Before we dive into the second way to assume power in your business, let’s revisit Part 1. 

Who informs your marketing strategy? 

YOU, with your carefully curated strategy informed by data and deep knowledge of your brand and audience? Or any of the 3 Cs below? 

• Competitors: Their advertising and digital presence and seemingly never-ending budgets consume the landscape.
• Colleagues: Their tried-and-true proven tactics or lessons learned.
• Customers: Their calls, requests, and ideas. 

Considering any of the above is not bad, in fact, it can be very wise! However, listening quickly becomes devastating if it lends to their running our business or marketing department. 

It’s time we move from defense to offense, sitting in the driver’s seat rather than allowing any of the 3 Cs to control. 

It is one thing to learn from and entirely another to be controlled by. 

In Part 1, we explored how knowing what we want is critical to regaining power.

1) Knowing what you want protects the bottom line.

2) Knowing what you want protects you from the 3 Cs. 

3) Knowing what you want protects you from running on auto-pilot.

You can read Part 1 here; in the meantime, let’s dive in! 

How to Regain Control of Your Business: Knowing Who You Are

Vertical alignment is a favorite concept of mine, coined over the last two years throughout my personal journey of knowing self. 

Consider the diagram below.

Vertical alignment is the state of internal being centered with who you are at your core. 

Horizontal alignment is the state of external doing engaged with the world around you.

In a state of vertical alignment, your business operates from its core center, predicated on its mission, values, and brand. It is authentic and confident and cuts through the noise because it is entirely unique from every competitor in the market. 

From this vertical alignment, your business is positioned for horizontal alignment to fulfill the integrity of its intended services, instituted processes, and promised results. 

A strong brand is not only differentiated in the market by its vertical alignment but delivers consistently and reliably in terms of its products, offerings, and services and also in terms of the customer experience by its horizontal alignment. 

Let’s examine what knowing who you are looks like in application, as well as some habits to implement with your team to strengthen vertical alignment. 

1) Knowing who You are Protects You from Horizontal Voices. 

The strength of “Who We Are” predicates the ability to maintain vertical alignment when something threatens your stability. When a colleague proposes a tactic that is not aligned with your values. When the customer comes calling with ideas that will knock you off course as bandwidth is limited or the budget is tight. 

I was on a call with a gal from my Mastermind when I mentioned a retreat I am excited to launch in the coming months. 

I shared that I was considering its positioning, given its curriculum is rooted in emotional intelligence (EQ) to inform personal brand development. The retreat serves C-Suite, but as EQ is not a common conversation among this audience, I was considering the best positioning. 

She advised, “Sell them solely on the business aspects, and then sneak attack with the EQ when they’re at the retreat!” 

At first blush, it sounds reasonable. After all, there’s a reason why the phrase, “Sell the people what they want, give them what they need,” is popular.

Horizontal advice and counsel can produce a wealth of knowledge. However, we must always approach the horizontal landscape – the external – powered by vertical alignment – centered internally with the core of who we are. 

Upon considering my values of who I am and the vision of what I want for this event, I realized the lack of transparency is not in alignment with my values nor setting the right expectations for the experience.

Sure, maybe I would get more sales; however, my bottom line — what I want — is not just sales. I want transformation on an emotional level. I want C-Suite execs to leave powered from a place of emotional intelligence to decrease decisions made out of alignment with who they are or executing tactics rooted in guilt, not vision. 

Ultimately, one of my core values is authenticity, and I must make business decisions accordingly. 

2) Knowing who You are Protects You from Reactivity.

Operating from vertical alignment maintains focus on the bottom line and the strategy to achieve it. From this position, you are protected from reacting to the horizontal pressures of the 3 Cs: Competitors, Colleagues, and Customers. 

This does not mean you do not adjust tactics or learn. 

However, your approach to adjustments is proactive direction, not reactive deviations. To do this, consider the following questions:

First: How does their (any one of the 3 Cs) tactic measure against my proven track record of success?

If your colleague promotes adding newsletters to your strategy, lean in and ask, “Why?” 

• What are their outcomes? 
• What metrics are they tracking for success? 
• What is their bottom line against yours? 
• How do newsletters fit into their strategy and stage(s) of the customer journey? 

Always consider your historical track record of success first and foremost. 

Have you tried newsletters in the past? Is their audience different from yours? Why are newsletters good for them when they did not prove profitable for you? 

Operate with your head up and your eyes open. 

Maintain focus on your bottom line and ask questions. Revisit your data, and don’t just take their word for it. 

2. Am I allocating time in my schedule?

I had coffee with the former CEO of Jiffy Lube, who built the empire that it is today. 

He could not emphasize more how critical it is to allocate time for thinking. Just being — not doing — and thinking about your business or department. 

Especially for senior leaders or business owners, but even still for junior staff. 

The time and space to be fosters creative thinking, new ideas, and energy. Some of my best campaigns are conjured on a walk or in the shower. 

Kasim Aslam, founder of the world’s #1 Google Ads agency and a dear friend of mine, is a machine when it comes to hacks and habits. He encouraged me to take an audit of my calendar over the last 30 days to assess how I spend time. 

“Create three buckets,” he said. “Organize them by the following:

• Tasks that Generate Revenue
• Tasks that Cost Me Money
• Tasks that Didn’t Earn Anything”

He and I chatted after I completed this exercise, and I added one to the list: Tasks that are Life-Giving. 

Friends — if we are running empty, exhausted, or emotionally depleted, our creative and strategic wherewithal will be significantly diminished. We are holistic creatures and, therefore, must nurture our mind, body, soul, and spirit to maintain optimum capacity for impact. 

I shared this hack with a friend of mine. Not only did she identify meetings that were costing her money and thus needed to be eliminated, but she also identified that particular meetings could actually turn revenue-generating! She spent a good amount of time each month facilitating introductions; now, she is adding Strategic Partnerships to her suite of services. 

ACTION: Analyze your calendar’s last 30-60 days against the list above. 

Include what is life-giving! 

