You might be shocked to learn that this week, my rant against vanity metrics is inspired by a bit of Seth Godin and umm.. cats.
Taking a walk the other day listening to Seth Godin’s Akimbo podcast, which, to be honest these days is a lot of replays or “special archive episodes”, I had to stop and make a note as Mr Godin said:
“Enough A/B testing will turn any website into a porn site”
You might be more familiar with Godin than me and would have heard this from him before, as, aside from the podcast it’s something he’s said on his blog.
As he then explains:
“That’s because the short-term waves of data-driven, algorithmic feedback loops inevitably make platforms banal, then trashy.”
I love this.
Since I switched careers to marketing, I have railed against chasing vanity metrics. I distinctly remember fifteen years ago, when I worked for an analyst firm, giving a presentation at an industry event. In the deck was a slide that promised I could help boost any company’s homepage traffic.
How?
By teaching a cat to play the piano and putting the video on their homepage.
YES, you would boost traffic, but it would have very little value to your business.
That’s kinda extreme, and what Seth is talking about is a bit more sophisticated with testing. Or maybe not, as I stuck to cats, and he went to porn, which on reflection, I’m glad I didn’t think of.
You could be testing your way to the same conclusion.
Look at the numbers! We tested the CEO’s keynote video on the homepage, then a cut with the CEO playing the piano, then a dog playing the piano, then the cat. Everyone loves cats!
Of course, from my slide deck authored in 2009 to today, the algorithms got smarter, and of course, we now have AI. Not only do we have testing, but we have a way to automate the decisions from those tests based on the word of the most worshipful: data.
It’s an incredibly tricky business to avoid the temptation of popular content and to try to please the maximum number of people, and the dose of dopamine from vanity metrics is SO good.
There is one thing executives like, almost as much as cats, it’s numbers up and to the right.
I once did some work for a company where the performance marketing team were CRUSHING the web traffic numbers, the PPC performance was off the hook. A quick dive into that performance led me to discover; bucket loads of cheap paid traffic from far Eastern countries that this company did not sell to or have any reason to want traffic from, the traffic from their target markets (UK/US/EU)was static or droppping, an agency measured by one metric (traffic), and an executive with a very blind eye to it all. Shockingly bad….. I think I’d have preferred a cat video.
That example aside, when we do try and woo traffic with optimized content and not fraudulent ad behavior, in B2B, we tend not to end up with cats (or porn) but wordy words that are so banal that ChatGPT could have written it two algorithmic generations ago when it was still in its beta diapers.
A/B tested, data-based AI generated, cranking the handle for more and more and more is not what we need, even if the traffic metric is up and to the right.
If only 100 people arrived on your website next week and all of them purchased something, who would give a f**k that site traffic was only 2% of the week before?
Or whatever numbers would blow the doors off your business.
We need to figure out how to discover that our people, our minority, liked it and took action, leave the cat porn or the banal to someone else.
Seth is actually making a different point in his blog post. He’s making a wonderful point about platforms, so go read that article too.
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I’m a 3xCMO, now a marketing strategy advisor and podcast host at Rockstar CMO. Although, I’m not a rock star, but a marketing leader, strategist, content marketer, columnist, speaker, industry watcher, and creator of ART (Awareness, Revenue, and Trust) for the companies I work with. But most of all, I am an enthusiastic tea drinker.
You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or now Threads! – or listen to my weekly podcast at Rockstarcmo.com
The half-baked thoughts shared on this blog may not reflect those of my employer or clients, and if the topic of this article is interesting or you just want to say hello please get in touch.