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The majority of marketing teams check two metrics “always/consistently,” according to the 2021 CMO Survey: 

• Sales/revenue
• Digital/web/mobile performance

Other metrics — including lead conversion and LTV — were more likely to get checked between monthly and “almost never.”

Is this a sign of negligence? More likely, it shows teams focus on real-time data, according to Arjun Bidesi, MarketerHire’s head of growth analytics.

Upper-funnel: digital performance

Digital performance data — like social engagement and click-through rates — updates constantly.   

Especially for marketing teams at companies where revenue takes time to bake out — like B2B orgs, or mattress retailers — this is worth “always/consistently” checking. 

Lower-funnel: revenue

For companies with quick sales cycles, revenue updates in relatively real time — and it’s usually more relevant to org-level goals than digital performance. 

In fact, about 50% of companies use revenue as their North Star metric, according to venture fund A16Z.

Our takeaway? 

Most marketing teams only check two real-time metrics regularly, which makes sense. 

In fact, for more agile decision-making, Bidesi recommends marketing teams focus on just one real-time marketing metric to “help you reach to the next desired stage of the startup the fastest.”