How are you spending your time? What is the data showing you? Are you on the path to achieving what you want and living in alignment with who you want to be?

Share with your team or business partner for the purpose of accountability, and implement practical changes accordingly. 

Finally, remember: If you will not protect your time, no one else will. 

3) Knowing who You are Protects You from Lack. 

“What are you proud of?” someone asked me last year. 

“Nothing!” I reply too quickly. “I know I’m not living up to my potential or operating in the full capacity I could be.” 

They looked at me in shock. “You need to read The Gap And The Gain.”

I silently rolled my eyes.

I already knew the premise of the book, or I thought I did. I mused: My vision is so big, and I have so much to accomplish. The thought of solely focusing on “my wins” sounded like an excuse to abdicate personal responsibility. 

But I acquiesced. 

The premise of this book is to measure one’s self from where they started and the success from that place to where they are today — the gains — rather than from where they hope to get and the seemingly never-ending distance — the gap.

Ultimately, Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan encourage changing perspectives to assign success, considering the starting point rather than the destination.

The book opens with the following story:

Dan Jensen was an Olympic speed skater, notably the fastest in the world. But in each game spanning a decade, Jansen could not catch a break. “Flukes” — even tragedy with the death of his sister in the early morning of the 1988 Olympics — continued to disrupt the prediction of him being favored as the winner. 

The 1994 Olympics were the last of his career. He had one more shot.

Preceding his last Olympics in 1994, Jansen adjusted his mindset. He focused on every single person who invested in him, leading to this moment. He considered just how very lucky he was to even participate in the first place. He thought about his love for the sport itself, all of which led to an overwhelming realization of just how much he had gained throughout his life.

He raced the 1994 Olympic games differently, as his mindset powering every stride was one of confidence and gratitude — predicated on the gains rather than the gap in his life. 

This race secured him his first and only gold medal and broke a world record, simultaneously proving one of the most emotional wins in Olympic history. 

Friends, knowing who we are on the personal and professional level, can protect us from those voices of shame or guilt that creep in. 

PERSONAL ACTION: Create two columns. On one side, create a list of where you were when you started your business or your position at your company. Include skills and networks and even feelings about where you were in life. On the other side, outline where you are today. 

Look at how far you’ve come. 

COMPANY ACTION: Implement a quarterly meeting to review the past three months. Where did you start? Where are you now? 

Celebrate the gain!

Only from this place of gain mindset, can you create goals for the next quarter predicated on where you are today.

Ultimately, my hope for you is that you deliver exceptional and memorable experiences laced with empathy toward the customer (horizontally aligned) yet powered by the authenticity of the brand (vertically aligned). 

Aligning vertically maintains our focus on the bottom line and powers horizontal fulfillment. 

Want to get certified in Content Marketing?

Leverage the tools and channels to predictably and profitably drive awareness, leads, sales, and referrals—EVERYTHING you need to know to become a true master of digital marketing.​ Click Here

Granted, there will be strategic times and seasons for adjustment; however, these changes are to be made on the heels of consulting who we are as a brand — not in reaction to the horizontal landscape of what is the latest and greatest in the industry. 

In Conclusion…

Taking back control of your business and marketing strategies requires a conscious effort to resist external pressures and realign with what you want and who you are.

Final thoughts as we wrap up: 

First, identify the root issue(s).

Consider which of the 3 Cs holds the most power: be it competition, colleagues, or customers.

Second, align vertically.

Vertical alignment facilitates individuality in the market and ensures you — and I — stand out and shine while serving our customers well. 

Third, keep the bottom line in view.

Implement a routine that keeps you and your team focused on what matters most, and then create the cascading strategy necessary to accomplish it. 

Fourth, maintain your mindsets.

Who You Are includes values for the internal culture. Guide your team in acknowledging the progress made along the way and embracing the gains to operate from a position of strength and confidence.

Fifth, maintain humility.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of humility and being open to what others are doing. However, horizontal alignment must come after vertical alignment. Otherwise, we will be at the mercy of the whims and fads of everyone around us. Humility allows us to be open to external inputs and vertically aligned at the same time.

Buckle up, friends! It’s time to take back the wheel and drive our businesses forward. 

The power lies with you and me.

The post 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 2 appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

As I considered the topic that would best serve entrepreneurs, business owners, and marketers alike — all of whom I am — I mused over what I needed most throughout the last year. 

I needed to take back control of my business. 

And I am charging you to do the same. 

While I have provided two strategic ways to do so, the first outlined below and the second outlined in this blog post, it is critical that we first identify the root issue. 

Why are you and I not operating in the driver’s seat of our marketing and/or businesses? 

Three fundamental core challenges come in the form of 3 Cs: Competition, Colleagues, and Customers.

Who Are You Listening To?

1. Competition

We know the feeling all too well.

We feel a pit in our stomach or a slight racing of the heart when our competitors’ ads or organic content seem to be taking over social media and the internet: Google Ads, YouTube, TikTok, newsletters, LinkedIn, programmatic…

And don’t forget traditional advertising.

Especially if you are in the home services or specialty services spaces where direct mail is 100% where you need to be, but don’t forget the QR code and UTMs and unique landing pages and geotargeted ads and email nurturing sequence for a holistic approach. 

Our competition’s budget appears never-ending, and their marketing team must be fantastic. 

Is theirs the strategy we should adopt, deviating from our carefully charted course agreed upon at the outset of the year?

2. Colleagues

Or perhaps it’s that of the peers in our Masterminds or networking groups or online communities. 

After all, within these groups resides a wealth of knowledge and expertise, tried-and-true insights, and wins. I am guilty as charged — my talk at T&C 2024 was chock-full of recommendations guiding marketers on their path to generating over 800% ROAS…
Should our marketing strategy or business’s bottom line deviate then?

3. Customers

Oh! But the power of our customers…when their phone call just after 5:00 PM because they saw their competitor’s ad and want to change course. 

Or when our customers’ higher-ups ask why you didn’t generate enough leads last month and how the bottom line is threatened if we don’t do something fast.

And how they joke about your job being on the line if numbers don’t change.

