What are vanity metrics

Hypothetical example

A clothing brand celebrates 100,000 Instagram followers. In the same quarter, online store sales fall 10%. Followers grew because of a giveaway, and almost none of the new followers matched the profile of buyers.

The team changes its main indicator: instead of followers, it tracks sales from Instagram and the cost per customer won there. The numbers get smaller and less flattering, and start telling where to invest.

The original idea

In the 2009 post, published on Tim Ferriss's blog, Ries gives a simple example: a site with 10,000 hits. Now what? Looking at that total, you do not know what brought the visitors or what to do next.

On the other side are actionable metrics. Ries cites three routes to them: split tests, which confirm or refute a hypothesis; per customer metrics instead of totals; and funnel and cohort analysis, which follows groups of customers over time.

Vanity or actionable

Side by side examples

	Vanity metric	Actionable alternative
Social media	Total followers	Sales and leads from each network
Website	Total visits	Conversion rate by source
Ads	Impressions and clicks	Cost per customer and return on investment
Email	List size	Revenue per send
App	Cumulative downloads	Active users returning after 30 days

How to spot them

• The number only goes up, even when business is bad.
• It changes no decision, whether it rises or falls.
• You cannot tell which action caused the change.
• It is a cumulative total, not a rate or a per customer value.
• It shines in the presentation and disappears in the budget meeting.
• It is tracked because it is easy to collect, not because it matters to the business.

Do vanity metrics have a place?

They do, as context. Reach and followers help size the audience and can be a means to a result. The problem is treating them as the goal. The question that separates the two is always the same: if this number doubles, what do I do differently?

Frequently asked questions

What are vanity metrics?

Numbers that look good in reports, such as followers and total visits, but do not tell you what to do next or show cause and effect.

Who coined the term vanity metrics?

It was popularized by Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, in a 2009 post contrasting vanity metrics with actionable metrics.

What are actionable metrics?

Metrics that show cause and effect and guide decisions, such as A/B test results, per customer metrics and cohort analysis.

Are followers a vanity metric?

When treated as a result, yes. As context for audience size, they are useful, as long as they are tied to leads, sales or retention.

How do I move away from vanity metrics?

Swap totals for rates and per customer values, tie each metric to a decision and ask: if this number doubles, what changes in what I do?

Related terms

• KPIA KPI (key performance indicator) is a number chosen to show whether a business is reaching a specific goal...
• Engagement rateEngagement is the measure of how much people interact with content or a website: likes, comments, shares...
• Reach and impressionsReach is the number of different people who saw an ad or piece of content; impressions is the number of times...
• A/B testingA/B testing is an experiment in which two versions of something, such as a page, ad or email, are shown to...
• ROIROI (return on investment) is the percentage that shows how much an investment earned beyond what it cost...
• CACCAC (customer acquisition cost) is how much a business spends, on average, to win each new customer. You add...

Sources

• Eric Ries: Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics (2009)

Rodrigo Fávaro

Founder of ROO3, a marketing and technology agency in São José do Rio Preto, Brazil. Builds AI products running in production (Tobia, gerar.app, Pense Mercado) and maintains the AI Benchmark, a public ranking of AI models.

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