Your follower count doesn't pay your bills—conversions do. Stop guessing at what's working in your business and start tracking the marketing metrics that actually matter. This episode wraps up our series on systems by showing you how data-driven decisions (not feelings or spaghetti marketing) help you scale faster and find more freedom.

Just like Sam Walton transformed Walmart in the 1980s by tracking store data daily instead of monthly, you need your own version of hard numbers that show what's actually working in your business.

✅4 marketing metrics that show real growth 

✅Why vanity metrics like follower counts and page views don't indicate success

✅How to create a 2026 dashboard you check weekly (not yearly or quarterly)

✅What Sam Walton knew about fixing mistakes quickly & doubling down on what works

✅3 categories to track weekly

Ready to stop guessing and start scaling? Create your 2026 marketing metrics dashboard this week—it only takes 30 minutes!

Resources Mentioned:

Business Audit Workbook 

Show Notes:

Hi everyone, Kerry Beck here with Family eBiz, where we help families start and scale online businesses so they can find freedom in their life to do what they're called to do.

Today, we're continuing a series on systems and ending up the year and being ready for 2026. Yes, this is December, if you're listening to this later, but December. I want to talk to you about something that a lot of, well, I will say even my students do not take this seriously.

They guess at what's going on in their business. You need to stop guessing, and you need to find the marketing metrics that actually matter.

Your Follower Count Doesn't Pay the Bills

Let me tell you, your follower count on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok does not pay your bills. Conversions pay your bills.

So we need to not worry about some metrics and be sure we're worrying and paying attention to the important ones. Decisions that are based on data will help you scale that business and find more freedom in your life. Not feelings, not guesses, not throwing spaghetti marketing on the wall and hoping something happens.

What Sam Walton Taught Us About Data

You see, back in the 1980s, Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, transformed the data that they were taking in on all the different stores. He began tracking every store's data daily, not monthly.

Now, why would you do it daily? Well, one, he is measuring daily, and if there's a mistake, you can quickly fix it. His competitors were guessing about what was selling.

And so you need to also pay attention. Now, I'm not saying you need to get in and track all your data every single day. We're not a huge retailer, largest retailer in the whole world.

You see, Sam Walton built a system that helped them grow exponentially to where they are the largest retailer in the world. So you need your own version of data, store data. Not guesses, what seems to be working, but hard numbers that show what is working.

This really hit home with me. Once I started running meta ads, I realized I better know my numbers, or I'm going to be losing some money. And I will say this, when I am running ads, I check them every day.

It is something I'm not going to lose money because I'm just guessing at what is going on. I want to know how many people are clicking on there, how many leads am I getting, how many sales am I getting from those ads. I have to know that, or again, it's just throwing ad money on the wall and hoping something sticks.

The Marketing Metrics That Actually Matter

Let's talk about some different tactics that you can use. You need to track the metrics that show real growth.

What are those metrics? Alright, if you're multitasking, come back here, get a piece of paper, write this down. If you're driving, don't write.

Number one, email opt-ins. This is an indicator of whether you have an audience that's interested in your topic. So you want to see that people are continually opting in.

I was reading something by Josh Coffey, who I follow with ads, and he said your number one job as a business owner is getting new customers every single day. You should be getting email opt-ins every single day, and if not, you need to go back and see what's the problem. Why am I not?

So you need to pay attention to your opt-ins. Now, once they get on your list, the next metric is their engagement.

Number two, list engagement. What's your open rate? What's your click-through rate? Now, that is going to be different from niche to niche or business to business, but if your open rate is less than 10%, that is a problem.

They're not really interested, or you need to warm up your list. Click-through rates, usually I say 1-2% is a good click-through rate. For me, personally, on the open rate, I get an open rate of about, it depends on the email, 30 to 45%, but I was happy a lot at 15-25% when I was working on engagement.

Number three, your conversion rate. What percentage of your subscribers are actually buying something from you? If you're not making sales, you need to go back and rethink your money-making process. What are your strategies to make money?

Number four, what is your revenue per subscriber? That is something that I am going to be working on tracking in 2026. This is the most accurate health metric of your business. How much money are you making for every single one of the subscribers?

You see, you could have a small list and you can still be making money. Back in the day, when YouTube was just starting out, a lot of those people, the small YouTubers, were making money, more than the big YouTubers.

What was happening? See, the smaller ones had high engagement. It wasn't the size of their audience that drove revenue, it was their engagement.

And so you need to go back and look at these. You're looking at your email opt-ins, your list engagement, your conversion percentages, and then how much money are you making for each subscriber that you have. Look at those things and realize that better engagement is going to be bigger numbers, all right?

Ignore Vanity Metrics

Number one, you need to track the metrics that matter. Number two, ignore vanity metrics. Ignore them.

What do I mean by that? These are numbers that don't indicate success. They just make you feel good.

Oh, look, how many Instagram likes I got. Look at how many followers I have. Look at how many page views I have, but I don't have any conversions.

Those, you may have a whole lot of high numbers, but if you're not making money off of it, it doesn't really matter. You see, many, go back to the YouTubers, many creators with small but loyal audiences were earning more than all those big creators.

The smaller creators focused on depth, going deep with each person, rather than wide in an inch thick and a mile wide. They wanted to build a relationship so when they had new content, people were just dying to buy whatever it was. So ignore the vanity metrics, pay attention to the metrics that matter.

Create Your 2026 Dashboard

Number three, create a 2026 dashboard. Commit that every week you will look at these metrics.

Sometimes it's probably only going to take 15 minutes, and if things are growing, that's all you need, you just need to keep doing it. If you're not growing, then you're going to need to go into each one of these and see what you could do to change them.

What should be on that lovely 2026 metric dashboard? What's your traffic like? And that includes different things.

Like, I was in Google Analytics this morning and looking at a brand new blog post that I put out last month about Advent Candles in order, and it was part of a collaboration. I had over, I've had over 2,000 views on that thing.

Now, that's really nice, the vanity metrics. But how many buyers have we gotten from that? And I can track that because I have a lead magnet, and I go to that lead magnet and see how many buyers I got from that.

So, number one, what's your traffic like? Number two, email sign-ups. Number three, conversion rates.

Number four, what's your revenue per offer? If you're running an offer right now, how much money are you bringing in? And then, what is your revenue per subscriber?

You're wanting to look at these metrics and pay attention to them. Again, you don't have to do it every day, but I would really encourage you to just pencil in 30 minutes a week.

You see, businesses that track weekly dashboards, not yearly, that's really nice, or not even quarterly, by the time you've gotten to the end of the quarter, you've had 2 or 3 months of mistakes that you could have fixed. You see, if they are tracking weekly, you're going to scale much faster.

You can correct the mistakes quickly and double down on what works. Think of it like Sam Walton's store-by-store data, daily. Think about it for your content, okay?

He's looking at inventory and sales, and you're looking at content and sales. So I would encourage you to choose these are 3 just general metrics. Again, traffic metric, email metric, and revenue metric.

Those are the three major ones. And make yourself a Google Doc, or whatever doc you like, and just have a doc for every month, and on that doc, you can do the weekly, and write all your numbers in, and track them, and just see how you're doing.

I would love to hear how you're putting this into practice, and if this is helpful to you, would you just share our podcast with one person, one small business owner, content creator, blogger, or podcaster? That would mean the world to me.

Hey, I am Kerry Beck with Family eBiz. We'll talk to you next time.