Growth Marketing for Deathcare Part 3: What Are North Star Metrics?

A North Star metric is the clever name for a single key performance indicator you can use to guide the growth of your firm and understand whether the business is healthy overall.

This growth marketing term gets its name from Polaris, the North Star. For centuries, sailors and other explorers used Polaris as a guide in the northern hemisphere. The bright, easy-to-locate star helped them navigate across vast seas, oceans, and plains long before GPS was even a dream in some modern inventor’s mind.

If you know anything about historic navigation techniques, you know that people couldn’t rely solely on the North Star. They also used various constellations and a complex series of measurements and math to guide them.

Deathcare firms, then, can’t drop all their other data in favor of a single North Star growth metric. Instead, they should identify a metric that helps them find their way to success while also using other KPIs.

Choosing the right North Star metric is the first step. Look for a metric that:

• Applies to all your clientele, products, and service lines
• Is within your control as much as possible
• Can be measured—easily if possible
• Can be measured within time boundaries, such as per day, week, month, or quarter, so you can compare success as you grow

Once you identify a North Star metric, find ways you can work to improve it. Doing so usually improves your services and processes, resulting in positive impacts to other metrics too.

If you’ve missed our other posts in the four-part growth marketing series, go back to find out more about how growth marketing works and how deathcare firms can use growth loops to increase conversions and revenues. In the fourth post, we’ll look at the importance of emerging marketing channels to growth.