Do any of these resonate? 

If you are a human with a soul that cares about your business, team, and customers, I anticipate your hand is raised alongside mine. 

Friends, it is time we unbuckle the seatbelt of the 3 Cs and graciously escort them out. 

It’s time for you to regain control.

How to Regain Control of Your Business: Knowing What You Want

I cannot tell you how many times my question, “What do you want?” is met with blank stares. 

Such a simple question with such significant ramifications. 

To assume control, we must know what we want for the following three reasons.

1) Knowing what you want keeps you focused on the bottom line.

So many of us fail to regularly take stock of where we are actually going. 

Our heads are down, focused on tasks before us, rather than heads up, looking to the finish line yet equally aware of how our strategies today are or are not moving us closer to that target. 

With our heads down, the focus is on the key performance indicators (KPIs) of the necessary activations to achieve the bottom-line goal rather than the focus being on the goal itself. 

The trick is maintaining clarity of the goal and bottom line to then inform the strategic direction.

EXAMPLE: The Knowing Agency serves as fractional CMO for a waterproofing company. A major — colossal, even — KPI is lead generation. 

This KPI is obviously important because you need leads to get customers.

However, in 2023, our lead count was down significantly. 

With the 3 Cs close at hand, I questioned myself: Am I leading the team in the wrong direction!? 

We must be willing to ask tough questions and pursue the truth, even if it may prove that we are heading in the wrong direction — especially then! 

For we must first know the truth to then be changed by it. 

But I had to zoom out in order to know. 

With the bottom line as the primary focus, I then considered the KPI. 

When we zoomed out and measured that KPI in light of the bottom line, revenue, rather than as a standalone metric, we actually saw a significant increase in overall revenue and profits despite a lower lead count.

This means that while we were driving fewer leads, they were much more qualified, hence driving higher revenue.

My question for you is: Do you know what you want? 

And do you know your bottom line goal and the KPIs necessary to get there?

2) Knowing what you want protects you from the 3 Cs. 

The bottom-line goals of your company or department serve as guardrails to keep you on the straight and narrow when one of the 3 Cs comes calling. 

Protection from Competitors: Their bottom line could very well be entirely different from yours. Perhaps you seek to expand into a new region and must allocate funds by cutting budgets on top-of-funnel brand awareness tactics. Yet your competitor is dominating TV. Don’t deviate; your bottom line is at stake. 

Protection from Colleagues: Perhaps your bottom line is similar, but your target audiences are different. They are finding wild success with newsletters reaching an older demo while your audience is highly engaged with podcasts. Yes, perhaps explore newsletters, but not at the expense of your engaged audience on your podcast. 

Protection from Customers: Hopefully, you both have the same bottom line! However, when my client called with concerns about the KPI of lead numbers, which is indeed important, my ability to maintain focus on the bottom line guided their right thinking about what matters most: Revenue. 

Protection from the 3 Cs does not mean turning a blind eye or ignoring what is working for them. But it does keep your bottom line as the chief focus.

3) Knowing what you want protects you from running on auto-pilot.

Knowing what you want maintains momentum and breathes energy into tasks that otherwise would be monotonous.

Lead yourself or your team in revisiting the vision for the company regularly.

Nine-to-five employees increasingly seek to align with impact-driven organizations, and keeping the transformation the company aims to procure top-of-mind will drive motivation.

The transformation is always emotional, even surrounding a product or service.

EXAMPLE: Returning to the waterproofing company our team supported. Waterproofing a basement transforms the customers’ emotional states from one of anxiety or worry into one of peace or assurance. 

What once was: We are a waterproofing company servicing homeowners in Destin, Florida, for 54 years. Trust our team to waterproof your basement! 

Turns into: Our company cares for your family. Our company preserves homeowners’ greatest investment. Our company, ultimately, protects your home, which is where life happens. 

Suddenly, a waterproofing company has empathy.

Just like that, we are serving families and homes, not just servicing a basement.

But before you can truly know what you want, you first have to know who you are.

Head on over to Part 2!

The post 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 1 appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

There’s so much data, from so many different sources, with so many different reporting tools, that you could just drown in reports, attribution, and meetings. With so much noise out there, it’s important that you look at the data in a certain way. There’s important information hidden in the metrics that will help direct your digital marketing strategy.

In this article I’m going to walk you through this technique that I’ve been using for 25 years, called MAA.

Metrics, Analysis, Action

MAA stands for metrics, analysis, action.

Let me show you how powerful it is when you use this technique on any kind of data set you have. It could be SEO data, website data, email data, conversion data, shopping cart data.

The Data Doc is in…

Think of this as if you are a surgeon in the emergency room. You must follow these three steps.

• Collect vitals.
• Diagnose.
• Treat.

First you collect the vitals. It could be heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, x-rays things like that. These are the numbers that clue you in to the cause of the problem.

The second phase is the diagnosis. In this phase you interpret all the vitals that you collected. Based on the data, you make the determination of a heart attack, broken bone, virus, etc. The key point is that the diagnosis is based on the data.

From that diagnosis, you create the treatment plan. The plan might include surgery, medications, a recovery plan, etc. But the list of things to be done to make the patient healthier is based upon the findings and the diagnosis.

The marketing analytics data you collect leads directly to analysis of the problem. That then leads directly to the action. What I will show you in this article is a number of examples from a variety of digital marketing projects. This works whether you’re working on a large or small project.

Data vs Analytics

Lots of people think that they have analytics because they have Google Analytics installed on their website.

But let me tell you a dirty secret.

There are no analytics in Google Analytics. It’s just Google charts. It should be called Google Chart-Maker.

Marketing analytics is figuring out what’s actually going on. It’s the interpretation of the data. Interpreting the data tells you why sales went up or down. It helps you discover why conversion rates went up or down. Analyzing the data answers questions like:

• Why did people buy or not buy?
• Why did a competitor take a certain action?
• Where are we losing customers along the customer journey?
• Is our content hitting or missing with our customers?

