How Do You Measure Success?

I’ve been driving to work this week with Built to Spill on heavy rotation, a band I discovered way back in college that never really “broke through” by conventional metrics, but quietly accumulated some of the most passionate fans in indie rock. No big hits. No algorithms. Just music that meant something to the right people.

It got me thinking about how we measure success in marketing. Reach, impressions, conversion rates, CPC are all very useful and absolutely necessary. But those metrics don’t always capture everything.

Did an ad connect with someone deeply enough that they’d tell a friend or share with colleagues?

Built to Spill didn’t need a million streams or ten million impressions. They just needed a few thousand people who genuinely and consistently cared about their music. People who bought their albums and saw them perform live, probably more than once…

Are we optimizing just for numbers, or for the kind of connection that makes someone turn up the volume? You don’t have to be perfect from now on, but what is your creative angle?

Who is your audience? Are you optimizing for impressions or for impact that sticks?