Most demand generation teams are still chasing the wrong numbers. Click-through rates, form fills, MQLs look good on dashboards, but they don’t always lead to real growth. These traditional KPIs measure attention, not trust. And without trust, SaaS buyers won’t convert, stay, or refer.

If you want to drive long-term revenue, you need to track what actually builds relationships. 

Why Click-Based Metrics Are Not Enough

Let’s start with the common KPIs most teams track:

• CTR (Click-Through Rate)
  
  
• Cost per Lead (CPL)
  
  
• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
  
  
• Form Submissions
  
  
• Traffic Volume
  
  

These KPIs only measure surface-level activity. They’re easy to chase but hard to connect to real revenue. Most SaaS teams know this, but keep reporting these numbers because they’re easy to track and show quick wins.

What’s missing is Depth. Trust. Engagement. Connection. 

What Are Relationship Metrics?

Relationship metrics measure trust, connection, and buying intent. They help you understand if your brand is building a long-term relationship with your audience and not just getting temporary attention.

Here are a few examples of relationship metrics:

• Are people coming back to read more, watch more, or listen longer?
  
  
• Are you getting direct traffic growth? Are people typing your URL or searching for your brand by name?
  
  
• Are buyers interacting in your social comments, events, or communities?
  
  
• Are prospects warming up before they enter your CRM?
  
  
• Are people referring others before they even buy?
  
  
• Are people talking about your product or team without being asked?

What to Track Instead (Practical KPIs)

If you're ready to shift your measurement model, here are some KPIs worth tracking:

Engaged ICP Follows

Track how many ideal customer profiles follow your brand, team members, or company page on LinkedIn or other platforms. A follow from the right person means they see value in your voice.

DMs and Inbound Conversations

Measure how many leads, referrals, or sales conversations started from organic interactions, especially from dark social or content channels.

Content Velocity

How many pieces of content are being shared internally or externally (even without links)? Sales teams can help track this by noting how often buyers reference your content.

Community Participation

If you run a Slack group or private community, track how many members actively participate or invite others in. Look at message volume, questions asked, and repeat activity.

Branded Search Lift

A rise in branded search traffic shows people are hearing about your product and searching it directly. It’s one of the clearest signs of growing brand demand.

Referral and Mention Volume

Track how often your brand, product, or team is being mentioned on podcasts, newsletters, group chats, or Slack channels even if it’s not linked. These “dark social” referrals are strong buying signals.

How to Reframe Success Criteria

Here’s how to shift from click metrics to relationship metrics step by step:

Audit What You're Measuring Now

Start by looking at your current KPIs. Be honest. Which ones actually help you understand buyer intent? Which ones just look good in reports?

Retire metrics that don’t tell you anything useful. Replace them with ones that track engagement depth, brand trust, or buyer behavior over time.

Outdated:

• Email open rate
  
  
• Landing page CTR
  
  
• MQL volume
  
  

Better:

• Repeat content views
  
  
• Direct traffic trends
  
  
• Warm lead-to-opportunity conversion
  
  

Align Marketing with Sales on Quality, Not Volume

Traditional demand gen hands off a high volume of leads with low intent. That leads to friction with sales.

Instead, focus on hand-raisers — people who already trust the brand, know the product, and are more likely to convert.

Use metrics like:

• Percent of demo requests from direct traffic
  
  
• Percent of pipeline sourced from warm channels (e.g. referrals, community, inbound)
  
  
• Opportunity win rate by source

Track Brand-Led Behavior

Some of your most valuable buyers won’t click your ads or fill out a form. But they will:

• Join your event and ask a question
  
  
• DM your team on LinkedIn
  
  
• Mention your company in a Slack community

These signals are harder to track, but much more valuable. Gather anecdotal data from your team like social screenshots, community mentions, support conversations. Over time, patterns will emerge. You can also use brand tracking tools, dark social analytics, or NPS follow-ups to capture more of this data.

Build a Feedback Loop Between Content and Buyers

Content is the engine of ERM. But not all content builds relationships.

Track how content performs beyond clicks. Use:

• Scroll depth and time on page
  
  
• Repeat visitors to content hubs
  
  
• Number of followers gained after content drops
  
  
• Replies, DMs, and reposts on social content
  
  

Redefine Funnel Stages for Trust

Traditional funnels start with “awareness” and end with “conversion.” But in a relationship-driven model, trust builds across multiple touchpoints, often before the first CRM record is created.

Instead of MQL → SQL → Opportunity, use a model like:

• Audience: People engaging with your brand consistently
  
  
• Participants: People interacting in channels or community
  
  
• Warm leads: People showing clear buying intent (demo, sign-up, referral)
  
  
• Buyers: People who close  and stay

How to Operationalize Relationship Metrics

It’s not easy to get buy-in for new metrics. Here’s how to make the shift stick:

• Educate leadership on why clicks don’t equal intent anymore. Use sales data to back this up.
  
  
• Define what good engagement looks like—don’t just say “more DMs,” define who they’re from and what qualifies as meaningful.
  
  
• Collaborate with sales to get real feedback from conversations. Ask them to track content mentions, LinkedIn referrals, or people who reference your brand early in the sales cycle.
  
  
• Use attribution wisely. Don't expect perfect tracking. Use directional indicators alongside direct feedback.
  
  
• Create a shared dashboard that blends quantitative (branded search, community growth) and qualitative (DM screenshots, referrals) signals.

A Note on Attribution

You won’t be able to track every relationship-building action with clean attribution. And that’s okay.

Traditional attribution models miss most of the real trust-building interactions like conversations in communities, brand mentions in dark social, or binge consumption of ungated content.

Instead of chasing perfect attribution, ask better questions during your sales calls:

• “How did you hear about us?”
  
  
• “What made you decide to reach out?”
  
  
• “What content or channels helped most?”
  
  

Final Thoughts

Click metrics are easy to track, but they rarely tell you the full story. If you’re focused on building long-term revenue, you need to focus on long-term trust. SaaS brands that shift from performance marketing to relationship marketing are the ones that win in the long run. Redefining KPIs is the first step.

FAQs

Are click metrics completely useless now?

No. They can still be helpful for testing content and performance. But don’t use them as your main success metric for demand gen. Use them alongside deeper relationship-based metrics.

What tools can help track relationship metrics?

Look at tools like HockeyStack, Dreamdata, or HubSpot (with custom reports). For qualitative data, use social listening tools or collect manual insights from customer-facing teams.

How long does it take to see results from ERM-based demand gen? 

It takes time to build trust. You may not see big wins in the first 30 days, but you’ll see a stronger pipeline, better close rates, and more referrals over 3–6 months.