Ryan, who markets for a HVAC company, unloaded on me about how one marketing company after another charged for services that didn’t, as he put it, “move the needle.” Gary, the owner of an asset maintenance company complained, “Marketing is a HUGE waste of money!”
That’s just two examples of comments I’ve heard over and over.
I used to think, “That just goes with the territory. You can’t please everyone.” But THEN I realized, there is a reason they feel this way. Most marketing companies, including ours, before we stopped it, gladly sell services you can’t track.
It hit me like a ton of bricks: When you don’t see the results you expect and you can’t track what is happening with the services you have paid for, you feel like you have wasted your money. .
So, toward the end of 2019 I made a game changing decision, “We will no longer sell services where we can’t track the bottom line effect.
You may ask, “What are the services you don’t sell?” And I understand the question, but that isn’t the important question.
We should ask. “What are effective traffic creating services you CAN track. AND what are the trackable numbers you should watch?”
We Believe There are Five Numbers That Matter in Marketing
My friend Dick, the president of a major bank in Albuquerque, New Mexico told me, “Every morning I look at five numbers. These five numbers measure the health of my bank. They tell me what’s working. They give me early warning if something isn’t going as we expected.”
In much the same way, at J3 we believe there are five numbers that matter in marketing. Five numbers that measure marketing health and effectiveness. These are the numbers we watch in our proprietary “TrackIT, NowFive Numbers Report”
These five numbers tell you:
1) What is working
2) What isn’t working
3) What you need to stop doing and
4) They identify specific points of great opportunity, specifically … What you should do more of as well as what you should work on to improve.
You know clearly the return you are getting on your marketing investment both in general and for specific things you are doing. You have the information you need to make confident wise decisions.
“Small improvements in several places can have a huge impact on the bottom line.”
The “TrackIT Now Five Numbers Report”
ONE OF OUR CLIENTS was trying to decide whether to continue advertising in a certain magazine. We had placed a tracking number in the ad he was running. Four months had gone by. He had spent $2250 on ads. Using our TrackIt Now Five Numbers Report I could tell him, “You have had 3 calls from that ad since you started running it and those calls are worth a total of $390 of revenue to your company.”
Before that he felt like he was wasting money. Now he knows he may be wasting money. To be fair, we talked about how people who see the ads know about you when they wouldn’t otherwise. There is value in that. We talked about how people may be calling as a result of the ad, but they first visit his website and then call, so the ad doesn’t get credit for the call. Those things are true, but the numbers were making a pretty strong case.
He said, “What if I put that $2250 into something that returns more money than I spend and at the same time gets my name in front of people who don’t know me?” I didn’t say it, he did. And that was a valid thought because our report showed things he was doing that did just that.
So How does this “Five Numbers Report work?
Imagine a set of FIVE buckets. The first and largest bucket, beautifully crafted…sort of stands out.
The next bucket, smaller of course, also carefully crafted, looks like it is ready to get to work..
1. IMPRESSIONS
Our first bucket is called IMPRESSIONS. It represents the total number of people who saw your company’s marketing message during this past month. We want that number to be a very large number. Why is this number important? Because only people who see you can choose you.
The numbers we put in this box come from Google My Business total views, Search Console total Impressions, Total impressions from paid promotions, newsletter opens and other things specific to our client.
We ask ourselves, how can we make this number grow. What are the trackable strategies we can use that will make our message visible to more people?
- We know there are certain organic “not paid for” strategies that increase the number of impressions.
- We know there are “paid for” strategies that increase the number of people who see our message.
- We deploy those strategies and track the results.
2 – ENGAGEMENT
The second bucket is called ENGAGEMENT. It represents the number of people who found your message engaging! So, they engaged with it. Specifically, they clicked to visit your website. It’s a percentage of the number in the impressions box.
The numbers we put in this box come from Google My Business visits to the website, Search Console click through rate, total clicks from paid promotions, newsletter click through and other things specific to our client.
We ask ourselves, how can we make this number grow. What can we do to increase the number of clicks to your website that come from a given number of impressions.
- We know the secret lies in getting the right message in front of the right people.
- We have to choose the specific audience we are going to go after and clearly identify the problems they struggle with that your services and products solve.
- We focus our attention on getting the right message in front of the right people and we carefully track and learn from the results.
3 – CONVERSION
The third bucket is called CONVERSION. What do you want your website visitor to do? Do you want them to order a product? Do you want them to set up an appointment. Do you want them to call your office? A website conversion is when your visitor does the thing you want them to do.
The numbers we put in this box come from Google My Business calls our call tracking system and other analytics that are built into the tools we use.
Most of our clients want this number to grow. So, once again, we ask ourselves how can we get more business from the number of people who visit your website.
- We know the secret lies in a high-conversion website design.
- There are seven elements every website should have.
- We know to convert well, the website should present a complete marketing message to our visitors. The message touches seven human emotion trigger points that capture attention, build trust and motivate action.
- And one more thing, something most websites don’t have. Your website must have a compelling call to action.
- We work on those things and track the results.
4- VALUE OF A CUSTOMER
The fourth bucket is the value of a new customer. How much money does a new customer bring to your company for the next year. There are things you can do to increase that number.
5- COST OF ACQUIRING A NEW CUSTOMER
The fifth bucket is the cost of a new customer. How much you spent on marketing compared to the number of new customers you got. When we do the first four boxes right, this number tends to drop. That’s a good thing.
Our Business Owners Love This Report
The numbers in these five buckets make it easy to calculate numbers that inform great decision making about your marketing plan.
- You know precisely your ROI, the return on your marketing investment.
- It is easy to calculate the conversion ratio of your website. (The Holy Grail of marketing).
- We also see things like: The dollar value of a website visit, and the value of a phone call. The report automatically calculates those numbers.
- AND most importantly, you clearly see where opportunities lie to increase the value of those things.
Small improvements in several places can have a huge impact on the bottom line. The synergistic, exponential effect can be stunning. The sheer joy and excitement it brings to your heart feels like what you dreamed owning your own business would feel like. You become the confident happy business owner of an exciting, thriving business.
When that happens to you, it makes our heart beat at a very joyful rate.
