I recently attended a strategy session for one of my clients, a financial services company looking to scale business growth via digital acquisitions. In engagements before now, they had echoed some of the sentiments I hear a lot of when talking to those just starting their growth marketing journey:
- “The bottom line is that X people downloaded the app.”
- “What matters is how many accounts were opened.”
- “Let’s focus on real outcomes.”
I’ll be honest, that’s a reasonable position to hold. Who cares about “vanity metrics” like impressions and clicks? Afterall, revenue is what pays salaries. KPIs like downloads, accounts opened etc are what keep management and the board calm. Actual conversions are easy to point at and say, “This worked”.
However, a key point I made to them during the strategy session – if you are responsible for growth, rather than just reporting numbers at the end of the month, thinking that way can get you into serious trouble, fast. Why? Because the bottom of the funnel does not exist in isolation. Let’s take a closer look.
Read More: The Data Trap: Why a Bad Week Doesn’t Mean a Bad Strategy
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What factors affect the bottom of the funnel?
People don’t just wake up one day and download an app they’ve never heard of. They don’t open accounts with brands they don’t recognise or trust. Every “real” outcome has a backstory. Someone saw you, then they saw you again. Then they started paying attention, and, then they acted eventually (hopefully😅).
See? This means that when you only care about the bottom of the funnel, you’re basically saying, “I don’t care how we got here, just show me the result.” That might work, but trust me, only for a while.
Growth isn’t a moment; it’s a flow
One of the hardest parts of managing growth is that the results lag the work.
By the time downloads slow down, the real problem usually happened weeks earlier: maybe awareness dropped, maybe targeting drifted, maybe messaging stopped resonating. That’s why “set it and forget it” is a recipe for marketing disaster. You’ve got to constantly check what’s going on with your growth funnel.
Top- and mid-funnel metrics are how you catch those things early. They’re not the goal, but they’re the signals that tell you whether the system is healthy. Ignoring them is like refusing to look at your fuel gauge because you only care about arriving.
Are “vanity metrics” really useless in growth marketing?
Nope, they are just misunderstood.
It’s true that impressions on their own don’t mean much. Yes, reach doesn’t pay rent. Engagement definitely won’t show up as revenue in your bank account. However, those numbers answer important questions:
- Are we reaching the right people at all?
- Is our message landing or being ignored?
- Is awareness growing or shrinking?
- Are we warming up demand or letting it go cold?
There’s no magic to it. If the top of your funnel is weak, the bottom will eventually feel it. You can optimise conversion rates all you want, but you can’t convert people who were never there in the first place.
The real issue isn’t vanity, it’s laziness
Not all metrics deserve attention, because some of them are genuinely fluff. The main work is knowing which ones matter — which channels drive conversion, which audiences show real intent over time, and signals consistently show up before growth spikes or drops.
That’s not vanity. That’s doing the job properly.
This means as a growth marketer, you’ve got to not only know which metrics matter and which don’t, but you have to actually put in the work to make sense of them and leverage them in making smarter decisions.
So yes, colour me vain
If being “vain” means paying attention to awareness, consideration, and intent before they magically turn into revenue, then fine. I’ll own it. You should, too, as a growth marketer.
Because sustainable growth doesn’t come from staring at the bottom of the funnel and hoping for the best. It comes from making sure there’s always something flowing into it, and that you’re paying attention before it runs dry.
If you need support making sense of the different metrics along your entire growth funnel, I’d be happy to help. Just drop me a note, and let’s catch up.