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 5th 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.