Analytics is more than making charts and collecting data. And action is the next step after marketing analytics.

The way we see it, if you are not taking action based on the analytics, which was based on the data, then whatever you’re doing is random.

Returning to our analogy, not everyone should take the same pill. If you’ve got a broken bone, you shouldn’t take the same medication as someone who has a headache. So the action that you take, the optimization, should be contingent upon the analysis, which should go straight back to the data that you gathered.

Most people make the mistake of just trying to look at lots of data. This Metrics Analysis Action framework is the easiest way to figure out what you really need to do versus what’s noisy.

MAA Framework Case Study: Ecommerce

If you are in ecommerce, lead gen, or any kind of performance marketing, then you’re going to start with the action, mapped back to the analysis, and back to the metrics.

Because the actions are all the things that you could do.

So make a list of the things that you could do.

• You can play with the website.
• You can change your budgets.
• You can change ads.
• You can optimize creatives.
• You can work with influencers.
• You can buy another tool.
• You can change bids.

Think of all the actions that you could take. Start with the end in mind.

Once you decide on the action, look for the trigger. In other words, when analyzing the data, what diagnosis will cause you to take that prescribed action?

That’s where you have automated rules on Google, Facebook, or Shopify. Wherever you’re looking at data, you can set up these rules.

For example, if your cost per acquisition goes above $50, then turn the ad set off. If someone leaves a positive review on Yelp, then reach out to them to say thank you.

So if a certain thing happens, then here’s the particular action.

Then there’s a limited number of things that you could do, so you don’t have to look at everything. And then if you need to determine if that triggering condition is true, then what data do you need?

Data, Analytics, and Attribution

On the far left of this image, we have plumbing. Plumbing is collecting the data from different tags in tag manager, UTM parameters, pixels that are firing, and other events inside an app.

These are the things that people are doing. For example, opening an email. When that happens, you get plenty of email marketing data. But the data doesn’t mean anything unless you can tie it to a goal.

How do you tie data to a goal?

Here’s a lifetime value example…

Seeds of Life sells flowers to people who’ve experienced the death of a loved one. The lifetime value (LTV) of a customer is $150. What can they do to increase the LTV?

They might offer a referral bonus, free shipping for orders over a hundred dollars, etc. Their goals, checked against the marketing analytics, will determine the direction of their next marketing campaign.

The important thing is to define the goals and measure them against the data. If the data doesn’t tie to the achievement of a particular goal, then you have to ask, “why are we even collecting that data?”

We’re not searching for a needle in a haystack, here. Although, that’s what most people do with their reporting.

Most people log into Google analytics, or whatever they use to pull in all the data from all the different places. And then they just hunt and peck and wander around and look for interesting things.

They look at the data then filter down to this date for that particular segment and this part of the country. It’s like the lotto, like the power ball where you choose six random balls to try to win the million dollar jackpot.

You want to have your goals before you figure out the plumbing.

Don’t Make the Same Mistakes with Analytics

Large and small companies make the same mistakes. They tend to go after impressions or click through rate or secondary metrics when the primary metric, the business goal, is more important than a diagnostic, secondary metric.

I love looking at cost per mille, or CPM, in advertising. For example, how much are you paying per thousand impressions? What is the trigger or check engine light, to let you know whether the algorithm is penalizing you for having a low click through rate, low quality score, low relevance score, etc.

Analyzing a marketing campaign in this way may show that something else is wrong.

Please don’t make the same mistake thinking that a secondary metric like click through rate, cost per click, quality score, or CPM is more important than the main business metric.

Profit, lifetime value, or cost of acquisition should be the goals that tie to your content and targeting.

Plumbing, Goals, Content, Targeting, Amplification, Optimization…

Here’s an example (above) of a marketing campaign we ran for our friend, Brennan.

At the very top are the financial metrics, specifically profit. There’s some kind of margin with or without cost of goods and services or overhead.

Then we have revenue minus costs.

Revenue is driven by factors like conversion rate, LTV, and how well you use things like recency and frequency to increase revenue.

Then there’s costs: people costs, ad costs, software costs, other kinds of costs.

On the revenue side, units (high price vs low price) multiplied by volume (clicks and/or conversion rate) is your revenue.

On the cost side, let’s say you run all your digital marketing campaigns on a cost per click basis. You can break that down to different fixed and variable costs. So we know if we double the number of clicks we’re buying from Google, we’re going to pay twice as much. Multiply the cost by the number of clicks you get for the overall cost of that campaign.

This decomposition pyramid helps you figure out the data you need to collect using secondary diagnostic metrics.

Start to think about how those different metrics will help you uncover the main issue to focus on right now.

MAA Framework: Case Study

Let’s look at how this actually applies when you’re looking at tabular data.

In this example (above), we’re looking at a lot of information. There are 132 ad sets here. That means we have all this information for 132 projects…

• Data
• Campaigns
• Ads
• Landing pages
• Messages

This happens to be a set of Facebook campaigns, but it could easily be any social media platform or other traffic source.

We use a concept called “Top N” to select a manageable number of ad sets to work with. Why? Because it’s intimidating to try and look at ALL of them to diagnose the problem or issue.

You don’t have time to look at every single keyword, creative, or landing page. The idea of Top N is to look at the top, best- or worst-performing ad sets and ignore the rest. This is just another way of using the 80/20 rule or prioritizing your work.

I find that when you use the Top N technique on any large dataset you can quickly zero in on the most important thing.

In this case, we can see that this very first ad spent $10,000 out of $43,000. That means 25% of all of the money being spent is inside that one ad out of the 132 ads total.

Look a little more closely and you’ll see the top five already account for 60% of the total spend.

That’s not uncommon. In lots of cases the top three to five ads will account for about half of your ad spend.

Applying the Top N Method

I like to start by doing Top N on spend, because that’s where I can identify a “bleeder” (a high-spend ad with very low return).

Then I look at what drove the most revenue or had the highest number of conversions. Because then I can find where the winners are.

Then I look at clicks, leads, or other metrics that are important to the business.

