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independence3 unconnected · 2 more authors in those circles
standing

contested · 8 claims against 2

applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

mixed results

confidence

high

evidence

10 claims · 10 articles · 4 receipts

window

2016-10-11 → 2025-05-31

3 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Grade marketing on revenue, not on traffic

Throw out any activity or writeup that reports views, clicks and impressions without ever reaching leads, customers or money, and label a big cumulative usage figure as the vanity number it is. Count profit after fees and refunds rather than headline revenue, and be ready to say which specific number the work is supposed to move.

Where this splits

Tying every activity to revenue is the majority position, while one member warns that strict measurement crowds out the playful ideas that earn the coverage in the first place.

  1. side 01 · 8 claims

    Judge every marketing activity by the revenue it produces

    Cory Zue · Greg Kogan · Justin Jackson · Preetam Nath

    1. 1Judge every marketing activity by the revenue it produces rather than by traffic, video views, ad clicks or email open rates.
    2. 2Throw out any tactic writeup that reports traffic, pageviews or click counts but never mentions leads, customers or revenue.
    3. 3Probe judgment by asking how they positioned a past launch and how they measured it: pointing at page views or restating what the PM told them is the failure mode, tracking signups and pipeline and killing weak work is the pass.
    4. 4Label your vanity metrics as such so that a big cumulative usage number does not get mistaken for progress.
    5. 5Treat monthly recurring revenue as the only result that counts and everything else as vanity, however meaningful the other numbers look.

  2. side 02 · 2 claims

    Do not let measurement crowd out playful ideas

    Harry Dry

    1. 1Change the metric you judge marketing by: count fans rather than views or impressions.
    2. 2Do not let measurement discipline crowd out playful ideas, since the playful idea is often what earns the coverage.

What it returned

  • $30

    Matt Paulson grew MarketBeat past $30 million in annual revenue by tracking precisely what each lead source earns per month.

  • 3,000

    A 3,000-word article celebrating thousands of visitors never used the word conversion; when he pressed the author, the campaign had produced $7 in revenue.

  • 100,000

    Zue called out hitting 100,000 place cards made as an obvious vanity metric

  • $1,979.79

    Zue's September profit split as Place Card Me $1,979.79 up 18.4%, Pegasus $740.44 down 15.3%, Chat Stats $131.74, Amazon affiliates $35.34, totalling $2,887.31

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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More in other

all other plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.