Marketing Mindset: 3 Tips to Help with Number Overwhelm | 110
If you’ve ever stared at your digital marketing analytics and found yourself overwhelmed, you’re far from alone. Whether you're looking at Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, or Instagram Insights, it’s really easy to get caught up in all the numbers.
As small businesses and entrepreneurs, we want to know that our marketing efforts are paying off. But if your digital marketing analytics are leading to confusion and overwhelm, it’s time to take a step back.
Emily Hirsh has a saying that I love: “marketing always works, it’s a matter of when”. Ultimately, your marketing should be a balance of data and simply letting things happen. (But I know it’s easier said than done, especially when money is involved.)
Here are three tips to help you avoid overwhelm when it comes to your digital marketing analytics:
#1 Pick a Metric to Track For Each Step
If you try to track every data point, it’s easy to end up overwhelmed. Not only because that’s a lot of numbers to track, but sometimes the data contradicts itself. For example, you might have a high open rate on your emails but a low click rate. Then, you’re left wondering what is going right or wrong because you have data telling you different things.
Instead, pick one metric to track. Maybe you only look at cost per click on your Facebook ads. Or only monitor engagement on Instagram. If your data point is not improving or getting worse, then you might consider taking in other data. But just start with one metric.
#2 As Long as It Takes
As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day. And neither is your business. When it comes to marketing, I like to live by, “Do what you need to do for as long as it takes.”
Maybe you spend six months tracking your click rates and making adjustments before you start to see improvement. There is nothing wrong with that. You do what you need to for your business. Every business is on a different journey, with different goals and outcomes in mind.
I’m giving you permission here to let go of the numbers, especially at first. If you need to avoid analytics on a certain platform or system for now, do it!
#3 Take a Lesson From Billboards
Sometimes we assume our marketing isn’t working because the analytics don’t show the desired numbers. But digital marketing analytics don’t show the brand awareness and other impacts our marketing could be having.
For example, take a neighborhood billboard for a realtor. The realtor has no way to know that this billboard is generating leads, and they probably aren’t asking, “Did you find me from my billboard?” when you meet (and if they do ask how you found them, your answer probably won’t be I called the number on the billboard as I was driving 50mph past it). And yet, I bet you could name a couple local realtors just from those billboards.
Those marketing tools are building awareness and name recognition, even if there is no data to be collected. Seriously, brand awareness is one of the most powerful results you can get!
Interested in growing your business? Creating a solid marketing plan? Running Facebook Ads? I have currently have 2 open spots. Get started today by downloading my services and pricing guide to learn about how I can help you in your digital marketing journey!
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there - I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow - a podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Welcome back to another Saturday strategy session. Today we're gonna be talking about marketing mindset and specifically data overwhelm. When there are so many numbers and so much information, it has your head spinning and you just feel paralyzed! And the reason I wanna talk about this is because a couple of people have been in my DM’s recently and the story is the same; I'm not a math person, numbers don't like me.
When you are marketing, especially online digital marketing, like Facebook and Instagram ads, there are so many numbers that you can look at to try and determine how successful your marketing is or isn't. I just want to, first of all, give you permission to let go. Just let it go! And then let's talk about number overwhelm more deeply, because it makes me really sad.
First of all, numbers are really, really great at giving you clarity in a situation, but only if you know what numbers to be looking at. That's why I highly recommend that at each step of the customer journey you have one (or maybe two) metric that you are looking at to determine the success.
So for example, if you're running Facebook ads, when you're looking at the Facebook ad information, the single result that you may be looking at could be cost per result. And if the cost per result is in your expected range, then you can let go and say, okay, my click-through rate doesn't really matter. My CPM doesn't really matter. My landing page views don't really matter.
Let's just say it's a list building campaign - I was hoping to get leads for less than $2. My leads are coming in at $1.58. Check ✔️. So even though my CTR is only 0.6, even though my CPM is 29 and I wanted it closer to $20, I can just let those things go. I don't need to obsess over every single piece of data. I have that one piece of data or that one number - the cost per result - that I am using as my thermometer, if you will, or my barometer. I don't know which tool I would be using, but as my instrument to determine whether or not the ad is successful.
The next step…we're driving people to a landing page. What percentage of people are opting in? Ideally, you want at least 30%, but the higher the better. If you have 52% of people who are opting in, great! You don't need to worry about that landing page because the metric that you determined beforehand was a 30% opt-in rate.
So by going through every single step of the customer journey and associating a metric to that action, helps to reduce the overwhelm because then you're not looking at the 17,000 pieces of information that are available to you. You're looking at the one piece of information that you've decided is the most important.
Now, back to the example of the cost per result. Let's just say you decided you were looking for $2 cost per lead. You wanted people opting in for less than $2, and it's at $5 at that. You could dig into the other numbers to help you better understand the whole picture and to see potentially where the numbers and the other metrics are off. And that could help you to determine what steps you need to take to improve it. But I still want that dominant piece of information to be one singular metric that you're looking at. That will help take the pressure off.
