Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Is My Content Working? — Part 3
480 Plays1 year ago
Season One Finale: In this final installment of a 3-part series, Jess and Susan address the final thing:
When do you admit content is NOT working?
Often we see so many places give up on content too soon, but of course, not all marketing works. So if we have to wait so long to know if our content is doing anything...how do we know when it's definitely not?
Make sure to check out the first 2 installments of this 3-part series, where Susan and Jess broke down arriving at an answer around content performance they feel confident in.
Part 1: Short-term metrics to keep your eye on
Part 2: Long-term feedback loops to build with sales
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Susan and Jess's Marketing Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to That's Marketing, Baby, the weekly show where two marketing besties talk all things marketing in the world of B2B and B2C. I'm your co-host, Susan Wenegrad, and I've spent over 20 years in marketing, focusing on paid media and email marketing. And I'm Jess Cook, copywriter and creative director turned content marketer. Every week, we'll tackle a topic that's on our minds and hopefully yours too. Ready? Let's go.
Podcast Sponsorship and Tools
00:00:31
Speaker
That marketing baby is brought to you by AirCuell, the agency that helps you get control of your SEO, analytics, and content strategy. They get in the weeds so you don't have to. Susan and I have both worked with the AirCuell team. They're crazy smart. And their free app, Optimo, translates the information overload that is Google Analytics to show you what content is performing, what isn't, and what to do next.
00:00:54
Speaker
Plus, Atomo is now the fastest, easiest way to blend your GA4 and UA data so you can see both in monthly snapshot and performance over time, which is pretty sweet. Check it out at Atomo.cool. That's O-T-T-I-M-O.C-O-O-L. And now, on to the show.
Challenges in Content Effectiveness
00:01:14
Speaker
Hello, party people. Welcome to another episode of That's Marketing, Baby.
00:01:20
Speaker
I'm Jess Cook, and I'm here with my favorite co-host of all time, the one and only Susan Leningrad. I'm your only co-host, but that's okay. I know, but there will never be another. There will never be another. There can be only one. There could be only one. It's like Highlander. Hey, everybody. We're two moms kind of punch drunk on the fact that we're going to be stuck with children the whole summer, so we'll just roll a lot of it today. Last day of school today.
00:01:46
Speaker
We are super excited to bring you part three of the how do I know if my content is actually working series.
Evaluating Content Performance
00:01:54
Speaker
So we have a couple things that even whether you're the paid person like me or the content head like Jess, we run into the same issues over and over with brands that want to do it a certain way, either because they're just like, we need to create more content or they're like,
00:02:12
Speaker
stop spending our media money. And we're going, no, no, no, we have some rules we need to follow. So we are going to give you our part three, which is when do you just call it and say this is not working. And this is really a symptom, I think, of what we've discussed, which is the short term metrics, which we covered in part one,
00:02:33
Speaker
the longer term metrics of the demos booked. And those are the things that a lot of brands want to always go to first. Like, well, it's not booking demos, so it's not working, right? So we've been working to try and dispel that myth. But to be fair, there are times it doesn't work.
00:02:49
Speaker
So let's cover that side of it. How do we decide that this is not working? So Jess, I will kick it over to you to the first tip. Absolutely. All right. So our kind of like first rule of thumb here, and I think this is going to make a lot of people very happy. You can't call it in the first week.
00:03:07
Speaker
I'm just, we're just going to put that out there. Demos Jess, no demos have been booked. It's not working. Sorry. I'm just going to, I'm going to play the brand. Yes. Playing the part of the CEO or I don't even know is Susan Winograd. Yeah. You have to give yourself some time. In fact, the media or the content. So if you have a big ebook or, you know, a video series or an event, right? A virtual event of some kind, like the longer you actually need to kind of know if it worked or not.
00:03:35
Speaker
So Susan and I, we wanted to throw out an actual timeframe because I think a lot of people are like, you can't call it. You can't know in the first week, but it's like, when should you know? And so we both kind of agreed based on our multitudes of experience. Give it a month.
Experimentation with Content Distribution
00:03:49
Speaker
That feels like a good amount of time for really any piece of content, any campaign, any virtual event, whatever you end up doing, give it a month to kind of see what happens. And to qualify that a little bit on the paid side, you'll probably see metrics
00:04:04
Speaker
sooner than a month on your side. And that's okay, right? It's like you might see the first week or so you're like, wow, click through rate really sucks, or this isn't working. But like, because we have control over other things, like the targeting or the ads, you may need to make changes there. But the point is don't just feel like this content sucks, it's not working.
