Choosing leading versus lagging indicators
Launch library · evergreen read
Lagging indicators describe outcomes that have already genuinely happened, such as final sales figures or completed perception shifts measured after the fact, while leading indicators offer a genuinely earlier signal of whether a campaign is likely heading toward those outcomes, giving a team the real chance to adjust course before the final result is fully locked in.
Relying solely on lagging indicators means a team only genuinely learns whether a campaign actually worked once it is already too late to change anything meaningful about it, while relying solely on leading indicators risks celebrating early signals that never actually translate into the outcomes that genuinely matter most to the organisation in the end.
The most genuinely useful measurement frameworks combine both types deliberately, using leading indicators to guide real decisions during a campaign's active run and lagging indicators to confirm, once the campaign has fully concluded, whether those early signals genuinely predicted the eventual result accurately, which is knowledge worth capturing for the next campaign.