Marketing reports should provide clarity. They should tell you what’s working, what’s not and where to invest your budget next. But for many in-house marketing teams, reports do the opposite – they create more confusion than confidence. Click-through rates, cost per click, ROI, ROAS – these metrics flood dashboards with numbers but often fail to translate into real business decisions. So why does this happen? 

Here,  Sod co-founder Simon Blangiardo puts reports and metrics into context to help extract more value from our data. He also reveals how businesses can move beyond vanity metrics to focus on insights that drive revenue.

The issue isn’t the lack of data, it’s knowing what to do with it. Digital marketing platforms generate an overwhelming amount of metrics across multiple channels, yet these numbers often sit in silos, disconnected from broader business objectives. Many marketing teams excel at executing campaigns but lack the analytical training to interpret data in a meaningful way. Without clear benchmarks, it’s difficult to determine whether a three percent click-through rate is cause for celebration or concern. And while reporting tools offer sleek visualisations, they rarely provide context on what the numbers actually mean for the business.

At Sod, we always start with one fundamental question: What are we trying to achieve? Before any reporting begins, we align with our clients on the goals and the best ways to measure them. This clarity makes reporting far more effective. From there, we implement a simple framework – we identify strategies that aren’t meeting our goals and stop them, we continue with strategies that are working, and we start testing new ideas to uncover future opportunities. This approach ensures that reporting isn’t just a summary of past performance, it’s a roadmap for future growth. 

Connecting metrics to business outcomes

One of the biggest pitfalls businesses face is focusing on isolated metrics without understanding how they connect to larger business outcomes. For instance, celebrating a surge in website traffic while ignoring declining conversion rates is like running a restaurant full of diners who never order food. Similarly, businesses often fail to account for seasonality or compare performance across unrelated time periods. Measuring a December holiday campaign against an April promotion without factoring in seasonal trends can lead to misleading conclusions.

Many businesses also rely on outdated attribution models, which give all the credit to the last click before a sale. This fails to acknowledge the entire customer journey – how they first discovered your brand, what influenced them along the way, and what ultimately drove them to convert. The danger lies in making snap decisions based on short-term fluctuations.  Marketing success isn’t determined by a single data point, it’s about recognising patterns over time. 

Growth versus vanity metrics

Not all marketing metrics are created equal. Some may look impressive on paper but don’t contribute to real growth. Vanity metrics like impressions, page views and social media followers might make reports look good, but they rarely indicate tangible business success.  Growth metrics, on the other hand, directly impact profitability.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) measures how much it costs to acquire a new customer.  Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) reveals how much revenue a customer generates over time. Conversion Rate by Channel helps determine which platforms are effectively turning prospects into customers. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) shows how much revenue is generated for every dollar spent. Customer Journey Completion rates tell you how far users progress through your sales funnel.

The difference is simple: growth metrics answer whether your marketing efforts are helping you build long-term customer relationships and generate revenue. Vanity metrics only tell you how many people saw your content. The former guides strategic decision-making, while the latter flatters egos.

For marketing to truly impact business growth, it must align with broader financial goals. This can be achieved by adopting multi-touch attribution models that understand how each channel contributes to conversions. Integrated dashboards that combine marketing metrics with revenue and profitability data can also bridge this gap. Collaboration between marketing and finance teams is essential to ensure that reporting connects ad spend to measurable business outcomes. 

Shift perspective to unlock new opportunities 

Developing custom formulas that reflect a company’s specific goals is crucial because what matters for an e-commerce brand will differ from a B2B enterprise. Transparency is key. If sales are the primary measure of success, marketing teams need access to real sales data to understand the relationship between spend and results.

A great example of how shifting your data perspective can unlock new opportunities comes from one of our lead generation clients. They were convinced most of their leads came from their existing database, relying on last-click attribution to measure success. Technically, their reports confirmed this, but when we looked at the data holistically, we uncovered a major blind spot. Their existing database contacts had originally come from paid campaigns that had been undervalued. By linking social and Google campaigns with lead capture processes, we significantly increased their lead volume. 

However, this success created a new challenge – their team wasn’t prepared for the influx of leads. Instead of letting opportunities go cold, we helped them implement a qualification system, using a tailored email sequence to keep prospects engaged while identifying high-intent leads. This shift in approach not only improved marketing performance but also transformed their sales process, proving that better data interpretation leads to smarter business decisions.

Prepare for a cookie-less future

Looking ahead, marketing analytics will continue to evolve beyond traditional metrics. Businesses should prepare for a cookieless future, where first-party data strategies replace traditional tracking methods. There will be a shift toward customer journey analysis rather than focusing on individual channel performance. Privacy and ethical data collection will become a greater focus as consumers demand more control over their personal information. AI-powered predictive analytics will allow marketers to forecast trends and make

proactive decisions. More advanced cross-channel attribution models will better account for the complexity of modern customer journeys. Ultimately, businesses that embrace these changes and learn to interpret marketing data through a business lens will be the ones that thrive.

At Sod, there’s a strong belief that marketing reports should be more than just numbers on a page. They should tell a story, provide clear direction, and help businesses make smarter, more profitable decisions. Because at the end of the day, marketing success isn’t about how much data you have, it’s about how well you use it.

For another expert take on data insights, read The importance of data insights in shaping effective content marketing campaigns, by Lyndall Spooner.