00:04:23
Speaker
So many times, it's like they just want to sweep their hand across the table, virtually speaking. They're like, this sucks. We have to start over. And on the paid side, it's like you'll get some learnings when you first launch. So you may have to obviously change up stuff. That doesn't mean that the content isn't correct. So just a qualifier there if you're putting media money behind it just to keep that in mind.
00:04:43
Speaker
Absolutely. And I would say, like, you just made me think on the content side, maybe the way that you have been distributing it isn't quite right. But the content, the story is still solid, right? So let's say, you know, the way that you shared it the first time was in a text-based post on LinkedIn, and it didn't get a ton of attraction.
00:05:01
Speaker
But then, okay, here's an example. We just posted, we just published a handful of new customer stories and we have quotes from those customers. We have some videos, we have some statistics that we can share. And so I've been kind of taking those and it's like the first time I'm talking about it, maybe I'm sharing a statistic and okay, that didn't do as well. Okay. I'm going to take one of these videos that like actually has the customer in it.
00:05:25
Speaker
Oh, that did a little better, right? Okay. So you're still getting those learnings in that first month about like the story is there. Like, you know, the story is solid and maybe it's just the way that you're putting it out there that isn't quite like hooking people yet. So just kind of take that first month to like experiment with some things. If you're putting some paid behind it, like just kind of see what's happening there as well and making sure that like the content that people are resonating with in organic is like what you're then putting out and paid as well.
Data-Driven Marketing Adjustments
00:05:53
Speaker
But I see a lot of marketing teams, personally. This is a little bit of a tangent, but not really. It's just something to keep in mind. I feel like there are a lot of marketing teams that really overthink and overprocess exactly how it should look. I'll see 50 rounds of things and all these
00:06:12
Speaker
tweaks and change the drop, obsess over that stuff. I mean, it's like you're going to spend all this time overthinking that. And so I think the problem is they have expended all of their energy on that. So then when it launches, they're like, oh, it didn't work. Well, it just didn't work. And it's like, no, it's just that you spent all of that time and creative energy doing it the way that you thought would be perfect. And the user is telling you, this is not what I want. So it's kind of like, don't put so much pressure
00:06:41
Speaker
on the tweaking and the perfection and all of that stuff before you've even launched it. Get data first because it's like I just see so many places. I'll see 50 rounds of something and I'm going, guys, let's just let the data tell us. We can change it. This is not print.
00:06:57
Speaker
It's like we're not sending it off to a red line environment where that's it. It's like we can change it whenever we want. So let's save the energy and the design resources for getting that feedback before we even bother getting way too into the weeds on it. Absolutely. So bottom line here, given a month, good enough and shipped is better than perfect. Exactly. Let's get
Aligning Marketing Strategies with Audience
00:07:19
Speaker
it out there. Let's get some learnings. Okay. You want to take the second one? Sure. So the second one is...
00:07:25
Speaker
As you are getting this content out there, make sure you're keeping an eye on going on, it can be the big conversion that you want, but also the micro conversions. So if you're seeing people subscribe to your newsletter, are they the people that you actually want?
00:07:42
Speaker
are the people that are actually booking demos with the salespeople? Are those the brand sizes you want, the seniority levels, the decision makers that you want? Or are you getting just kind of a mishmash of uncertainty where sometimes you are, sometimes you're not, maybe you're just getting completely the wrong person? A lot of times what that can indicate is that you are, it might not be the content problem necessarily, but maybe you need to be more explicit about who it's for.
00:08:10
Speaker
And I feel like, I don't know, Jess, if you run into this as much on the straight content side. This is definitely a problem in ads, though, because you have such limited amount of space to be able to define who your customer is. And I feel like so many brands, they're very general there. They just assume that they either want to get the content in as many hands as possible thinking that's going to be a good thing,
00:08:33
Speaker
or it doesn't occur to them that this might sound like it's for everybody because they're so close to the product of the offering that they just assume that people are going to know it's for them or not for them. Or here's another one. They think that targeting is going to take care of that for them. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Yes. And that's definitely not the case.
00:08:51
Speaker
Not anymore. No, it's like you can do the targeting all you want. But the other thing to remember, especially on things like LinkedIn, it gets shared. So it shows up in people's feeds beyond who you actually targeted, especially if it's a good piece of content, which is great. But it also means that you might get a lot of waste when it comes to impressions or clicks or demos booked or any of that stuff.
