1 article
Pipeline & Conversion
Marketing does not end with a lead. Notes on conversion, measurement, sales alignment, and the systems that turn interest into revenue.
← All insights
The Metric You Report Becomes the Product You Build
Metrics don't just measure performance. Over time, they shape behavior, priorities, and the product teams end up building.
MJ Habal · July 2026 · 5 min read
Most organizations say they’re customer-focused.
But if you want to know what a marketing team actually values, don’t start with the mission statement. Don’t start with the strategy deck.
Start with the dashboard.
The metrics that appear in weekly and monthly reports have a strange effect on organizations. They begin as measurement tools. Eventually, they become instructions.
Not because leadership explicitly says so. Not because people are lazy. Quite the opposite.
People respond rationally to incentives. They spend more time on the things that are visible, discussed, and rewarded. If a number shows up in every review meeting, teams naturally start optimizing for it.
Economist Charles Goodhart described this pattern in 1975. Once a measure becomes a target, it stops functioning as a reliable measure. Marketing departments provide fresh examples of this every quarter.
When Traffic Becomes the Goal
Imagine a marketing team is tasked with increasing website traffic.
Traffic appears on the monthly report. Leadership reviews it. Growth is praised.
The team’s response is predictable.
More content gets published. SEO investment increases. Topic selection gradually shifts toward high-volume keywords. Distribution strategies focus on maximizing sessions.
None of these decisions are inherently wrong.
The problem appears later.
After a year, the organization has become very good at generating visits. Articles rank. Clicks increase. Sessions climb.
Sales, however, starts complaining that lead quality is slipping. Conversion rates aren’t improving. Revenue doesn’t move in proportion to traffic.
The dashboard says success. The business tells a different story.
Nobody made a bad decision. The team simply followed the incentives in front of them.
When Engagement Becomes the Goal
The same thing happens on social media.
Suppose a team is evaluated primarily on engagement rate, shares, comments, likes, and reach.
The rational response is to create content that generates reactions.
Trend-chasing increases. Messaging becomes more emotional. Content formats are chosen based on algorithm performance rather than customer value.
Over time, the brand can drift away from its original positioning.
The posts that perform best are often not the posts that help customers most. They’re the ones that trigger the strongest response.
Engagement rises.
Whether trust rises with it is another question.
When Leads Become the Goal
This is especially common in B2B, education, healthcare, and real estate.
The marketing team is measured on lead volume and cost per lead.
The logical move is to reduce friction.
Forms become shorter. Targeting becomes broader. Campaigns prioritize quantity. Promotions attract more people into the funnel.
Lead counts increase. Cost per lead decreases.
Meanwhile, sales teams spend more time filtering out poor-fit prospects. Conversion rates decline. The cost of acquiring an actual customer quietly increases.
The metric improved.
The outcome didn’t.
What Is Actually Happening
Traffic, engagement, and leads are not bad metrics.
The problem starts when a metric stops being observed and starts being pursued.
Once that happens, behavior changes.
Budgets shift. Priorities change. Creative decisions are influenced by the number. Teams begin asking not just whether something helps the business, but whether it helps the metric.
Eventually the metric stops measuring performance and starts shaping it.
The dashboard is no longer a rearview mirror.
It’s the steering wheel.
A Better Question
Most leaders ask:
What should we measure?
A more useful question is:
What behavior will this metric encourage?
Traffic encourages traffic-seeking behavior.
If traffic is genuinely the objective, that’s fine.
But many organizations actually want qualified demand, revenue, retention, or customer growth. Traffic is often just a proxy. And proxy metrics have a habit of drifting away from the outcomes they were meant to represent.
Leading indicators still matter.
The challenge is choosing indicators that create the behavior the business actually needs.
Consider the difference:
- Report qualified conversations instead of raw leads, and targeting improves.
- Report pipeline contribution instead of lead volume, and marketing and sales become more aligned.
- Report content-assisted revenue instead of pageviews, and editorial decisions change dramatically.
The reporting changes.
The behavior follows.
The Decision Most Leaders Underestimate
Metric selection is often treated as an administrative task.
Someone builds a dashboard. A few numbers get added. Reports are generated.
In reality, choosing a metric is a strategic decision.
Metrics don’t simply track work.
They define what work matters.
Choose the wrong metric and a team can work incredibly hard, hit every target, and still drift away from the outcomes that matter most.
Choose the right one and alignment becomes easier. Priorities become clearer. Activity and business results move closer together.
Give a team a number and they'll pay attention to it.
Put that number in front of them every week, tie decisions to it, and eventually they'll reorganize around it.
A KPI is not just a measurement.
It's a standing instruction.
And a dashboard is often a roadmap disguised as a report.
The metric you report becomes the product you build.
Quick answers
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Goodhart's Law in marketing?
Goodhart's Law states that when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. In marketing, this happens when teams optimize for metrics such as traffic, engagement, or lead volume rather than the business outcomes those metrics were originally meant to represent.
Why do marketing teams optimize the wrong metrics?
Marketing teams usually optimize the metrics they are evaluated on. If leadership focuses heavily on traffic, engagement, or cost per lead, teams will naturally allocate resources toward improving those numbers, even when doing so does not improve revenue, customer retention, or business growth.
What are vanity metrics in marketing?
Vanity metrics are measurements that look impressive but do not necessarily correlate with meaningful business outcomes. Examples include raw website traffic, social media likes, impressions, or follower counts when they are not connected to revenue, qualified leads, customer acquisition, or retention.
Why can website traffic be a misleading KPI?
Website traffic measures attention, not necessarily business value. A company can significantly increase traffic through SEO, advertising, or content marketing while seeing little improvement in lead quality, conversions, or revenue. Traffic is often a useful leading indicator, but it should not be treated as the ultimate goal.
How can lead generation metrics create unintended consequences?
When marketing teams are measured primarily on lead volume or cost per lead, they may broaden targeting, reduce qualification requirements, or increase promotions to generate more leads. This can result in lower-quality prospects and increased workload for sales teams.
What is a proxy metric?
A proxy metric is an indirect measurement used to estimate a desired outcome. For example, website traffic may be used as a proxy for market interest, and lead volume may be used as a proxy for future revenue. Proxy metrics can be useful, but they can diverge from actual business outcomes when optimized aggressively.
How do dashboards influence organizational behavior?
Dashboards are not neutral reporting tools. The metrics they display shape priorities, resource allocation, incentives, and decision-making. Over time, teams adapt their behavior to improve the numbers that leadership regularly reviews.
How can companies avoid Goodhart's Law?
Organizations can reduce the risk by selecting metrics that are closely connected to business outcomes, reviewing multiple indicators instead of a single target, and regularly evaluating whether the reported metrics are encouraging the behaviors the business actually wants to produce.
How do you know when a marketing problem is actually a measurement problem?
A useful test is to compare the reported metric with the business outcome it is supposed to influence. If the metric is improving while revenue, pipeline, retention, or customer quality remain flat, the organization may be optimizing the measurement rather than the outcome. In many cases, the issue is not execution but incentive design.