At the beginning of March, I set a goal to read 5 books before May 1. With my schedule, I knew it was a lofty goal, but part of the reason for setting a goal is to push yourself. Your goals should always seem a little scary and unattainable.

I scheduled a time to read into my daily plan, just like I do for sleeping and eating. Some days went better than others. Because I am voraciously curious, distraction is a huge challenge. I am continually researching people, advertising history, and processes.

I’m sure you can relate to 30 minutes disappearing in the blink of an eye. My research rabbit holes always garner some excellent stuff, but I wasn’t reading the books, which was the scheduled activity.

By May 1, I had read 4 books but didn’t meet the goal of 5 (I can, however, explain the science of pricing and tell you all about Napoleon Hill 😂). This could have resulted in disappointment and internal scolding. The reason it didn’t and still doesn’t—I measured my progress backward.

I focused on the gain of reading 4 of the books on my list vs. the pain of not having read all 5.

There’s a lot of emotional baggage that comes with goal setting.

This baggage is what holds us back from achieving the goals. Negative self-talk, disappointment, and low self-esteem sap your energy and your confidence. You didn’t lose the 12 pounds, you didn’t get 5 new clients, you still can’t run 5 miles without stopping…bah. The negativity abounds.

But you did lose 6 pounds! You did get 3 new clients! You can run 2.5 miles without stopping! All of these would be improvements over where you were when you started, right? Always measure against your starting point, not in the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

If you set a goal and set it the right way, it is highly likely that you will make progress of some sort even if you don’t achieve the final, ideal end result. Focusing on that progress will produce feelings of happiness and, even better, confidence.

Confidence is the by-product of past performance.

When you measure your goals by looking at where you started vs. where you ended up, you get the benefit of all the feels— those positive and energizing emotions that will allow you to become increasingly successful. Little by little, a little becomes a lot.

Don’t rob yourself of the joy and benefits of measuring your progress.

Always behind you 1,000%-
Julia

A common misconception is that the roadblock to success (and thus happiness) is a lack of resources. Alas, it’s not.

It’s not a lack of time, money, or education. It’s not because you don’t have a personal trainer or a sous chef (this is often my reasoning). It’s not your bank account, your job, your husband, wife, kids, or even the past.

It’s not that you don’t know how to run Facebook ads, you don’t have enough followers or a big enough email list. (Sigh)

The biggest roadblock we all face regarding success (in anything) is…our lifestyle.

Our beliefs, the actions we take daily (aka habits), and the people we surround ourselves with create how we live. And how you live may very well be holding you back.

The power of belief.
What you believe about yourself is what you will create and receive in your life. If you think money comes by struggle, you will always struggle.

If you think you are “bad with money,” you will mismanage money.

If you think money comes from hard work, you will always have to work really hard to get money.

We’ve all been raised with a bunch of mandates on our beliefs that simply aren’t helpful. They are old wives tales, myths, superstitions and general societal fears that people operate by as if they were the golden rule. Some of what we are taught (do unto others…) is valuable advice. But have the strength to stray from the herd. To let go of the past and believe in your future. To walk your own path.

To get something you’ve never had, you have to do things you’ve never done.
Every, single time I’ve pushed myself to get out of my comfort zone it’s paid off. And usually in a pretty big way. It’s hard. Sometimes there are tears. There’s almost always fear. But the prize I visualize at the end is bigger than the tears and the fears. So, (most of the time) I push through.

Sometimes change doesn’t involve tears or fear but pain. There’s pain in lifting weights and seeing no immediate benefit. There’s pain in throwing the bag of Ruffles out and seeing no immediate weight loss. There’s pain in writing and posting content without a huge audience of viewers. But which came first? The chicken or the egg? You have to do all those things (consistently) before you will gain strength, lose weight, or amass a dedicated tribe of followers and customers.

Who do you love?
It’s a proven, scientifically researched fact—the heavier your friends are, the heavier you will be. The more they workout and live a healthy lifestyle, the more you will as well. The same is true for every area of your life. You are the sum total of the 5 people closest to you.

Hang out with people who are already doing what you want to do. Emulate them. Copy them. Whatever you have to do to create the good habits that will, in turn, create you and the life you want.

