The Metrics Audit: Is This Company's Growth a Strategy Win or a Tactic Fluke?
Objective: Given a company's public marketing results and spend pattern, trace the numbers back through the three-layer model (Goal, Strategy, Tactics, Metrics) to state the underlying strategy in one plain sentence.
You're advising a small SaaS company's marketing lead, who wants to copy Coinbase's playbook after reading about its viral Super Bowl ad, and needs to know whether to imitate the tactic or the strategy underneath it.
Look at Coinbase's Super Bowl results and its longer marketing-spend pattern. Separate what's a metric, a tactic, and the actual strategy, then recommend what a much smaller company should actually imitate.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
Free, easy to share with the marketing lead for comment
The process
1 step
Step 01 of 01
The lesson's three-layer model runs Goal to Strategy to Tactics to Metrics. Metrics should trace back and explain whether the goal is being served, not just prove a single tactic was flashy.
Coinbase's 2022 Super Bowl QR ad drove 20 million landing-page hits in one minute and pushed the app from 186th to 2nd on Apple's App Store, and the company's overall marketing spend grew from $78.2 million in 2023 to $164.8 million in 2024 while broadening from crypto enthusiasts toward mainstream education. Was the QR ad Coinbase's strategy, or one tactic inside a larger strategy? What is the strategy in one sentence?
Procedure
- List every metric mentioned: landing-page hits, App Store rank, marketing spend growth, audience broadening
- Group each item under GOAL, STRATEGY, TACTIC, or METRIC using the three-layer model
- Write the underlying strategy in one sentence with no channel or campaign name in it
- Recommend which layer, if any, the SaaS company should actually imitate
Metric trace (excerpt) GOAL: expand from early-adopter traders to a mainstream, trusted financial platform STRATEGY: build broad public legitimacy for crypto, so trust transfers specifically to Coinbase TACTIC: Super Bowl QR ad (Feb 2022); TV explainer campaign; sports sponsorships METRIC: 20M landing-page hits, App Store rank jump, marketing spend growth
Healthy
The memo states the strategy in one plain sentence with no channel name in it.
Unhealthy
The memo's takeaway is 'we should also run a Super Bowl ad.'
What this means
If the recommendation names a specific channel or campaign, the SaaS company copied the tactic, not the strategy, and it will not transfer without Coinbase's budget or existing audience.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Team wants to imitate the exact tactic (a viral stunt ad) | Redirect to what strategy the tactic served, then pick a tactic that fits the smaller budget | 30 min |
Final deliverable
A one-page memo tracing Coinbase's public metrics back to a plain-English strategy statement, with a recommendation on what, if anything, the SaaS company should imitate.
See a reference example
Wise growth memo (excerpt) GOAL: become the default way people and businesses move money across borders STRATEGY: win trust through radical fee transparency so referrals replace paid acquisition TACTIC: public fee comparison calculator; the 2021 TransferWise-to-Wise rename METRIC: roughly 65% of new customers arriving via referral, revenue up 24% year-over-year RECOMMENDATION: imitate the transparency strategy (publish real numbers), not the specific calculator tool.
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- States the strategy in one sentence with no channel or campaign name in it
- Correctly separates at least 4 items into GOAL, STRATEGY, TACTIC, or METRIC
- Recommendation targets the strategy layer, not the exact tactic