Useless Metrics

Chris Higgins
Jul 24, 2017 · 1 min read

In digital marketing, it is incredibly easy to fall into the trap of useless metrics. No metric in itself is useful or useless. The value comes from how you use the metric — what action do you take as a result?

Reports quickly fill up with numbers, percentages, ranked lists. You glance at them and go back to what you were doing. If there are enough non-actionable metrics, sometimes you don’t even open the report (too busy with actual work).

The simple way to make your metrics more powerful is to delete any that are just ‘nice to know.’ Only keep the ones that feed directly into actions. If you are not going to change your plans, or create tasks and deadlines based on the metric, you probably don’t need it.

Chris Higgins

Written by

Thoughts on Indian and global advertising from an Australian digital strategist working in Mumbai.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade