A marketing metrics primer

Since I'll continue to address marketing metrics here on LM, it's important to have an understanding of when and how to use metrics, generally speaking. To that end, there is a concise summary of the characteristics of helpful metrics in the MarketingProfs article, Five Fundamentals for Useful Marketing Metrics (free registration required). The author argues that metrics should focus on these 5 areas:

1. Essential metrics criteria
2. Customer-acquisition metrics
3. Product "wow" metrics
4. Customer-retention metrics
5. Strategic accountability

It's important (and a bit of a relief!) to acknowledge that you can't and shouldn't measure everything. We need to be selective about what we measure in the context of our goals and go from there. This article helps focus metrics on only the most significant aspects of our work. We should keep this in mind as we continue discussing marketing metrics. Happy measuring!