00:09:09
Speaker
So whether it's just on the content itself the content itself may be pretty explicit but if a user sees you know see the promoting season and add and they're just like oh that sounds great they just blaze into the content and might not even see kind of the parameters that.
00:09:26
Speaker
around the content about who it's for. So you might want to just keep an eye on like, if you're just getting a lot of people that are not the people you want, A, is it, you know, a question of you need to be more explicit in that three seconds that they're looking at the ad you're running to know if it's for them or not? Or B, is there something about the content that is too general, right? Is there something that like, you could be more specific about who this would actually serve us and who it wouldn't?
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah. What are some clever ways where you can like, you know, Hey, content marketers, right? Like literally call them out, you know, and, and whether that's actually saying the job title or using the language they use, or like we used to do with kind of like the, the memes that we used in those ads that were so successful. Those jokes only work for a very specific subset of people. Right. And so that's kind of what you need to figure out is like, are we being very explicit about who we're saying we serve?
00:10:18
Speaker
So something to go back and look at. Yeah, for sure. And then we do have a third one that's kind of related to that, actually. So Jess, you want to take that one? I would love to. Okay. So if you're driving traffic, so like, hey, the campaign, the piece of content, whatever, it's working in terms of people are coming to it.
00:10:35
Speaker
but they're really quickly leaving after they get there. That could be a couple things. That could be, again, like we just talked about, you're not reaching the right people. You need to be more explicit about who it is this is for. Another problem could be that it's too big of an ask. You're asking them, your call to action is book a demo when your call to action should be, take a look at this other piece of content.
00:10:58
Speaker
sign up for our newsletter, take a smaller step. And so those are a couple of things to look at when people are coming, but they're not staying in it. And that means that they're not finding what they need or you're asking too much of
Responding to Audience Feedback
00:11:12
Speaker
them. Yep. I think the other thing, I just thought of this as we were talking, but if you're amplifying this stuff on paid also, it can be helpful to look at the comments. Something I've noticed
00:11:24
Speaker
you know, both on LinkedIn and Facebook, I mean, yes, of course, you get like trolls and bots and whatever. But sometimes there'll be notes from people that like, wow, this is in this happened with you and I with some of the stuff we used to run where they'd be like, this looks great. But the platform is really expensive. And we're like, okay, so this is reaching SMBs, which we don't want.
00:11:42
Speaker
So there's also sometimes if you dig for feedback, and I mean, I always kind of say if you're getting comments, it's a good piece of content, right? Because people are responding, even if it's not positive, they're, they're feeling compelled to say something. Yes. So that's kind of the other thing on platform. When we're thinking about
00:12:00
Speaker
indicators and that kind of thing i mean i you really can't measure things by like virality and all that stuff anymore because it's any metric it doesn't really mean anything people don't share a lot of stuff but i still find that people will comment. So it's can be a really good indicator of like we might not be getting what we want but you know when you start seeing people tagging their colleagues in it.
00:12:18
Speaker
right?
When to Abandon Ineffective Content
00:12:19
Speaker
Like, that's always a good sign on LinkedIn, when they start tagging other people, they're like, you know, so and so should we try this, or this guy's really helpful. Anything anecdotal like that can also be really helpful to know. And sometimes people, you know, a lot of times they just won't say anything. But every once in a while, we'll run something where it's like we start to see comments racking up on it. We're like, Okay, we've hit
00:12:36
Speaker
a nerve, go to a bad ad, and it's a really good indicator if it's the right person or not. So there are also those things that happen in platform, whether it's a LinkedIn post, and I'm sure you've certainly seen that more on your side, Jess, but I noticed that in the ads for sure. Yeah, absolutely. So I think the thing to know is like, okay, you've done all this. You've given it a month. Maybe it's not working the way you want it to. You go back in and you're more explicit about who you serve. Maybe people are coming, but they bounce really quickly. So you go back in and you're giving them smaller steps.
00:13:05
Speaker
If those few things then don't prove out some results, some positive results, it's time to call it. It's like in Mean Girls where she's like, quick trying to make fetch happen, right? Like fetch is not happening. Yeah.
00:13:21
Speaker
Yeah. Whatever reason, at that point, if you have tweaked and refined to say who it's for, to give them a smaller, easier, lighter lift to wait a little longer just to get more data, and it's still not getting you the results you need, then it's time to move on.