Tip number two is to do what you need to do as long as it takes. And by that I mean, let's just say you’re trying to build up an audience on a podcast. It might not happen immediately. Yes, there are some people that put out 10 episodes and they've had 10,000 downloads. There's other people who've put out 200 episodes and they have 10,000. Each person is on their own journey. But if creating an audience through a podcast is one of the things that you are looking to do, then what are the action steps that you need to take to move forward on that goal?
So turning away from the numbers, especially at the beginning when you're first launching that podcast, you don't need to be looking at your downloads every single episode. Just letting it go and saying, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get this podcast up and running for as long as it takes.
Or if that's a little bit too big for you, you can say, I am going to podcast every single week. I'm gonna put out an episode every single week for three months, or for six months, or whatever time frame you think is manageable. And then at the end of that time, you can use the numbers to help you.
But in that initial time period, you're building up the consistency and the habits and figuring out all of the other pieces, and you can really just let the numbers go. Permission to let the numbers go.
My third tip is just think about more traditional media and more traditional marketing. Things like television or radio ads, bulletin boards, or flyers in a newspaper. There is a lot less information about those. There’s less data and less metrics available in traditional marketing than in online marketing. But you still see realtors who have billboards up constantly. I can give you three realtor names in my area based solely on those billboards because they always have billboards up. I drive by them to go to the grocery store, and to go to the spin class. I see their faces and their names. If I saw them at the grocery store, I would recognize them. That's how often I see them.
But what's the likelihood, if I were to hire one of them and they asked me like, why did you hire me? Would I necessarily say, well, it's because of the billboard? I don't know.
How much money does PepsiCo and Frito Lay put into television ads every single year? Millions! But when I go and buy a bag of Lay’s potato chips - and I'm not buying the original. I am buying salt and vinegar - they’re not asking me, why did you purchase Lay’s. It probably has something to do with every single time I watch tv, which is not very often. We don't actually even have cable. But every single time I do watch tv, I see a Lay's commercial or a PepsiCo commercial.
Also, my husband works for Frito Lay’s. So it's kind of like I have to buy it. Like that's what determines what kind of orange juice comes into our house or what brands of pop come into our house. We have to support his company! Anyway, that's a total, total side note.
But nobody at the cash is saying, why did you pick these salt and vinegar chips versus the store brand? These brands are just trusting that these millions of dollars that they're putting into TV ads are working. Brand recognition, visibility, they're getting out there. And so I'm not saying that because PepsiCo pours millions of dollars into their advertisements, you should also pour millions of dollars into your advertisements and not look at the numbers. That's not what I'm saying at all.
PepsiCo has an entire marketing department that their entire jobs, every single day of their life is all about this. But I just want you to just consider how you can kind of flip the script a little bit and take the pressure off of needing to know all the numbers. And it kind of does go back to number one, which is picking those very specific metrics to track knowing what you are trying to track.
And so those billboards that the realtors are putting up, those are visibility. They just want their face, their name out there as much as possible. And so I'm sure the billboard company has stats for an average of a thousand cars that drive by in the morning during rush hour, and then a thousand cars that drive by in the afternoon for rush hour. So they're looking at those numbers and saying, yes, this billboard is worth those 3000 views every single day. Allowing your marketing to do its work, to help you be more visible, help you to grow your email list, knowing that the numbers are there and the data is there.
Like with the podcast example, when it is time to start looking at it. Once you're consistent, once you have that habit, and just taking a deep breath. Emily Hirsch is a huge name in Facebook ads. She always says marketing always works. It's just a matter of when. And what she's talking about is following the numbers, following the data, and really making the appropriate tweaks and changes to your messaging, to your positioning, to your offers. Because eventually marketing does work, but it takes consistency. It takes brand recognition and your visibility increasing over time.
And so there is definitely a balance of knowing your numbers and picking the right ones to track, but then also not obsessing about every single little number and really getting caught up and overwhelmed by the numbers.
So if you take anything away from this episode - Number one, just take a deep breath. And number two, attach a metric to each of the pieces, each of the actions someone might be taking so that you can see at each step, are they meeting the metric that you want? Are they meeting that goal? Or does something need to change at that step of the journey?
Thank you so much for listening. I hope that you have a wonderful day, and I'll be back next week with another brand new episode.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Market Scale Grow. I'm so thankful that you've taken some time out of your busy schedule to make me part of your journey. If you love this podcast, don't forget to share it with your friends. And then head to your favorite podcast app to subscribe so that you won't miss next week's episode or any of the upcoming ones. And if you loved it, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcast so that other people can find this podcast and we can impact teachers and teacher business owners around the world!