I see it all the time—entrepreneurs bragging about their website traffic, email list size, or social media following like it’s some badge of honor. But when you look under the hood, they’re barely scraping by.

It’s like celebrating how many people walked past your store while completely ignoring whether they actually bought anything. 

Vanity metrics don’t keep the lights on. Revenue does.

You’re not here to rack up likes. You’re here to make money. So it’s time to stop chasing likes and follows and start focusing on what will help your bottom line. 

That means tracking numbers that actually matter—the ones that tell you if your marketing is working or if you’re just burning cash.

If you’re not tracking the right numbers, you’re flying blind—and that’s a fast way to waste time, money, and effort on marketing that doesn’t move the needle.

So, what should you focus on instead? Let’s break it down.

Know Your Damn Numbers

Running a business without knowing your core marketing numbers is like flying a plane blind. You need instruments to guide you. 

Just like your doctor needs your vitals and your accountant needs your financials, you need to know the vital signs of your marketing. 

Stop with the guesswork and get crystal clear on these key numbers:

• Leads: How many new prospects are you pulling in?
• Conversion Rate: What percentage of those leads are actually becoming paying customers?
• Average Transaction Value: How much is each customer spending with you on average?
• Break-Even Point: What's the bare minimum you need to make to keep the lights on?

Track these numbers religiously – monthly at a minimum, weekly or even daily if you're serious about growth. Even small, consistent improvements in these core metrics can have a massive impact on your bottom line. 

Remember, small hinges swing big doors. Know your damn numbers, manage them, and watch your business take off.

In God We Trust. All Others Must Bring Data

No matter what numbers you decide to track, the truth is, there are only two types of marketing metrics you need to pay serious attention to: leading and lagging.

1. Lagging metrics are your historical data – your profits, your sales figures, your customer retention rates. They tell you where you’ve been, but they can’t help you change course in real-time. It’s like looking at your bank balance at the end of the month – it tells you what happened, but it doesn’t help you make better decisions today.
2. Leading metrics, on the other hand, are your indicators of future performance. These are the numbers that show you if your current marketing efforts are actually working. 

Forget obsessing over last month's news – that's what lagging metrics are.  

What you, as a smart business owner, need to be obsessed with are your leading metrics. These are the dials and gauges that tell you what's actually happening in your marketing right now and where you're likely headed. 

Focus on the leading indicators – your new leads, your conversion rates, your engagement – because those are the levers you can actually pull today to change your future results. Ignore them at your own peril.

The Growth Equation: Know Your LTV and CAC

If you want to truly level up your marketing, you need to become intimately familiar with two crucial leading metrics: Lifetime Value (LTV) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

1. Your Lifetime Value (LTV) tells you exactly how much profit you can expect to make from a single customer over their entire relationship with your business. This is the ultimate measure of customer worth. 

If you want to dive deeper into strategies for maximizing this crucial metric and turning your existing clients into a sustainable growth engine, I highly recommend checking out the Lean Marketing podcast episode featuring Jay Goncalves on How to Turn Your Existing Clients into a Sustainable Growth Engine.

2. Your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) tells you precisely how much you’re spending to acquire each new customer.

The bottom line for sustainable growth is simple: you need high LTV and low CAC. 

If it costs you more to acquire a customer than they’re worth to you in the long run, your business is on a losing trajectory. It’s basic math.

Loose Goals, Tight Systems: The Winning Combination

The most successful businesses often operate with "loose goals and tight systems." 

You should absolutely be setting ambitious goals for your business growth – the kind that really stretches you. But those goals are meaningless without the tight systems in place to actually achieve them.

When it comes to your marketing metrics, this means having robust systems for tracking your leads, conversions, customer value, and acquisition costs. 

It’s not enough to just want to lower your CAC or increase your LTV; you need the systems in place to accurately measure these metrics, identify areas for improvement, and consistently implement changes that move the needle.

Stop the Guesswork: Implement a Tracking System

If you’re still struggling to keep track of all your marketing numbers, t's time to stop flying blind and actually take control. The first step is to put a system in place to track your key leading metrics – no excuses.

I recommend creating a focused dashboard, highlighting the handful of numbers that will make the biggest difference to your specific business right now. Watch those numbers like a hawk, regularly. 

When things go sideways (and trust me, they will), then you can dig deeper and expand your scope. Remember, you need to understand what those numbers are telling you at both the high level and in the nitty-gritty details. 

As a top-tier marketer, you might be smooth on the surface, but underneath? You're a data-obsessed spreadsheet ninja. Now go make those numbers work for you.

If you're serious about mastering these critical metrics and want a detailed, step-by-step system for implementing this in your business, then you need to check out our Lean Metrics course. It's time to stop just reading and start getting real results.