How We Measure Digital Marketing Success (No Vanity Metrics)

You've probably received agency reports before. Colorful PDFs showing impressions, reach, and engagement rates. Maybe some charts are trending upward. The problem? Your pipeline looked exactly the same as it did before you hired them.

We've seen those reports too. And we built our entire measurement approach around one question: Does this actually connect to business results?

Here's exactly how we measure, report, and iterate on marketing performance for our clients.

The Short Answer: We Measure What Leads to AUM

We track five things, in this order: traffic, conversions, lifecycle stage progression, meetings, and opportunities. These are the indicators that lead to AUM growth. We don't promise AUM directly because we can't control your sales cycle, but we can measure and optimize everything that feeds it.

You'll get weekly email updates, access to real-time dashboards, and bi-weekly strategy sessions. Everything ties back to 90-day shared goals that we set together at the start of each quarter.

Why We Don't Promise AUM (And Why That's a Good Thing)

Let's be honest about something. An advisor might download your whitepaper in February, attend a webinar in April, and finally take a meeting in July. The actual investment might not come until September. Between that first download and the closed business, there could be a dozen marketing touches and just as many sales conversations.

Trying to attribute that AUM to a single campaign is a fool's errand. Anyone who promises you direct AUM attribution in B2B financial services is either lying or doesn't understand your sales cycle.

What we can do is measure the KPIs that actually predict AUM growth: the leading indicators that tell us whether marketing is working before the revenue shows up.

What We Actually Measure: Five Tiers

We use a tiered measurement framework. Each tier builds on the one before it, and together they tell the full story of marketing performance.

If we do all five well, AUM growth follows. These aren't vanity metrics. They're the controllable inputs that drive your business outcomes.

Lead Scoring: Because Not All Engagement Is Equal

Someone who downloads a single checklist isn't the same as someone who reads five blog posts, watches your process video, and opens every email you send. We implement lead scoring for every client to distinguish between casual browsers and serious prospects.

The scoring weights matter. An advisor who watches your 80% video (where you answer their most common questions) gets more points than someone who skimmed a blog post. Multiple engagements over time count more than a single download. And when someone crosses the threshold from Marketing Qualified Lead to Sales Qualified Lead, your sales team knows that the contact has demonstrated real interest.

This is how we turn raw data into actionable marketing insights. The score tells your wholesalers who to call first.

How We Report: Weekly, Bi-Weekly, and Real-Time

We believe in full transparency. Here's what that looks like in practice:

Weekly Email Updates Every week, you get an email covering high-level performance numbers, where we stand on current projects and campaigns, what deliverables are in progress, and what we're waiting on from your team to keep things moving.

No surprises. No waiting until a quarterly review to find out something's off track.

You have access whenever you want it. You shouldn't have to ask us how things are going.

Bi-Weekly Strategy Sessions Every two weeks, we meet to discuss performance in depth. What's working. What isn't. What we should do more of. What we should stop doing. These aren't status update calls. They're strategic conversations about how to improve results.

The 90-Day Goal Framework

Everything we do ties back to 90-day shared goals. At the start of each quarter, we work together to define what success looks like for the next 90 days. Those goals drive the deliverables we'll create, the campaigns we'll run, and the results we'll measure.

This matters because it keeps everyone aligned. The weekly emails reference those goals. The dashboards track progress against them. The bi-weekly calls evaluate whether we're on pace to hit them.

If we're behind at the 60-day mark, we know it. And we adjust.

Marketing Is an Experiment (That's the Point)

Here's something most agencies won't tell you: even for clients selling the same product through the same channels, different messaging works differently. What converts for one firm falls flat for another. The copy has to be authentic to your voice, your value proposition, and your audience.

That's why we treat digital marketing as a continuous experiment. We test. We measure. We do more of what works and less of what doesn't. The data tells us what to do next, so we're not guessing or making assumptions.

This is the real advantage of digital marketing. You can be targeted. You can be transparent. And you can iterate based on actual evidence rather than gut feel.

Where You Start Determines What We Measure First

Not every client starts from the same place, and understanding buying signals versus raw leads matters for setting the right priorities.

If you're starting from scratch with a website that isn't even tracking basic analytics, we focus first on traffic and conversions. You need the foundation before you can optimize the funnel.

If you've been doing marketing for a while and you've got traffic, content, and an email list, we focus on lifecycle progression, meetings, and opportunities. The foundation exists. Now we optimize for pipeline.

Either way, all five tiers should eventually be measured. But where we put our attention first depends on where you are today.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long until we see results? It depends on where you're starting and what "results" means for you. Traffic and conversion improvements can show up within 30-60 days. Pipeline impact typically takes 90-180 days, sometimes longer for firms with extended sales cycles. We set realistic expectations during onboarding and build timelines around your specific situation.

What if the numbers aren't hitting our goals? That's what the bi-weekly calls are for. Marketing is iterative. If something isn't working, we diagnose why, adjust the approach, and test again. The 90-day framework gives us regular checkpoints to course-correct before small misses become big problems.

Do we get access to the dashboards, or just reports? You get real-time dashboard access. We want you to be able to check performance whenever you want, not wait for us to send you a PDF.

How do you handle attribution when someone has multiple touchpoints? We track all touchpoints through lead scoring and lifecycle stages. We can see the full journey from first touch to closed deal. While we can't always say "this one campaign caused this deal," we can show you which content and channels are contributing to pipeline movement.

What do you need from us to make this work? CRM access or regular feedback on lead quality, input from your sales team on which leads are converting, and patience with attribution. The more visibility we have into what happens after marketing hands off a lead, the better we can optimize.

The Bottom Line

We measure what we can control: traffic, conversions, engagement quality, meetings, and opportunities. We report transparently through weekly updates, real-time dashboards, and bi-weekly strategy sessions. And we tie everything to 90-day goals so there's never any ambiguity about what we're trying to achieve.

Marketing should be measurable. And the people doing your marketing should be able to show you exactly what's working, what isn't, and what they're doing about it.

Want to see what this looks like in practice? Our Services Catalog includes a breakdown of our reporting approach and the metrics we track at each engagement level.

Get the Services Catalog →