I recently lost a client to a competing marketing consultant.

The client wanted a Facebook advertising campaign for her business and I told her that she could expect about a dozen new customers based on her budget.

The other marketing consultant promised her 1,000 Facebook likes in a week, so she went with them.

A month later, her company had 1,000 more likes but not a single new customer.

Your marketing efforts should be driven by your business goals.

My former client is a classic example of a small business owner with the wrong marketing priorities. In this case, my client really wanted new customers, not Facebook likes.

The competing firm got her 1,000 likes, but mostly from overseas profiles. This is a completely useless audience for most Minnesota small businesses.

If you have 15 Facebook followers from Minnesota and you add 1,000 fake likes from Malaysia, you still only have 15 Facebook followers. Even worse, fake followers can hurt the unpaid reach of your Facebook posts because they will never interact with your content.

By focusing on gaining Facebook likes instead of new customers, my former client wasted her money chasing a false success metric. She pays her employees with money from new clients, not Facebook likes. Her lack of focus resulted in a major missed opportunity.

Ignore the crap – focus on conversion

Many small business owners make the mistake of solely focusing on “puff metrics” like page rank, visitor/click numbers, or social shares. Although all of these metrics can result in increased sales and visibility, it is very easy to manipulate those metrics using scripted programs (bots) or offshore click farms.

That is why it is important to focus on conversion – what do you really want people to do?

The exact definition of conversion depends on your business goals.

For example, you may want someone to make a purchase, share their contact information, sign up for a demo, or subscribe to a newsletter.

Clicks, page rank, and social shares should be secondary considerations unless you solely want to create brand awareness for your business. Even then – you should ask your marketing agency to demonstrate that they have generated awareness among your target audience (usually local people of a certain age) instead of a click farm in a distant land.

Dennis Jansen is a marketer and Upsize Minnesota’s digital editor. Follow him at @DennisJansen.