Picture this: you just wrapped up a brilliant campaign. Your creative was outstanding. Your engagement metrics were through the roof. Your social media team is still buzzing over the sheer volume of likes, shares, and comments on every post. And everything fits into a neat report that’s full to the brim with all the wins your campaign generated.
So, you march into your CFO’s office, ready to deliver the good news about your campaign’s runaway success. Their feedback? At best, a noncommittal thumbs-up, but more likely, a simple question: “What did that do for the business?”
Vanity Metrics: Your CFO’s worst nightmare
As marketers, we’ve been conditioned to chase vanity metrics. Likes, Shares, Engagement Rate, Impressions, and View-Through Rates feel important, give us a sense of accomplishment, and often provide insight into your campaign’s performance.
But let’s be honest. Vanity metrics aren’t indicators of success, and your CFO does not care about them one bit. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be a great CFO.
Your CFO’s only job is to oversee the financial health and growth of the company. They care about ROI, profit and loss, revenue streams, and sales growth, so they want marketing KPIs that translate directly into tangible business outcomes.
Real Business Results that your CFO Cares About
Foot Traffic: Getting People to Show Up
Foot traffic is the bread and butter of brick-and-mortar. Marketing activities that inspire people to get in their car, catch a bus, or stroll to a storefront are as good as gold for Finance. Foot traffic is also notoriously difficult to track with standard media metrics. That’s why GroundTruth connects the dots between someone seeing your ad and physically visiting your location, enabling you to prove to your CFO when your ad yields a store visit. If you want to prove your campaign’s impact to Finance, you can’t do much better than proving Foot Traffic.
Market Share Increase: Eat Your Competitors' Lunch
Are you measuring the impact of your campaign on your company’s market share? Because we can guarantee that your CFO would love nothing than to see your team successfully chipping away at your competitors’ dominance. An increasing market share proves that your campaign isn’t just making noise, it’s driving sustained growth and changing consumer behavior.
Sales Lift: Driving the Bottom Line
Want to prove your ads are making a serious difference to your company’s bottom line? The best way to do it is by proving that your campaigns directly contribute to a sales increase. That doesn’t mean a general sales uptick either. Finance expects to see attributable sales that prove that a person who saw your ad bought something. Then, you can prove the percentage increase in sales attributable to your ads, just like Gary’s QuickSteak did in their digital audio and CTV campaign with GroundTruth (30% sales lift, anyone?).
Check Growth: More Bang for Your Buck
Beyond getting people to show up and buy something, your CFO will almost certainly want to know: Are customers buying more because of your ads? Are your campaigns encouraging bigger baskets, more frequent purchases, or trading up to higher margin products? By proving check growth, you’re demonstrating that your campaigns are going beyond simply attracting new customers. They’re making customers more valuable for your company.
The Takeaways?
- It’s time to finally banish vanity metrics from your campaign reports. Start thinking like your CFO and focus on the metrics that directly impact the business.
- Expect more from your media partners. They need to provide you with the metrics you need to drive real business results, like foot traffic, market share increase, sales lift, and check growth.
- When you can say, “Our media campaign drove X% increase in foot traffic, resulted in Y% sales lift, and contributed to Z% market share improvement,” you’ll be able to transform the perception of your marketing budget from an expense into an investment with a clear, profitable return.
- Get ready for a much happier, healthier relationship between marketing and the CFO.
Ready to leave vanity metrics in the dust? Get started with a GroundTruth Ads Manager account today, and start exploring our platform (no minimum spend required). If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.