Your focus is your future.
Where is your attention? What are you truly committed to? Do your actions reflect those commitments each day?

Where your thoughts go, you go. If you regularly expose yourself to the negativity of the news channels, the uninformed regurgitation of news on the social channels, and people who worry and gossip, your life will reflect negativity, worry, and judgment.

Change your focus, change your life. Start by observing your negative thoughts. We have 60,000+ thoughts a day, and the majority lean toward negativity, complaints, worry, and anxiety. That is no way to live the life of your dreams.

Ever evolving.
My lifestyle has changed tremendously. Not just in the last 5 years but even in the last 6 months.

I do a lot of things now I’ve never done before and mostly because I’ve learned how to control my thoughts. 

The most significant determinant of your lifestyle: your thoughts.

Our thoughts create emotions, emotions create our actions (and habits), and our actions create our results. Focus your thoughts on gratitude. On abundance. On peace in your life. On health in your body. Imagine and feel what your desired lifestyle is like before you have it and know, down to the tips of your toes, it is coming.

You can create any results you want to create. From weight loss to daily Stripe deposits in your bank account. You just have to think the right thoughts, believe them wholeheartedly, act accordingly, and the rest will follow suit.

Always behind you 1,000%-
Julia

The idea formulated at a creative brainstorming meeting at Bandolier Media in Austin, Texas. They ran with it. Then it hit Twitter (@barbzlovescarbs). Then a popular Instagram meme influencer (@middleclassfancy) got in the game. And that’s when the tide turned for @justaconstructionguy.

The story:
Some chick going by @barbzlovescarbs on Twitter posts that “her dad” asked her what an “influencer” was. She explained the concept, and he says, “I can do that.” So, he creates an Instagram account to prove it. A few influencer tags and re-posts later and bam, he’s got over 500,000 followers in less than 2 weeks.

He’s just a simple, coffee loving construction guy working on the East Side in Austin, Texas posting his crazy-good photos of designer coffee in a thermos. Hhhmmm…

The REAL story:
Mike McKim, the owner of Cuvee Coffee in Austin, Texas, wanted to pump up the marketing for his local coffee shops a bit. He felt like the typical influencers were passé and wanted to “create” an influencer more akin to the customers Cuvee actually had, specifically in their East Side shop.

The East Side of Austin has been under massive amounts of construction for the last 10 years or more. It’s a perfect example of gentrification at its best (or worst). When Jeff and I lived in Austin, we spent most of our time on the East Side and even looked for a house there right before we moved to Palm Springs. But I digress. The point is, the customers Cuvee saw most often were, of course, the construction guys on the neighborhood projects.

Someone at Bandolier Media knew a construction worker. Omar Madani was their guy. They approached him, and he agreed to be the face, err the Influencer, running the Instagram account @justaconsructionguy. The catch? Omar wasn’t really running it. Bandolier was. Omar was paid for the photo shoots, and Bandolier handled the rest.

After @barbzlovescarbs posted her Tweet about “her dad” and the influencer convo, the account literally blew up. But not one person knows or will claim who Barb is and why she did it. Mike McKimm says he has no idea who she is.

By the time the account got to about 400,000, the jig was up. The internet had been spoofed—Omar was a marketing ploy to “influence” people to drink Cuvee coffee.

The thing is, it worked for Omar, not for Cuvee. Once the cover was ripped off the story, Omar took over the account. He’s partnering with other brands to promote their products (this happened in 2 weeks, I kid you not). Omar got to go wave the flag at the big NASCAR race in Iowa over Father’s Day weekend.

This will literally change Omar’s life (has already). But what about Cuvee?

They are left to explain why Barb lied (Omar is NOT her dad), deal with the backlash of people angry to have been tricked, and slink away tail tucked. Some people think it’s funny and “so 2019” that they were so easily duped and some are straight-up mad.

The Challenge.
Bandolier Media did too good of a job. It looked staged, just like every picture on the Cuvee account does. There’s no way Just A Construction Guy could take photos like that on his own. The social media savvy picked up on it in a big fat hurry. Now the discussion is, is it right to use influencers? Is it inauthentic? Is it really brand influencing if you pay that person to use your products or services?

