My husband calls me the Gladys Kravitz of our neighborhood. I’m always looking out the window and down the street. It’s important to be aware of your surroundings. 

One day as I was peering out the window, a car whipped around the corner, made a U-turn and parked right in front of our house. Out popped a chick with a bird’s nest of hair piled on her head, wearing pink bunny slippers and a black pleather jumpsuit. #nojoke

She had a cigarette dangling from her mouth and her iPhone hanging around her neck, playing rap tunes. I was mesmerized.

She grabbed a camera out of the back of her car and walked to the house across the street. She yanked the “for sale” sign out of the yard (and placed it in the neighbor’s yard), set up a tripod, and started snapping away.

As I watched her march around the yard in her fluffy bunny slippers, I thought, “now there’s an independent soul who is quite secure in their state of being.”

She went into the house (I was disappointed the show was over), and I went back to work.

It was a memorable, albeit brief experience.

What’s the point here?

I’m not saying I want you to dress up in pink bunny slippers and a pleather bodysuit (unless the spirit moves you…), but I do want you to put effort into making your content memorable.

As if it had on pink bunny slippers.

Instead of throwing facts, figures, and data at us in your social posts or website articles, give us some juicy details. A story about why you’re sharing what you’re sharing. And yes, you too have juicy details. Those aren’t reserved for strippers named Tanqueray.

Have you used this information to improve something in your life? Has it helped someone else? Is there an anecdote you can relate it to?

David Sedaris has said that it’s usually the worst thing you can admit about yourself that most people will be able to relate to. Which means I’m really relatable.  #plentytoshare

Don’t be afraid to get personal. It creates a connection that facts and figures can’t.

Facts tell, stories sell. Use your stories to make memorable experiences for your customers. The kind they will be disappointed to miss.

Always behind you 1,000%-
Julia

PS – She never put the sign back in the yard. For a week, it looked like the neighbor’s house was for sale. 😳

PPS – The next Noteworthy has some good info in it on content generation that is effective (read connects) and tips for writing stuff worth reading. Click here to get the next issue: https://www.juliapizzolato.com/get-noteworthy/

PPPS – Gladys Kravitz was the nosey neighbor on Bewitched. 😂

Way back when (not quite the stone ages) in the beginning of my corporate career when I was new to the “marketing department” (this consisted of one other person and me, and both of us had other job responsibilities as well at the time), I worked with a top ad agency in town to put together a new campaign for some high-end, luxury office space our company needed to lease.

We came up with the coolest concept. 😜👏🏼

It was a full-page newspaper ad that was blank.

At the very bottom, it said, “space available.” Then gave the contact info for our leasing agents. That’s it. Eye-catching, simple, effective—right? Well…

I vividly remember our CEO at the time, an imposing man of about 6’5 who I’m sure slept in a suit, saying, “Yes, it’s very creative, but will it lease space? I don’t care about awards.”

My first thought, at the ripe age of 28 or so, was “who cares if it leases space—it makes us look cool!” Because believe me, were so not cool.

We sent it to the paper to be printed in the next issue. They called us almost immediately. Something was wrong with the file we sent. It was blank.

“No, no–that’s the right file,” we said. “Just run it.”

We ran it. It was cool. We won an award (I still have it!). But it didn’t really lease any space. 😬

Here’s what we should have done.
When you are ready to sell something, you need to write copy that will sell it. You need to talk about the benefits, not the features. What are the reasons someone would use your product or service?

You must appeal to your customer’s self-interest (what’s in it for me?) and do it in an engaging way.

And you must ask them to take action. And tell them how to take action. What’s the next step in the buying process? A phone call? Fill out an order form? Make an appointment?

So many miss this step. But it’s impossible to sell anything without it.

Here’s one way to write copy that sells:

Tell a story that addresses a pain point your product or service solves. Paint the picture of what it’s like when the problem is solved, or the desire is satisfied. Offer the solution and validate it (your product or service) and then give them the call to action (buy, call now, book appointment, etc.)

There are many kinds of ads and many ways to write them. We will go over this in my upcoming 6 week “The Real Marketing” online workshop.

But—most importantly, before you do all that, you need to create relationships (branding) that encourage trust so that when they read your ad, website, or email, they start from the point of believability.

Remember: The key to being believable is to always tell the truth.

Always behind you 1,000%-
Julia

PS – The Real Marketing Online Workshop is a 6-week program with live instruction from me. It starts Monday, November 11, at 9 am PST, 11 am CST. I will teach you the skills you must have to build a profitable business. 💰💰

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.