Using this method, I kill the losing ads and amplify the winning ads.

Let’s say you were to sort just by conversions or revenue. If you do that, then you could have an ad that’s wasting lots of money that doesn’t make it into the top four or five for your most important metrics.

So I use Top N for three or four metrics in succession. Each time it reorders the ad sets or ads or creatives or whatever it is that you’re looking at.

You can use this method to determine ad performance in just three minutes.

Find and Fix the Issue

If something’s out of whack, it could require a big change or it could be something wrong with the tracking.

It could be iOS 14, or the pixel wasn’t on that landing page. It could be the data didn’t come through and it’s delayed. There’s all kinds of things that could play into why numbers aren’t adding up.

A lot of people freak out when sales are way down. Understandable. But many times it’s because of some silly issue. So before you pull the fire alarm, just think, does that really make sense?

I like this particular ad here.

There’s no way we spent this amount of money with no return. So we know there’s an issue. And we know with social media platforms like TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook, their systems often will not show data.

We know that because of the iOS 14 update, impressions and clicks are reported on different frequencies. So you might see a bunch of spend show up before the conversions show up or vice versa.

Make sure it’s statistically significant. Also make sure that you have enough data, so you don’t jump to any conclusions.

We’ve seen these systems spiral out of control. For example, let’s say you decide to reduce the bid amount on a marketing channel when the ROI falls below a certain amount. That seems logical. But if you’re only looking at revenue, not conversions, you might kill off a marketing campaign that was actually working quite well.

Imagine if it all boiled down to a hiccup in the data that caused the downward spiral. Not good. So be careful about that.

Now, if you see that a metric is out of whack and the data looks good, then ask yourself why that campaign isn’t performing as well.

Data and Instinct for the Win

Don’t let everything you do be completely automated and dependent upon rules. A successful marketing strategy requires a human touch.

Don’t set so many rules that the software automatically terminates your ads.

Instead, take a moment to look at how far out of bounds the ad performance is. It could be that you launched a new campaign and you’re doing an AB test or some kind of split test. The winner stays on and continues to win, even when other ads are losing, because you’re trying to find another winner to take its place.

If the cost per acquisition is high, then you can break that down using the metrics decomposition pyramid.

For example, the cost per acquisition will double if:

• the conversion rate is cut in half and the cost per click is the same
• the cost per click doubles and the conversion rate is the same

The cost per acquisition remains the same if either factor doubles while the other one is cut in half.

Always look at your marketing analytics when the cost per conversion goes up. Determine whether it’s because of the cost per click or the conversion rate.

When you run ads using objective-based bidding you don’t have to worry as much about cost per click, click through rate, or conversion rate because the artificial intelligence behind the ad platform is going to seek your target metric.

If the target metric is out of whack, you can decompose it into the underlying metrics.

That’s true for organic traffic. But it’s not as true for paid traffic because the systems are getting smarter and can optimize for the objective you set. Either way you should still look.

Balancing Metrics

This method gets you to look at metrics that matter according to our business goals. It gets you to think about and analyze why the data might be good or bad. And it gets you to outline the actions you’re going to take when goals aren’t being met. Over time you’ll find that the same pairing of metrics change alongside each other. So let’s talk about what these balancing metrics are.

One company we were working with was spending a hundred thousand dollars a month on advertising. When they were unhappy with the return, the analyst on the project adjusted the Google ad campaign. All of a sudden the cost per conversion dropped from $20 per lead to $7 per lead.

But I wanted to know how and why it dropped so dramatically. I found out that this person went into the Google ads campaign and turned off all the campaigns except for the brand search terms. Of course it was going to convert super well!

But the balancing metric was volume. When the analyst “fixed” the cost per conversion, the number of leads dropped from 5,000 leads a month to maybe a thousand leads a month.

The key takeaway here is that if you optimize one metric blindly, you can fool yourself into thinking everything is better when in reality another metric took a nosedive.

Analyzing Like a Scientist, but NOT a Rocket Scientist

Metrics don’t matter, unless there’s a clear analysis that can come from the information. Remember, you’re seeking a diagnosis.

Think like a surgeon or scientist. Start with a hypothesis. If a certain thing happens, what will you do to correct it and what outcome do you expect? If there’s no potential action based on some metric, there’s no need to gather the metrics.

I see companies spend most of their efforts collecting data. No one even knows why they’re using the data. Be strategic and ask, “what are we doing with this data? Is there some meaningful action we’re going to take?”

Maybe there’s another metric that would measure the goal better.

The point of analytics is to figure out whether something is worthwhile. Most of the data you thought was important, doesn’t even matter.

I’ll give you one example. Our client was a large company, but this works for small companies, too.

We were working with an airline, taking one database and matching it against another. They wanted to know things like whether a customer that goes skiing has kids and what their income was.

They wanted predictive models to uncover which customers would be most likely to sign up for their credit card or buy flowers or upgrade or travel to new destinations.

We went all in on the idea that more data is better. After all the time and money spent on sophisticated data models, what we found was that the best predictor of people flying more was past purchase behavior. Not a surprise, right?

In this case, purchase behavior predicted purchase behavior. And the fact that they drove a station wagon, or liked to eat Haagen-Dazs ice cream, might be interesting but it had very little impact on their flying behavior.

Moral of the story, you might find that the most obvious thing is the best place to start optimizing in your business as well. Start thinking about what kind of “if-then” logic you can implement. And don’t dismiss the really simple idea just because it’s simple.

The MAA Framework is Not Just for Advertising

Collecting data allows you to put if-then sequences in place across your business. In Google and Facebook you can set up automated rules using if-then logic. For example, one might be for conversions. If conversions fall below a certain number, then an automated action would be taken or an alert might be sent to whoever’s in charge of that area to let them know there is something that needs their attention.

Here is a table of common if-then scenarios we’ve come across. Start small by looking at just a few of these things.

You’ll find a lot of value when you look at the patterns. For example, look at posts with the highest engagement versus posts with the lowest engagement. What can you learn? What do the high-engagement posts have in common? Is there a cross-over with the low-engagement posts?