Hollywood has been using product placement to raise capital for movie production since the beginning of time. Sleight-of-hand advertising. Instagram just offers a different stage, right?

If an ad campaign, stunt, spoof—whatever you want to call this—leaves most or even any of your customers, potential or current, seriously questioning your integrity (the comments are all there on both Cuvee’s and Omar’s accounts) is any publicity good publicity?

My take: nope. Most of the comments are along the lines of disappointment in Cuvee for dishonesty or what a genius marketing stunt it was by Bandolier Media. Either way, it did nothing to sell Cuvee Coffee. It just made them look bad. Omar goes on with his 540,000+ followers, and Cuvee stays behind with their 16,000 and a bad rep.

You reap what you sow in marketing…and in life.

Always behind you 1,000%-
Julia

You need to know how to measure your marketing by numbers. Not just the dollars in your bank account or the number of subscribers you have but the numbers that tell you how your marketing efforts are actually working for you.

The highfalutin corporate term would be KPI’s – key performance indicators.

These are the numbers that go a long way toward helping you make more dollars and save more time.

I also want you to know and understand the bare minimum of what to expect from anyone you hire to help you grow your business. Their performance should help you hit these numbers. 👇🏼

KPI’s also include, of course, your sales vs. expenses. But I know you know that number so let’s cover the less obvious, shall we?

Marketing by the Numbers: Email

Email is ruled by open rates. But you can’t have good open rates if you don’t have good (great) delivery rates. Your delivery rate is determined, in part, by your bounce rate. That’s a backward way of doing it, but the number that bounced is the number that didn’t get delivered.

Then you also want to know how many people unsubscribed to your emails and which emails had the highest unsubscribe rates. Look at the subject line and the content of those emails. What could have turned your subscriber off? Use that info going forward.

You can find numbers for each of these categories—open rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates—for lots of different industries. The ones I have listed here are the industries that most of my clients fall under.

I compiled these percentages by taking the average for each category of what some of the biggest email service providers—MailChimp, GetResponse, and Constant Contact—were reporting. The reason I did this is because each provider has servers with varying delivery rates and each provider has clients with different email lists and skills. So much goes into the making of an excellent open, bounce, and unsubscribe rate. I felt like these would be much more valid and fair numbers on a general basis.

Note: Bounces come in two flavors—hard or soft. I didn’t report soft bounce percentages because they are so variable. Inbox is too full, vacation auto-responders, etc. all change weekly. The most dangerous bounce is the hard one. That’s the one I want you focused on to start. If your numbers are higher than what listed above, it’s a must to address this. Quickly. Same for open rates and unsubscribes. 

Marketing by the Numbers: Bounce rates on your website

The behind-the-scenes world of website analytics (all the factors that determine where you show up in the search results and how effective your website is) might as well be coming from another planet. Here’s my effort at translating that alien lingo into understandable English.

To find your Bounce Rate by page: In Google Analytics (from your home page) go to Behavior >> Site Content >> All Pages. The top ten most visited pages on your site will be there. The Bounce Rate is usually about the 5^th column over.

A bounce rate is simply the percentage of visitors that entered or landed on your website and left on that same page.

They did not click to read your about page, read another blog post, or sign up for your email. They read what they wanted to read or completely lost interest when they got there and left. Bummer.

Google reads the quality of your website by how engaging it is and how much time people spend on it. The longer, the better. The more pages they click through, the better.

If the content on your website is not what they were looking for, they scram. Or maybe it was, they read what they wanted, and they were done.

Here are the user (website visitor) actions that determine bounce rate:

Hitting the back button

Going to a new URL

Leaving the page open for more than 30 mins (for those of us with multiple windows/tabs open…🙋🏼‍♀️)

Closing the browser tab or window while on your page

In general, a bounce rate of 20-40% is great. 41-55% is about average, and 56-70% is higher than average.

But wait. Higher isn’t always bad.

Blogs tend to have really high bounce rates. But here’s why: People land on your page, read what they want, and exit. They got what they wanted, you created a warm and fuzzy by giving them what they wanted, you got retargeting info while they were there (because you have the pixel code for retargeting installed, RIGHT?), and they will likely recognize your name/brand when they see your ad come at them in the newsfeed. And be more likely to engage with said ad.

