The Only Marketing KPI That Matters How Utah Founders Should Be Tracking Customer Interest

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Most Utah founders are tracking the wrong number. They open the dashboard, scroll to the conversion rate, and let one decimal point dictate the next quarter's marketing decisions. Jonathan Lo, CEO of Salt Foundry and author of the new book Keeping People Interested, The Only KPI That Really Matters, sat down with Peter Anthony on the Utah Business Spotlight Podcast to reframe the entire scoreboard. The number that actually matters is whether attention compounds. The only way attention compounds is if the brand is genuinely interested in the customer first.

Jonathan Lo's premise is one sentence, said twice in the episode for emphasis. To keep people interested, you have to be interested in them. That single line collapses most of what Utah operators worry about into a sharper question. Is the brand built around the customer's job to be done, or around the founder's conversion funnel. The two paths look identical on a one-week dashboard. Over a thirty-six month window, they produce radically different companies.

Why The Conversion Rate Obsession Is Costing Utah Founders Real Growth

Jonathan Lo spent years inside a multi-billion-dollar e-commerce brand where the team obsessed over a 3 percent conversion rate. The math was rational. A one basis point shift in conversion was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual revenue. But that math hides the silent leak. The brand was pouring resources into the 3 percent who already wanted to buy, and ignoring the 97 percent who showed up, scrolled, and quietly disqualified the brand before the first email ever fired.

For a Utah founder running a service business, a clinic, a fitness studio, a SaaS, or a consumer brand, the lesson lands harder. Doubling a 2 percent conversion rate to 4 percent is a celebrated win. But doubling the percentage of qualified visitors who become interested in the brand at all, regardless of whether they buy this month, is the move that builds a pipeline that compounds. Jonathan Lo is not telling Utah operators to abandon the conversion rate. He is telling them to stop letting it be the only number on the wall.

The Premise Of Keeping People Interested

The book was almost called Empathy Marketing. Marketers loved the working title. Founders did not. Jonathan Lo did his own customer research, listened to his own advice, and retitled the book around the only outcome a business owner actually cares about, attention that does not have to be re-purchased every week. Keeping People Interested, The Only KPI That Really Matters launched on May 19 and is built on more than 100 references and dozens of stories, but the operating premise sits in one sentence and one math equation.

"To keep people interested, you have to be interested in them."

Jonathan Lo argues that brands playing the infinite game, adding value at every stage of the journey instead of selling, selling, selling, end up with sustainable, profitable growth. Brands that flip the order, hunt for the conversion first and treat the customer as a number afterward, end up paying the ad networks more every quarter just to stand still. Utah operators recognize the pattern instantly because most have lived it. Paid traffic gets more expensive. Organic reach gets harder. The only escape is a brand that customers willingly bring other customers to.

The Value, Price, Cost Framework Every Utah Operator Should Be Running

Halfway through the conversation, Jonathan Lo lays out a framework that should sit on every Utah founder's desk. It is called Value, Price, Cost, or VPC. Three numbers. Margin lives between cost and price. That is the math everyone already does. The variable that decides whether the business survives is value, and value is set by marketing and brand, not by the spec sheet.

Jonathan Lo's framing is direct. No customer pays a price unless they believe the value to them is even higher than the price. That perceived value is overwhelmingly emotional. Peter Anthony picks it up with the luxury example. A Louis Vuitton bag is canvas wrapped in plastic with leather sides. The materials are not the value. The story, the identity, and the emotional weight of carrying it are. A watch keeps worse time than the phone in the same pocket. The watch is not telling time. It is telling the world something about the wearer. Brand is what closes the gap between cost and perceived value, and the gap is where the business actually lives.

"A powerful brand means someone will choose you even if your product is inferior to someone else's."

About INCubator Marketing Agency

INCubator Marketing Agency is Utah's first AI-integrated marketing infrastructure team, headquartered in Sandy, Utah and serving small businesses, founders, and operators across Utah County, Salt Lake County, and the wider Wasatch Front.

Every engagement is built around the INCubator Method: seven core marketing systems — authority web design, local SEO, CRM and pipeline, marketing automation, AI voice receptionists, video content, and conversion-focused funnels — installed together as one accountable infrastructure so every dollar compounds month over month.

The agency was founded by Peter Anthony Wynn (Founder & Marketing Strategist) with Marc Olsen (Partner & Automation Expert) and Chelsie Wynn. INCubator operates Utah Business Spotlight, a long-form Utah small business podcast filmed at Bad Bet Productions in Sandy, Utah, and hosts Tuesday Night at the INCubator — a weekly marketing training and networking event for Utah business owners.

Contact: team@incubatormarketingagency.com · +1 385-386-6988 · Office hours Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Mountain Time.