Don’t spend all your time messing around inside the tools. Even Google’s head of analytics said that 90% of every dollar you spend on analytics should be on people and 10% should be on the tools.

We see a lot of businesses do the opposite. They spend 90% on tools and 10% on people. The hard truth is, the most sophisticated tools are useless without someone who knows how to make sense of the numbers.

To ensure success, set the framework in place. Make it clear that everyone is accountable for the results.

Summary

I hope the metrics, analysis, action framework I’ve just introduced you to encourages you. Data and analytics aren’t really that technical. You don’t have to collect a ton of data, build regression models, or feed your AI any recipes.

Customers buy this over that. It’s not math. It’s not huge databases. It’s not engineering.

The MAA framework is all about understanding the numbers in the context of business performance and goals. Tracking metrics should always begin with the business strategy in mind. 

The post Digital Marketing Data and How to Optimize Like a Champ appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Let me ask you a question:

Are you trying to make money on all your marketing campaigns?

If so, I have bad news.

You’re holding your business back.

Yep, you heard me right. Always striving for a positive return on advertising dollars can actually be a BAD thing—that is, if it means that your business never takes any risks.

Let me explain…

ROI vs Growth in Your Business

If you’ve been following DigitalMarketer or Ryan Deiss for any length of time, you may have heard this little gem of a saying:

This probably feels counterintuitive to anyone who’s ever poured over a budget sheet. That’s because trying to spend goes against many of our natural instincts, which usually focus on minimizing customer acquisition costs.

But the truth is that if you want your business to grow, to SCALE, then you have to be willing to spend more money to acquire new customers. To take on more risk. To lose money in the short term so you can set yourself up for more revenue potential in the long run.

To drive that point home, let’s talk really quickly about the difference between growth and ROI:

ROI, or “return on investment,” is a measure of how effectively you have recaptured the money you’ve spent to create, distribute, and promote your product. In other words, ROI helps you track whether every dollar you’ve spent has been recovered or not.

Growth is all about the generation of new customers. It’s a function of scale and volume—instead of acquiring 100 new customers every month, growth means acquiring 200 new customers, then 300, and so on and so forth. More customers mean more market penetration, more opportunities to cross-sell and more word of mouth—all things that can make your business more impactful in the world.

Now, here’s the thing about growth and ROI.

ROI is great. We all want to make money, after all—right?

But if you focus too much on ROI, it can really limit your ability to scale. You’ll be stunting your business’s long-term growth in favor of a quick return.

A while back, we took a look at what was going on under the hood at DigitalMarketer. And we realized that’s exactly what was happening in our own business.

Our ROI was good—we knew we could put a dollar in our campaigns and get $1.50 back. But we had capped out on the number of people we could reach and bring into the fold. We realized that a high ROI does not necessarily mean a growing business.

Unfortunately, the problem with playing it safe like that meant that our business wasn’t growing quickly enough to meet our long-term goal of doubling the size of 10,000 businesses over the next five years.

And we realized that if we were going to hit our goals, we would have to create new selling systems that carried more risk—but along with that risk, the potential for greater growth.

In Business, Risk = Opportunity

Anytime you attempt to scale your business, to grow beyond your current size, you’re going to have to take on some risk.

But don’t worry. We’re not talking about buying lottery tickets here.

These are calculated risks that you make leveraging formulaic selling systems designed to scale your business.

In this post, you’re going to learn how to create a variety of these selling systems that will work together to grow your business. You’ll also learn how to evaluate the opportunity of a selling system and take smart risks that are necessary to scale.

And you’re going to learn through an in-depth analysis of five selling systems that worked for us at DigitalMarketer.

But first, let’s define exactly what a selling system is (and is not). We do that by answering these three questions.

The 3 Critical Questions for Every Selling System

I should explain that when I say “selling system,” I could be referring to any kind of online marketing funnel or campaign that converts visitors into leads, customers, and fans.

They can span any number of websites or traffic sources and look different depending on the market they serve.

(RELATED: How To Architect The Perfect Conversion Funnel For Your Business)

But for your marketing funnel to be considered a selling system, you need to be able to answer these three questions…

Selling System Question 1: What is the Goal of this System?

Every time you create a new selling system, that system should have a goal. One overarching objective. Something your business needs.

It’s important to remember that not every selling system will have the same goal. And certainly, not every system will have the goal of “making money”—some systems exist only to set up future opportunities to make sales and create customers.

For cold traffic, your goal might be to generate awareness.

(RELATED: Traffic Temperature: How To Build Real Relationships With Automated Campaigns)

For early-funnel prospects, your goal might be to nurture visitors and convert them into leads.

Finally, for mid- to late-funnel visitors, your goal will probably be to generate sales and revenue.

The goals you choose for your selling systems will vary depending on how mature your business is. If you’re starting a new business and in need of cash, your goals will almost exclusively be to generate revenue.

If you’re a more established business looking to expand your reach, your goal might be to generate more leads or get more inbound phone calls that you can push through to your sales team.

But to call your marketing funnel a selling system, it’s critical that you have a defined goal because working towards that goal will drive your future decision-making.

Selling System Question 2: How Do You Define Success?

Now that your selling system has a goal, you have to decide how to measure the success of that goal.

You can’t know what success looks like until you know how to measure it.

To define success, you’ll need to choose a key metric or KPI that you can use to gauge the performance of your selling system.

Your method of measurement can pretty easily be deduced from your goal—if you want to grow your email list, your success metric will be the number of new leads you add to that list.

Here are a few other possible metrics:

• Revenue
• Orders
• Site visitors
• Leads
• Phone calls
• Posts read

The most important thing is that this metric must give you an accurate way to quantify your goal and measure the success of your campaign.

Selling System Question 3: How Much Risk Are You Willing to Take?

Finally, you have to figure out what is an acceptable level of risk for this selling system.

The most important thing to keep in mind here is that risk correlates with opportunity.

The greater the long-term revenue potential, the more risk you can afford to take on.