There’s an article on my website I wrote about two years ago that drives a tremendous amount of traffic. It has a really high bounce rate. But it’s topic-specific. They got what they were looking for and left. I got their info because I have the retargeting pixel installed on my website. They stay for a decent amount of time (average is 9 mins), so I can assume they read the article. All good.

So why am I telling you this? Because a high bounce rate can be an indicator of something that needs to be addressed. But I think it’s more valid if you have a high bounce rate on your homepage or services page than on a blog post. If nothing on your homepage grabbed them, you probably need to re-evaluate the content and/or design of that page.

Most marketers will tell you that the main reason to drive traffic to a website is to get them to convert to, at the very least, an email subscriber. It is getting harder and harder to get people to convert to a subscriber from a mere website visit. If you have a lead magnet that offers them something they are interested in, it is slightly easier, but I have found that it takes much more strategic effort to get an email address these days. This is another reason I love that pixel.

Moving on.

Marketing by the Numbers: Facebook’s Organic Reach vs. Paid Reach

Oh, the big controversy. Facebook took our organic reach away!

Listen, Facebook was always going to monetize. Yes, they reeled us in with free reach and increased sales. That’s how it works in marketing. You let people sample before they buy. And no, they shouldn’t pay you for your data, but that’s a whole other soapbox.

But alas, all is not lost. Reach has tanked for the average page. But you and I don’t run average pages, do we? 😉

Overall, reach on Facebook averages 6.4% of total page likes/follows. I have clients that easily get 4 times that. It’s not how often you post or what time of day. It’s simply what you post.

(We talk about this and more in my upcoming 6-week “The Real Marketing” online workshop starting November 4th.)

How do your posts do? Do you know which ones bombed or got negative feedback (hide post or hide ALL posts)? Do you know which ones did really well?
 When you know the stats on that content, you can avoid more of the stuff people didn’t like and create more of the stuff they loved. This is how you get more organic reach. And yes, getting more organic reach is possible.

This page has 3,069 followers. Here are the percentages of organic reach for each of these posts in the last two weeks or so (found under the Insights tab>>Posts on your business page):

We post regularly to this page. It’s fun, engaging, meaningful, and educational content. We sell to them less than 20% of the time. And this hasn’t been built overnight—it’s taken a few years (do NOT let that deter you—the time is going to pass anyway. Get on it.). We have a good reputation with Facebook, we never break the rules, and our ads follow all the guidelines. All important to the organic reach gods.

More stats to know:

The average CPC (cost per click) for a Facebook ad is $1.72.

But OMG so much goes into this number. The content of the ad, the imagery, the type of ad (have you tried video?), the targeting for the ad, the length of time the ad has been running…So. Much. Stuff. It varies by industry (real estate is less expensive than fitness, believe it or not), and even by country. But $1.72 is a good benchmark to measure from. If your CPC is much higher than that and you’ve done your industry research, it’s time to re-evaluate your ad campaign.

But maybe the most important marketing number to know…

Your net promoter score.

It’s obtained by having your customers answer just one question that’s based on a scale of 1-10:

“How likely is it that you would recommend [insert your business] to a friend or colleague?”

Some people will tell you that a net promoter score above zero is good. Omg, that is hogwash. That may be true for cable companies, health insurance providers, and internet service providers, but fortunately, none of us are in those businesses.

I want you to be somewhere above 60. Most of my clients hover around 80. One regularly gets a score of 95. Something most experts classify as “world-class.” And that’s because the net promoter score is mostly about customer service. Just be kind and caring. That’s really all you have to do. Well, funny doesn’t hurt either.

That’s a start on the stats.

Those are some of my favorite metrics. The ones I look at first to determine what we need to do to improve your business. The numbers always tell a true story.

And it’s a proven fact that regular analyzation of your marketing strategy data will help you run right past your competitors, leaving them in the dust. It also makes you more efficient and more effective.

PS – I have done deep dives on data for clients. It’s always eye-opening. If you’d like me to “deep dive” into your data, let’s do it. Here’s what that looks like and what it costs.