Quantification Bias in Marketing, Rory Sutherland for SMBs
Not everything that counts is measurable. Not everything measurable counts.
It's an old warning, usually attributed to Einstein, actually written by the sociologist William Bruce Cameron, that Rory Sutherland uses as a through-line in his work. And it's the most underrated lesson for marketing teams trying to steer by dashboard.
What Sutherland actually says
Sutherland's central critique of modern marketing is what he calls quantification bias. The assumption that what you can't measure doesn't exist. Or worse: doesn't matter.
He often cites the McNamara fallacy, named after Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of Defense during Vietnam:
"The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. The second step is to disregard that which can't be measured. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured really isn't important. This is blindness."
Sutherland's own addition: this logic is everywhere in marketing teams working with platforms that supply their own metrics. He calls it technoplasmosis, the tendency to chase the metrics Google, LinkedIn or Meta hand you, instead of the metrics that actually matter to your brand.
Why this hits SMB marketing especially hard
A large agency has a brand strategy, a media strategy, and a measurement strategy running in parallel. A small or mid-sized company has a marketing lead and a dashboard. That dashboard becomes the yardstick for everything.
What results:
Content optimized for click-through but not brand recognition
Campaigns evaluated by lead volume without regard to lead quality
Strategic choices not made because they aren't measurable within a month
Short-term winners are often long-term losers. And that's exactly what a dashboard can't see.
What you do measure
Sutherland isn't saying don't measure. He's saying: know what your dashboard isn't telling you.
Three principles to put that into practice:
1. A maximum of five KPIs at a time. Three primary KPIs tied to a business outcome, plus two supporting KPIs that explain why the primary number is moving. Above five, the discussion shifts from what should we do differently to which number are we even looking at.
2. One quarterly conversation about what you don't measure. Once every three months, take 30 minutes for questions a dashboard can't answer. How are we being talked about? Which customers stayed, which left, and what did they say on the way out? What feeling do our largest customers retain from our content?
3. Separate efficiency metrics from effectiveness metrics. Efficiency: cost per lead. Effectiveness: do those leads convert and stay? Sutherland's frustration is that the first is easy to measure and the second isn't, so the first gets all the attention.
What a dashboard can do
A dashboard can tell you traffic rose by 12%. It can't tell you whether the people who arrived took anything away. Whether your pricing position is right. Whether your audience is shifting.
For that, you need conversations. With customers, with the team, in quarterly reviews. Not tools.
You might ask
Which five KPIs would you recommend for an SMB? Depends on the business. A starting structure: qualified leads per month (primary), lead-to-customer conversion rate (primary), retention or churn percentage (primary), organic traffic (supporting), cost per lead (supporting). Adjust based on what actually steers your business.
How do you convince a team to measure less? Rarely by arguing. By running one quarter with a shorter list and comparing the result. What most teams discover: measuring less leads to more decisions made.
Does this apply to B2B? Yes, more strongly. B2B cycles are long and complex. Short-term metrics force decisions that hurt long-term. Sutherland's principle is most useful here.