So, with higher-value offers like a high-ticket item or a subscription business that provides long-lasting continuity revenue, you can afford to take on more risk.

Alternatively, if you’re selling an inexpensive item with a low-profit-margin, then your risk threshold should be much lower.

So, how should you define risk? What exactly IS it?

Risk here refers to how long you can wait to recoup your investment and get to break-even. In other words, how long does it take you to earn back all the money you spent on that selling system?

Your initial investment may include expenses like the cost of your goods, payroll, or the cost of running traffic. And once you break even on those costs, any additional revenue generated by a customer can be reinvested into the business.

For a low-risk selling system, your goal might be to reach break-even after just a couple days.

But for a high-risk selling system, you might be willing to stomach a negative ROI (spending more than you made back) for several months before earning back your investment.

And you know you can afford to do that because the eventual payoff is worth it—you are investing in the relationship based on the promise of future returns.

So now that you know the three critical questions you have to ask every time you build a selling system, here are the five selling systems your business needs to scale. We used these same systems to take DigitalMarketer to the next level.

Selling System to Scale Your Business #1: Bulk Lead Acquisition

Our first example is a classic selling system that we have used many, many times in the past with great success.

It’s called a bulk lead acquisition funnel, and it’s all about driving as many leads as possible.

Having a large list of prospects that you can email anytime you want—when you release a new product, for example, or put out a new piece of content that needs a little traction—is important for any business.

And that’s why this type of selling system has been so critical for us in growing DigitalMarketer.

Goal

Our goal with this selling system is to generate a high volume of new subscribers to our email list.

Success KPI

Our KPI for this selling system was positive growth in our email list. In other words, we wanted the number of new email subscribers to outpace the number of unsubscribes caused by normal email list attrition.

So, if we were losing 5,000 subscribers each week to attrition, we needed to be gaining at least 5,001 new subscribers. (And preferably many more than that.)

Risk

This was the selling systems where we could afford the least risk.

That’s because the offers we promoted with this selling system weren’t very expensive, and we cast a wide, wide net (meaning some people weren’t qualified off the bat).

Because the opportunity here is relatively low, we don’t want to take on too much risk.

In this case, we were willing to stay in the negative for 30 days. That let us include the revenue from those who took the Lab membership and decided to stick around past their first month

Example

One of our most successful examples of this type of selling system is our “Facebook Ad Template Library” funnel. It started with this Facebook ad:

The ad took visitors to this landing page, where they could opt-in to get a free resource that would help them create better Facebook ads.

After the visitor opted in to our email list, they were offered a Tripwire (a low-dollar offer designed to convert leads into customers).

And finally, we followed up by selling them our monthly subscription product, DM Lab.

This selling system did generate some sales and new customers—and it made enough money after 30 days to cover the costs of the paid traffic sending visitors there!

But more importantly, it achieved its primary goal, which was growing our email list—allowing us to reach more people and helping to scale our business.

Selling System to Scale Your Business #2: Low Entry Barrier Subscriptions

So our first selling system succeeded in growing our email list. Bringing in new leads.

But as I mentioned, it doesn’t necessarily do a great job of converting those leads into customers.

Only about 4% of people who saw the ad for our “Facebook Ad Template Library” ever even saw the DM Lab offer.

And that was a huge barrier to adoption.

The challenge was: how do we get them to join in the first place?

We solved that problem by creating a low-entry barrier subscription selling system.

We removed the risk by offering people a $1 trial to DM Lab. If they stuck around after 30 days, they would become a paying subscriber (which, at the time, was $38.60/month).

Goal

The goal of this selling system is to encourage massive subscription growth in DM Lab.

We believed that if we could limit the perceived risk by offering a 30-day trial for just $1, we could convince a large number of people to give Lab a try…

…and we knew from experience that once they did, more than half (about 58%) would stick around and become full-paying customers.

Success KPI

Remember our goal here wasn’t to generate leads. It was to generate actual paying subscribers.

With that in mind, our success KPI wasn’t trial sign-ups. It was the number of people who stuck around after the trial was over and converted into paying members of DM Lab.

Risk

Our risk tolerance for this selling system was higher than it was for the bulk leads acquisition funnel, but it was still fairly low—because we were only guaranteed a dollar off the bat from conversions—the real payoff wouldn’t come till later.

For that reason, we required this selling system to break-even after 40 days (just after the first rebill period).

Example

To create a similar system of your own, you need two things: some kind of a subscription product and a “warm” audience of people who know who you are.

For DigitalMarketer, that audience included site visitors and email subscribers.

We drove those people to a sales page like this one, where we offered them a $1 trial membership in DM Lab.

This is a really common strategy that you’ll notice all over the place when you start looking. Subscription companies like Audible, Spotify, and Pandora offer similar trial offers designed to generate new subscribers and build recurring revenue.

Selling System to Scale Your Business #3: Value-Centric Lead Acquisition

The first two selling systems were all about volume—driving massive numbers of leads and subscribers.

But this one is different. In this selling system, we’re optimizing to deliver value and a great experience.

Everything else—leads, subscribers, revenue—all that goes on the back-burner.

This can be a scary prospect for a company that is in need of quick financial returns because it involves more risk and delayed monetization. With a selling system like this, it can take several months to earn back your investment.

But when you can use a system like this to promote a fairly high-ticket item, it will prove well worth it in the end.

Goal

With this selling system, our goal was to educate and excite people. We wanted to prioritize providing a great experience and ensure customers learn a lot from us in order to qualify people for a more expensive, higher-touch offer on the back.

Success KPI

That brings up a tricky question…how do you measure education and excitement? There’s no straightforward metric for that.

So, what we did was use percent of course consumed as our KPI.

And by doing that, we were able to optimize for that metric…getting more people to actually watch more of the training videos. We used emails and even Facebook ads to encourage students that didn’t complete all the lessons to go back and finish the course.

It’s important to note that we still promoted products to these customers and made sales. We just optimized our system around consumption, rather than sales.

