you measure your campaigns more effectively. Using the latest technology will let you monitor your events with 20/20 clarity and provide with rich insights that you just can't replicate if you still rely on manual methods like paper questionnaires.
Vanity metrics are a thing of the past. Nowadays, it's all about actionable metrics, which provide you with so much more insights into your experiential campaigns. All the big brands are using them to gather data on customer behavior, optimize existing efforts and prove the impact of experiential.
