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Your agency just sent over the campaign report. The deck looks stunning. Impressions are through the roof. Engagement is "phenomenal". The creative director is thrilled.
Your bank account tells a different story.
This is the gap that costs Australian businesses thousands every quarter. Campaigns that look brilliant in presentations but deliver nothing measurable where it actually counts: revenue, leads, customers. You're paying real money for metrics that sound impressive in boardrooms but don't move your business forward. The problem isn't creativity itself. It's creativity disconnected from outcomes. And if you've ever sat through a glowing campaign debrief whilst wondering why your sales pipeline looks exactly the same, you already know what this costs.
Let's talk about what you're actually paying for when the numbers look good but your business doesn't grow.
Picture this: your agency presents the quarterly results. The campaign performed "exceptionally well". They've got the slides to prove it. Reach exceeded targets. Engagement rates climbed. The creative work even got shortlisted for an industry award.
Meanwhile, you're looking at flat revenue and wondering where the actual customers are.
Creative excellence and business results are not the same thing. A campaign can be clever, visually stunning, and widely shared whilst generating precisely zero qualified leads. This isn't about dismissing good creative work. Strong creative matters. But only when it's tied to outcomes that actually affect your bottom line.
Has your agency ever celebrated a campaign whilst you struggled to see the ROI? You're not alone. The disconnect happens because agencies often optimise for what makes them look good, not what makes your business grow. If you're ready to close that gap, understanding how Services like conversion-focused campaign design work can help you demand better from your marketing spend.
Let's call them what they are: vanity metrics. These are numbers that make a company look good externally but do not provide insights that help in making meaningful business decisions. They fill presentation decks beautifully. They sound impressive when your agency recaps the campaign. But they don't connect to revenue.
Vanity metrics are what agencies hide behind when real results are missing. They're the smoke screen that makes a failing campaign look successful. And you're paying for them.
Here are the three most common offenders.
Impressions measure how many times your ad appeared. Not whether anyone cared. Not whether anyone acted. Just that it showed up somewhere, to someone, at some point.
Impressions can be legitimate for brand awareness goals. If you're launching a new product and need visibility, tracking reach makes sense. But impressions become vanity metrics when they're used to justify campaigns meant to drive sales. 500,000 impressions sounds massive until you realise it generated three enquiries and zero customers.
The question isn't whether your ad was seen. It's whether being seen led to anything that matters to your business.
Likes, shares, comments. Agencies love presenting these as proof of success. And yes, engagement metrics may indicate brand awareness and affinity but not direct sales performance.
A post with 1,000 likes that generated zero sales enquiries or purchases isn't successful. It's just popular. There's a difference.
Can you pay your suppliers with likes and shares? Can you cover payroll with comments? If the answer is no, then engagement metrics alone aren't telling you what you need to know.
Follower count is easily inflated and rarely translates to sales or genuine engagement. Having 10,000 registered accounts seems impressive until you realise only 100 users are active monthly. The same logic applies to social media followers. A large audience means nothing if they're not buying, enquiring, or engaging in ways that move your business forward.
Viral moments create temporary buzz. They feel exciting. Your notifications explode. Then Monday arrives, the noise fades, and you're left with no lasting customer relationships or revenue to show for it.
Social media isn't worthless. But there's a massive difference between followers who buy and followers who just watch.
Pretty numbers aren't free. You're paying real money for metrics that don't move your business forward. The cost isn't just the campaign budget. It's the wasted time, the lost opportunities, and the momentum you'll never get back.
Let's break down what vanity metrics actually cost you.
Campaign budgets get allocated to maximising shareability rather than conversion potential. The goal becomes creating something clever enough to go viral, not something effective enough to generate customers.
Here's what that looks like in practice: $15,000 spent on a clever video that went viral, racked up shares, and generated no qualified leads. The agency celebrates. You're left wondering what you actually bought.
Contrast that with what the same budget could achieve when focused on conversion-driven campaigns. Targeted ads. Landing pages optimised for action. Follow-up sequences designed to turn interest into revenue.
Would you rather have 10,000 shares or 50 new customers?
Opportunity cost is the hidden killer. Whilst you're running vanity-driven campaigns, you're not running campaigns that actually convert. Every quarter spent chasing impressions is a quarter your competitors might be capturing actual customers.
Six months and $40,000 spent on brand awareness whilst direct competitors run conversion-focused campaigns and steal market share. That's not just money lost. It's time and momentum you can't recover.
The market doesn't wait for you to figure this out. Your competitors are already moving.
You shouldn't wait until campaign end to discover it didn't work. You need to know upfront whether the strategy is built to deliver real results or just impressive-looking numbers.
The good news? You don't need to be a marketing expert to ask the right questions. You just need to know which questions separate vanity from value.
Before approving any campaign, ask your agency these three questions:
1. How does this metric connect to revenue?
If they can't draw a clear line from the metric to money in your account, it's probably vanity.
2. What conversion action are we tracking?
Impressions aren't a conversion action. Likes aren't a conversion action. Enquiries, purchases, bookings—those are conversion actions.
3. What's our cost per acquisition target?
If your agency doesn't know what it should cost to acquire a customer, they're not managing your budget strategically.
These questions align with the SMART criteria: metrics should be Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-related. If your agency can't answer these clearly, you're likely being sold vanity metrics.
These questions should feel simple enough to ask in your next meeting. If your agency pushes back or deflects, that tells you something too.
Here's what you should be tracking instead: conversion rate, cost per acquisition (CPA), return on ad spend (ROAS), revenue per email, qualified leads generated.
Conversion rates and revenue per email are more indicative of success than open rates or click-throughs. These metrics might look smaller and less impressive in a presentation. But they're the ones that actually predict business growth.
Tracking that your campaign generated 47 qualified leads at $85 each tells you something useful. Tracking that it got 12,000 impressions tells you almost nothing.
The numbers that matter are the ones that connect directly to your ability to grow, hire, invest, and scale.
Creative work must serve business outcomes, not just win industry applause. You can have both—campaigns that are creative and convert—but conversion must be the priority. If your agency can't deliver that, you're paying for the wrong thing.
Starting with your next campaign, demand conversion tracking and revenue-connected metrics. Ask the three questions. Insist on clarity around cost per acquisition. If you need expert guidance implementing these strategies and holding your agency accountable, Seogrowth specialises in conversion-focused campaign design that prioritises business growth over vanity metrics.
You're the client paying the bills. You deserve campaigns that actually grow your business.