Risk

The training product this selling system promoted is relatively expensive ($1,997), so as a result, we could take a little more risk here. We set our break-even goal at 60 days, which was enough to cover the six-week course plus the follow-up emails to promote the product, “The Machine.”

It was definitely a risk to spend all this money with no expectation of making it back for two months. But the results were incredible, and we blew all our goals out of the water.

Example

Ryan taught a free six-week class in conjunction with InfusionSoft called “Double Your Sales.” And in that class, he delivered a ton of great information how people could double their leads, double their sales, double their reactivation purchases, and so on.

It was an awesome course that proved to be a great introduction to digital marketing for people who needed an automation tool like Infusionsoft but didn’t realize that this was a missing piece in their business.

During this six-week course, we weren’t focused on making money at all. Instead, we put 100% of our focus on delivering value and making sure the people in this class had a great experience and learned a lot.

At the very end of this course, we did promote our product called “The Machine” to people who had finished the class. We didn’t push it very hard; we basically said, “You’ve learned a lot, and now that you’re using InfusionSoft, here’s a course that will help you to get the most out of your email marketing.”

And what we realized was that over time, even after three to five months, we were generating an insane number of sales from people who had taken this class!

3 Keys to Success with this Selling System

To succeed with a selling system like this, you need three things.

First of all, you must have great content.

People who consume your content have to learn a lot and come to trust you as an authority in your niche.

Second, that content has to lead naturally to the product you’re promoting.

In this example, we taught a course in combination with InfusionSoft (which is a marketing automation platform with a big email marketing component). Then we promoted an email marketing training system on the backend.

A big part of the reason why this worked so well was because of the congruency between the free class and the product on the backend.

And finally, the product you’re promoting has to sell for a fairly high dollar amount. Otherwise, it’s hard to justify all the time and expense of delivering that content for free.

Remember, risk is always correlated with opportunity.

Selling System to Scale Your Business #4: Monetization & Retargeting

Of all the selling systems in this post, this is the one that everyone should get started with.

This is where you promote your best stuff to your customers and previous buyers—in other words, your smallest but highest-quality audience.

It’s low-hanging fruit with great potential for immediate revenue and high ROI.

Goal

The goal here is simple: to monetize your leads and customers. You want to turn one-time buyers into multi-buyers while promoting higher-ticket items.

Success KPI

For the KPI, we’re also going to keep things simple and straightforward: we’re looking for maximum positive ROI.

Risk

With this selling system, because you’re promoting your hottest products to your hottest audience, there should be almost no risk. Typically we look to break-even after 0-3 days (only use more than 0 days if you have cart abandonment retargeting to recapture potential buyers).

Example

At DigitalMarketer, we run a number of live events each year (Content & Commerce, Traffic & Conversion, and Digital Agency Growth Summit).

If you’ve never been, then take it from me: they’re an AMAZING experience for everyone involved. Because we have in-person access to people for several days, we can provide massive, massive value during these events. They’re some of the best training we can offer.

But guess what?

We aren’t promoting these events to cold traffic. Because someone who has never heard of us is not likely to buy a plane ticket and fly several hours to spend a couple days with us.

Instead, we’re promoting these events to CUSTOMERS—people who have already taken the time to know us and invested in some of our other trainings. Those are the people who are most likely to go to these live events.

Selling System to Scale Your Business #5: Sales Lead Acquisition

When we implemented this fifth and final selling system, it was a big turning-point for DigitalMarketer.

Why?

Because this one helped us change not just our strategy, but our audience. It marked the point where we expanded beyond B2C marketing (which targeted entrepreneurs and employees) and started talking to larger businesses about how we could help them grow with better marketing training.

The thing about B2B marketing is that some big-ticket items will never be sold via an online sales funnel. That’s because they require a conversation to make sure that the product or service is a good fit for what that business needs or to customize the offer to suit the business’ specific needs.

This requires a strong sales team to close your leads.

It also requires a different kind of selling system to be effective. We call it the sales lead acquisition selling system.

Goal

The goal of this selling system is not to generate new customers…but to generate conversations with prospects.

The reason we focused on conversations was because the product we were promoting typically requires some customization and approval from a chain of command rather than just one individual.

Our salespeople have to take the time to understand each customer’s unique situation and make sure they are really getting a version of the product that fits everyone’s needs.

Success KPI

In this case, our success KPI was a customer-initiated conversation where the customer came to us with a question or request for more information.

Primarily we looked at…

• Lead forms completed
• Email replies
• And phone calls initiated

Risk

Because this is a high-reward sales funnel leading to an expensive product with a recurring element, our goal was to break-even after 60 days.

And in many cases, you can push that out even further, depending on the revenue potential of your product or service (and your average sales cycle).

Example

We used this selling system to extend an invitation to DigitalMarketer HQ, our flagship training program designed to train an entire marketing department.

It’s a more complex offer than DM Lab. It requires more decisions on the part of the customer.

So rather than trying to sell the product directly online, we just wanted to get the customer on the phone—and give our salespeople a chance to help customize the offer based on the needs of each individual business.

If you take a look at the form page for DM HQ, you’ll notice that we require more information than simply an email address.

For instance, we ask for a phone number because when someone fills out this form, our ultimate goal is to get them on the phone.

The Importance of Multiple Selling Systems for Business Growth

One thing I hope you take away from this blog post is the realization that a successful business requires more than one good funnel or traffic campaign.

In order to set your business up for growth, you’ll need a variety of selling systems that bring you a diversity of leads using a healthy mix of low, medium, and high risk selling systems.

Don’t forget—risk is an inevitable and essential part of business. You need some risk!

You should, of course, avoid taking on too much risk. Don’t go out and empty your company’s entire bank account on Facebook ads after reading this (that’s just not smart).

Instead, you need to find a happy medium. And that happy medium typically involves leveraging a few higher-risk selling systems supported by many lower-risk selling systems to scale your business.

So, take the five selling systems you learned in this blog post, try them out in your company, and test new variations on each one to reach new heights in your business.

The post The 5 Selling Systems Your Business Needs to Scale appeared first on DigitalMarketer.