Episode 32: Your KPIs Are Broken: Rethink the Metrics of Success
Explore why your KPIs might be failing you in this episode of the Content Community Commerce podcast. Tim and Robbie unpack how AI overviews, shifting search behavior, and platform changes are disrupting traditional marketing metrics. Learn why impressions are up but clicks are down, why brand visibility matters more than ever, and how to rethink performance in a world where ROAS isn't everything. Get practical tips for resetting your KPIs, educating stakeholders, and adapting your strategy to today’s evolving marketing landscape.
“Be willing to kill your sacred cows if you want your marketing to evolve.”
Objectives
In this episode, you will be able to:
Understand why traditional KPIs like traffic, rankings, and ROAS are becoming less reliable.
Recognize the impact of AI overviews and changing user behavior on organic search performance.
Reframe your marketing measurement strategy around brand visibility and trust signals.
Identify the downstream effects of reduced traffic on retargeting, email, and paid media.
Learn how to educate stakeholders on shifting metrics and realign internal expectations.
Discover how to balance brand and performance marketing in a post-ROAS world.
Explore creative ways to grow your audience through email sharing, reviews, and alternative channels.
Gain permission (and motivation) to challenge “sacred cows” and rethink what success looks like.
Transcript
Tim Lowry:
[00:00:00] Robbie, did you hear that? Universal Studios just launched a new ride. It's the ROAS rollercoaster.
Robbie Fitzwater:
Wait, wait. Is that the rollercoaster I’ve been living on this whole time? I’ve been working on two. Good for not one to drop, but yes, that’s the rollercoaster. Took a good moment to drop, but it will.
And when it does, it'll make your stomach turn. You’ll probably end up in the negatives pretty quickly. Your photo at the end? Not gonna look good. Not gonna look good at all.
Okay, and onto the podcast. On the Real. On You Market. Can I market? Yes, you can. Can I market? Yes, you can.
We’re diving into hopes and dreams, but where’s the strategy? This will be great. We’ll be great.
This is Tim and Robbie with the Content Community Commerce podcast. We talk about topics at the intersection of content, community, and commerce. Today, we're talking about something every marketer faces: KPIs.
Everyone loves them. They evolve constantly. But are your KPIs broken? What needs fixing? And how should we think about marketing now, when so much is changing?
Tim Lowry:
Yeah, it’s broken. So broken right now. It hurts. Like everything else in your life, it’s broken.
It happens in waves. There's always a shift, but now feels different. The core vehicle behind what we do—Google—is changing. It's in flux. It has new competitors and it's shifting the user journey completely.
Old KPIs don't work the same way. We need to evolve with it. And honestly, it might change again before this even gets posted. For now, we need to figure out how to lean into this new space.
Robbie Fitzwater:
Yeah, it's a new paradigm. You brought this up because it’s incredibly relevant.
AI overviews are already changing how we interact online. We thought it would take longer to catch on, but user behavior is adapting quickly.
Tim Lowry:
Yeah, and marketers are trying to figure out where they stand. We're less than a year in, and traffic erosion has already happened.
We're not losing rankings. We’re still in positions one or two, sometimes even in the AI overview. But users just aren't clicking anymore.
Robbie Fitzwater:
Yeah, you're still calling Google "Daddy," but it's not giving you the credit or love anymore.
Tim Lowry:
Exactly. You're saying, “We’re in position one,” but traffic is down 35 percent. That doesn’t compute for most people.
They ask, “How can we be number one and still lose traffic?” That’s where old KPIs, like SEO traffic and rankings, need to be reassessed.
They’re no longer the gold standard. Revenue still matters, of course, but these were signals people used to track performance. Now, they don't hold the same weight.
This is front and center for us because we’re having to work through it in real time. So I’m pulling Robbie into it, and we’re bringing all our experiences along too.
Robbie Fitzwater:
It’s all broken. We’re throwing everything under the bus and going after sacred cows. Or at least we’re trying.
If you like cows, don’t worry. We won’t actually hurt any. At lunchtime, that might change. But not yet.
As marketers, we typically have goals set for each quarter or year. KPIs are part of that structure. They help us stay accountable.
But with things changing so rapidly, we have to ask ourselves, what market forces are shifting? What does success look like now?
Success this year may be very different from what it looked like last year. And while this change might have happened anyway, it’s happening much faster now.
