by Queen Nwabueze
Let’s start with a true story.
A certain Nigerian telco once celebrated their campaign for getting 3 million video views in one week. They printed banners to congratulate the team. They even got featured in a trade magazine. But when they looked at post-campaign sales data, guess what?
SIM card activations had dropped by 8%.
Nigerian marketers, please gather here. We need to have a very awkward but necessary conversation: Vanity metrics are killing our marketing efforts.
Likes, shares, views, impressions, emojis, retweets, clap emojis, fire emojis? These things are sweet o, but they don’t really pay the bills. Unless your agency invoices based on vibes, these metrics are not strategy.
Yes, awareness is part of the funnel. Yes, engagement is nice. But if all your marketing reports especially PAID ones, are a list of engagement stats with no link to the business objective, what you have is a social media party. Not marketing.
Let’s break it down. The following are popular in Nigerian boardrooms and very useless if not properly contextualised:
• Impressions: So what if 9 million people saw the ad? How many bought something? How many even noticed what you were selling?
• Likes: Most likes are sympathy reactions from colleagues and interns. Your customer doesn’t care.
• Shares: Some are just because of the music or the meme, not the message.
• Reach: Great. You reached people. But did you connect?
These are not inherently bad. The problem is when they are treated as indicators of success on their own.
Now let’s talk about the grown-up table. These are the real KPIs you should be tracking:
1. Depletion Rate: How fast is your product leaving the shelves as a result of that highly funded campaign? This tells you if people are actually buying.
2. Customer Retention: Are people coming back? Or do they taste once and bounce?
3. Market Share: Are you gaining ground or shouting on Instagram while your competitor grabs your lunch?
4. Top-of-Mind Awareness (TOMA): Can your target market recall your brand without prompts? This is the real awareness.
5. Cost per Acquisition (CPA): How much does it cost you to gain one customer? This tells you if your marketing is profitable.
6. Lifetime Value (LTV): How much value does one customer bring over time? A customer who buys once is not the same as one who buys 10 times a year.
7. Conversion Rate: Out of all who saw your ad or visited your page, how many actually took action?
These are the metrics that mean something to your CFO (those guys can be overbearing though). These are the metrics that make marketing a business driver, not just a department of vibes and Canva posts.
In Nigeria, we have a deep love for performance. We like to see that something is happening. That’s why marketing teams often over-index on surface-level wins:
• “Our campaign trended on Twitter.”
• “We gained 5,000 followers in 2 weeks.”
• “The MD reposted it on his WhatsApp status.”
All of that is nice …now match that with revenue for the business?
You say the influencer campaign was a hit. But traders in Alaba don’t even know the product. Distributors are still complaining of lack of demand.
Marketing is only successful if the market is moving. Period.
Remember Moniepoint?
When Moniepoint decided to go aggressive in the Nigerian market, they didn’t start with billboards or jingles. They started with a clear customer pain point (reliable POS and better uptime) and built credibility at the grassroots.
Now they can run campaigns and point to real metrics:
• Number of POS agents activated
• Transactions per day
• Customer retention among agents
That is metrics with blood in it. Not just pretty charts with bar graphs on PowerPoint.
Many Nigerian agencies are guilty of this scam. Every report deck is a carnival:
• “We got 12 million impressions.”
• “Engagement up by 320%.”
• “Followers gained: 7,000.”
Okay. So?
What’s the ROI? What’s the CAC? What’s the depletion uplift?
These reports impress the CMO who’s allergic to numbers. But the CFO and COO are not smiling. They want to know: Did sales move? Did brand preference shift? Did we gain ground?
If your agency is not helping you build a bridge between marketing activity and business outcome, they are not an agency. They are an event planner.
The danger with vanity metrics is that they feel good. They make you think you’re doing well. Until it’s time to renew budgets or face the board.
A lot of brand managers spend their time optimising for applause, not impact. A creative goes live, and everyone checks for “engagement” within the hour. But nobody checks the sell-out figures for the week.
That’s how you end up with award-winning campaigns for brands that are broke. PR success, marketing failure.
How to Clean Up Your Metrics Game
1. Start with Business Objectives: Every campaign should answer a business question. Are we trying to acquire customers, increase loyalty, or introduce a new category?
2. Match Metrics to the Funnel: At each stage of the marketing funnel (awareness, consideration, conversion, retention), choose the right KPIs.
3. Train the Team: Not everyone knows what a CAC is. It’s a real business metric that tells you how much you’re spending to get one customer. Let’s say you run a ₦5 million digital campaign and gain 2,000 new customers. Your CAC is: ₦5,000,000 ÷ 2,000 = ₦2,500 per customer. Now, if each of those customers only bought ₦1,500 worth of product, you’re losing money. But if each one brings in ₦10,000 over 3 months? You’re winning. So? Train your marketers and agencies to speak the language of business.
4. Collaborate with Sales and Finance: Get out of your silo. Work with the people who touch the cash. That’s if office politics permit. Wink*
What Real Reporting Looks Like
Bad report: “We got 8,000 likes on our World Jollof Day post.”
Good report: “Our campaign led to a 12% increase in trial purchase, with a 7% uplift in repeat sales within 4 weeks. CAC dropped by 18%.”
If you want marketing to be taken seriously in your company, talk like a revenue partner. Not a social media intern.
Final Words: No More Ojoro Metrics
Metrics are powerful when they are honest. They show us what’s working and what’s not. But used wrongly, they become weapons of deception.
Nigerian marketers must grow beyond the dashboard screenshots. We must insist on insight, impact and integrity.
Because in the end, nobody will remember that your post trended if the business went under.
Your metrics must make sense to the market. Or they’re just noise with a filter.
