Metrics That (Almost) Matter

Mar 23, 2017 | By Kevin Oakley

At this point you’ve most likely seen me give a talk or have read my Professional Builder article on metrics that matter for new home marketing and sales. Today I’d rather share with you the ones that I think almost matter – they come close, but we aren’t playing horseshoes or hand grenades. It can be easy to fall into the trap of believing they really are important because they are easy to measure, and when measuring what you really care about is difficult (appointments, sales, and where they came from) you can fall into the trap settling for what is easy.

The problem becomes when you need to determine how to invest your time and money these – “amateur metrics” – can steal resources away from solving the real problems that will increase your truly desired result (appointments and sales). Often, these metrics can often be easily manipulated and give you a false sense of security.

Even worse, is when company ownership begins to believe that these data points that almost matter are supremely important and demand that you “fix them.” It isn’t their fault though if you’re the one who has been highlighting them in report after report. Every person in your organization doesn’t need to see every metrics – unless they have a broad and deep enough understanding of them to know what is critically important (what drives appointments and sales).


Metrics that Almost Matter:

Time On Site – You don’t really care how long someone spends on your site do you? If your time on site average was 15 minutes but no one converted to a lead, would you be happy? 1.5 minute average with a 15% conversion rate? Sign me up.

Pages Per Session – This goes right along with time on site, if landing pages can convert better than the rest of your entire website – what could that be telling you? What happens if your site now has people scrolling for days instead of making 8 page clicks to see the same amount of data. Your page count goes down, but your conversions go up – do you panic? Of course not. You only panic when the leads stop showing up.

Facebook Page Likes – A like means they “like” you, right? Does that mean they’ll buy from you? In the current state, those who like you still will likely not see your messages unless you pay for them to see it… which sounds an awful lot like you are running an ad (you are). If you’re going to run Facebook Ads, what is the ultimate purpose? Get more likes? Comments? Or – you guessed it – leads, appointments, and sales.

Impressions – Impressions (the total times your ad is viewed) are often a REALLY big number. Big numbers always feel exciting. Marketing is not a raw numbers game, unless you can afford to pay $600+ per lead (yes – I’ve seen it that high for a large company as recently as 3 months ago). The correlation between impressions and leads just isn’t there in any data I’ve analyzed.

Reach – How many total people have been exposed to your ad. Do you want people who have been exposed to your ad, or who actually care to see it? Reach doesn’t speaking to targeting the right people at all, or the context of your message likely getting passed their internal ad-blocking filter.

Clicks – Yep! I’m trying really hard to make you stop and think on this one. Clicks are the life-blood of traffic to your website, right? Absolutely. From search engines, Adwords, Facebook, and anywhere else – people have to click (or tap) their way to your front door. But clicks alone don’t tell you anything. Do people who make the click convert? Enough to lower or at least match your average cost per lead? Even the almighty click can deceive you.


You, the marketing leader, still need to have a sense of these items, but don’t let them distract you from focusing on your true desired result – and be careful about how you teach those around you to think about them.

Kevin Oakley
Managing Partner

Kevin Oakley

Meet Kevin

Online Sales & Marketing Insights Delivered Straight To Your Inbox

Get Free Insights