Alexander Serradilha
Marketing metrics for whoever watches the cash
Impressions, CTR and average position say nothing to the person paying the bill. Five translations from marketing metric into business language.
What you will learn here
- A channel metric does not answer the question leadership is actually asking.
- Five direct translations from marketing metric into business concept.
- A metric with no decision attached is not a metric: it is decoration.
There is a recurring mismatch between the people running marketing and the people deciding the budget. The report shows impressions, clicks, average position, reach. Whoever reads it wants to know one thing: is this bringing in money, and how much.
Ahrefs published an article on this problem in an SEO context. The argument carries across any channel: it is not that leadership does not understand the metric — it is that the metric does not answer the question leadership is asking.
Five translations
The article proposes swapping the channel metric for the equivalent business concept:
| Business concept | Matching marketing metric |
|---|---|
| Market share | Share of voice — your slice of the clicks across a set of terms, against competitors |
| Revenue growth | Organic traffic value (rankings × CPC of those terms) |
| Market penetration | Share of traffic value — the opportunity in R$ that exists and you are not capturing |
| Customer value over time | Organic engagement signals |
| Brand demand | Search volume for the brand name |
The fifth is the most underrated. The article cites research by James Hankins, according to which share of search accounts for roughly 83% of a brand's market share. It is a correlation, not a law — but it means that how many people search for your name is an indicator that moves alongside the size of your business, and it is free to track.
How this becomes an e-commerce report
The direct translation for a store, with no paid tool at all:
- Instead of "impressions", show "how many people searched for our brand". Google Trends and Search Console itself will give you that. It is the closest indicator to "we are becoming known".
- Instead of "average position", show "what it would cost to buy that traffic". Volume × CPC of the term. It turns into a figure in R$, comparable to the media budget.
- Instead of "CTR", show "out of every 100 people searching for this, how many land on us and how many go to the competitor". Same information, framed as a contest.
What not to do
Do not swap the metric in the presentation only. If the number steering the team's decisions is still CTR, the translation becomes theatre — and the first hard question brings it down.
The practical rule: every metric in a report needs a decision attached to it. If nobody changes anything because of that number, it is not a metric — it is decoration. A good marketing report has fewer lines than today's, not more.
That is the principle behind the WIG methodology: fixed cadence, decisions on the record, tests that become standard practice.
Source: Ahrefs — MBA Metrics for SEO.
“If nobody changes anything because of that number, it is not a metric — it is decoration.”
