People often ask me for advice about measuring their marketing. They tell me how difficult and challenging it is to do so. Here is my take on this issue.

First, a foundational point: the only measurement that really matters is revenue. How much and how fast is your business growing? This is important because too many marketing “experts” will have you measuring things that don’t affect revenue. For example, I don’t care how many Facebook friends and Twitter followers you have because those statistics don’t make you money.

What to measure then? Three things:

1. Your marketing activity levels: Track your frequency of communication, and the quantity of recipients. The former should be steady and consistent, while the latter should be increasing relentlessly.

2. Hand-raising: One real measure of marketing effectiveness is how many of your prospective buyers are making their interest known as a result of your marketing effort. Everything after the raised hand is sales effort.

3. Buying levels: Is your improving marketing leading to increased revenue for your organization?

Everything else — awareness, followers, exposure, branding, etc. — is noise. Measure only the money, and the activities that lead to it. The money is always accurate. It always tells the truth about how your marketing efforts are performing.

This piece ran in my Evangelist Marketing Minute short-form newsletter, which you can receive every Monday morning for free by signing up here.