The Two Types of Metrics
by. Jared Miller
When it comes to online marketing and consumer engagement, there’s a lot you can measure.
You can measure your volume of performance, such as the number of times you’ve posted an article, comment or tweet. This type of measurement may help you regulate frequency of engagement or understand triggers for consumer actions, but it has limited usefulness on its own.
You can also measure your market’s response to you in the form of likes, shares, comments and traffic. A lot of marketers pay close attention to these metrics, and with good reason: they can help you determine the success of a post, individual marketing piece or campaign. Yet when it comes to making decisions about your overall strategy, relying on this type of measurement can be problematic. Why? Because these data snippets focus on the research phase of the purchase cycle rather than the buying phase.
At Third Degree, we like to look at two types of measurement in tandem: consumption and conversion.
Consumption metrics are important because they give you an idea of demographic makeup and how consumers are using certain channels. Website traffic, Facebook likes, Nielsen ratings and call center inquiries are a few of the metrics marketers use to determine how successful their efforts are. Think of these as contextual metrics – their value lies primarily in helping you understand consumers in the pre- and post-purchase phases.
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