Tim Lowry:
If your KPIs were to grow traffic by 50 or 100 percent year-over-year, that’s a lot harder now.
Everything that got you here has changed. Based on my experience and what I’ve seen across the industry, everyone is reporting traffic losses between 25 to 60 percent.
Impressions are up. Clicks are down. Rankings are stable. Even AI overview inclusion is there. But behavior has changed.
Thankfully, revenue and conversions haven’t been impacted as drastically. People still need to visit a transactional page to make a purchase. But we’re losing exposure and reach.
So now, we’re reporting on things like brand visibility. How many AI overviews are we in? How often do we show up in image packs or People Also Ask boxes? What’s our ranking within AI results?
Those are signals of trust. You can treat them like a brand awareness campaign. They're like billboards that users pass every day. When they’re ready to take action, hopefully they remember us.
But this opens another question. Should we be investing more in Reddit? In YouTube? That second click may no longer be going to our website. The user journey is shifting.
And that shift means our reporting has to change too.
Robbie Fitzwater:
Exactly. If you're not having awkward conversations about KPIs already, you're going to have them soon.
A year from now, someone’s going to say, “Your KPIs look terrible.” You need to be ahead of that conversation. Change the narrative now.
Tim Lowry:
And the problem runs deeper. If you're getting fewer site visits, you're also getting fewer people to retarget.
If you used to get 100,000 organic visitors, and now you’re getting 50,000, that’s a huge drop. Fewer retargeting opportunities. Fewer email signups. All your downstream marketing channels are affected.
Robbie Fitzwater:
Exactly. It’s the economics of the platform.
If Google is keeping users on their platform, you lose access to data. Retargeting becomes less effective. Your email list grows slower. Your ROAS drops.
Tim Lowry:
And this isn’t just a theory.
The AI overview rollout began slowly in late 2024. But by February 2025, it ramped up massively.
We’ve seen it in the data—impressions skyrocket, but clicks decline. We’ve talked with brands that rely on performance marketing, and they’re feeling it.
Now they have to rethink everything. How do you hedge against this shift when your biggest driver—Google—is changing?
Robbie Fitzwater:
Yeah. And we used to think in a linear structure: more traffic equals more conversions.
That still works in theory, but the path to conversion is more complex now. Intent is still there, but the route has changed.
We need to refocus on outcomes and think less about surface-level metrics. That’s what actually matters.
Tim Lowry:
Exactly. Google is changing, but so are other platforms. People are discovering through GPT, Claude, Perplexity.
So now we’re asking: how visible is our brand across all these tools?
And beyond that, what’s the cascading effect? Fewer visitors mean fewer email subscribers, fewer retargeting impressions, and ultimately fewer conversions.
Robbie Fitzwater:
Right. If your cost to acquire is going up, how do you maximize your list? Make it easier to share. Add opt-ins in email footers. Make emails something people want to forward.
That newsletter strategy should include more than just content. It needs to drive growth too.
Tim Lowry:
I love that. Some emails are built to be shared. That’s how you leverage what you already have.
Robbie Fitzwater:
Exactly. We even add CTAs like, “Send this to your spouse” or “Forward to a friend.”
We ask readers to reply. That helps with engagement and deliverability. It also helps us land in the primary inbox.
Tim Lowry:
So good. Let's wrap with three takeaways.
Robbie Fitzwater:
First, be willing to challenge what’s working. No sacred cows. The market is shifting fast. Your KPIs need to evolve with it.
Tim Lowry:
Second, understand the difference between performance and brand marketing. You still need both. But ROAS isn’t everything. Not anymore. You need visibility and trust to make performance work.
Robbie Fitzwater:
And third, educate your team and stakeholders. You have to explain how and why things are changing. Don't wait to be asked. Be proactive.
Tim Lowry:
Exactly. Go to your stakeholders with insight, not excuses. If they come to you first, it’s too late.
Robbie Fitzwater:
Make sure your KPIs have context. As marketers, we educate, inform, and entertain. That includes internal teams too.
Tim Lowry:
Alright, man. This was great. Let’s keep figuring this out. And if anyone has questions, or if we missed something, call us out on LinkedIn.
Robbie Fitzwater:
Yeah, tell us we’re wrong. Or tell Tim he nailed it.
If you liked the episode, leave us a review. Five stars. Or at least three and a half