Learning from Marketing Failures
00:13:38
Speaker
Yep. And that's always a tough one to call because it's involved a lot of resources, it's involved media money. And that's part of the reason why I say to when you run this stuff external to whatever it is you are trying to get people to do, when you run it and you put paid media behind it, try and learn something. Because you know what I mean? It's like make sure that you tested different angles. And it's like even if you decide this piece of content didn't necessarily make the cut,
00:14:04
Speaker
Were there other things that you noticed that did work? Were there lots more comments or higher click-through rate? Or was there something that you tested visually or in the copy that you can take and go to the next thing with? I mean, I am a silver lining kind of gal. If we spent all that money, you darn well should have learned something from it, even if it was beyond just this piece of content didn't work. In the ad itself, there's things that exist separately from the content that you can still take with you for the subsequent campaigns that you run.
00:14:34
Speaker
So just something else to keep in mind. Exactly. And on the content side of that, it's like when we did the video content from this piece or this campaign performed better than the rest. So let's take that learning for next time. I think like you're saying is like, don't just let it be a failure. Take something from it so that the next time you come up with an idea, you can take those learnings and just give yourself better odds.
00:15:00
Speaker
I think that's the number one thing that I notice when I start engaging with a brand and this is just in even in like the fractional marketing like head of marketing type work I do not even just with paid but I'll go back through what they've done in the past and ask how it went and almost always it's like oh that didn't work.
00:15:18
Speaker
And that's all I ever hear. And I get that overall it didn't produce the results you wanted, but there's never any nuance to it. I'm like, were there parts of it that did? Were there parts that's, you know, I mean, it's just so black or white. And most marketing isn't like that. You know, it's like normally there's something that even if it didn't work, making some assumptions as to why or what specifically,
00:15:40
Speaker
It just seems like it's always this, oh, that whole thing just didn't work. And it's like, well, was it the content? Do you think it was the creative? Because there have been times where there's been content that has done well on a site, but it just doesn't do well when we've tried to amplify it paid. And that could be targeting limitations. But then we know. We're like, OK, this specific type of content, we just can't seem to reach people what we want. There's never that nuance of what was learned. It's always kind of like it worked or it didn't. And there's very rarely an in-between. So especially with a startup, when you have limited funds and resources,
00:16:07
Speaker
Try and make as many of those shades of gray notes that you can, because I just find those are missing. And so you just feel like you're starting over from the beginning every time you run a campaign. It doesn't feel like there's usually anything that's been learned previously to just avoid.
Season 1 Conclusion and Future Hints
00:16:21
Speaker
It's either like that whole thing just didn't work. And no one's really kind of combed through the pile of garbage to see if there were pieces in there that should have been in the recycling bin. See, right? There's an analogy for you.
00:16:33
Speaker
Nailed it. You might find a plastic bottle in there, people. You just got to go through it. That's right. That's just kind of another side note. Love that. So that is our, not only part three of this, how do I know if my content is working, but this is also our last episode for season one. Last episode. So we completed season one. Yay, us. Woo-hoo. We did it. But as two working moms, we were like, our kids are going to be right up our rear ends.
00:17:03
Speaker
for the next two months and trying to record anything with travel schedules and plus all of you guys are going to be out and about with family and everything. So we are going to take off for July and August, but we have a whole bunch of stuff we've been working on behind the scenes. So that's what we're taking the other part of the summer to work on is to flush out some of that to bring you guys additional resources this fall and some pretty fun offerings. So
00:17:27
Speaker
we are going to be spending the summer trying not to lose our minds, entertaining children, and then also putting that stuff together that we will be unveiling this fall. But we will be back with new episodes in September. Super excited. Yeah. And thank you all so much. This has been this was something Susan and I set out to do because we just genuinely really like to talk to
00:17:46
Speaker
to each other about their stuff. And we were like, maybe someone will want to listen. And so thank you from the bottom of our hearts for listening, for liking it, for telling us you like it, for giving us suggestions, for the feedback, for the shares. And we get so excited. When we get nice comments or we get emails, we're like, oh my god. We text each other. We're like, look, look, look.
00:18:05
Speaker
Oh my God. So like it's just, in case you think that we don't read them, like we are two people, we read every single thing you send us and we just get stupidly excited about it. So I can't tell you how much we appreciate having other people that like to geek out about all of this stuff with us. It means a lot. That's right. And we'll be back with more. That's marketing baby. Have a great summer and thanks for an awesome season one. See you soon. Bye.
00:18:32
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of That's Marketing, Baby. Like what you heard? Please give us some love with the review. And don't forget to hop into our community list at That'sMarketingBaby.com to get more helpful tips, resources, and thoughts from us. See you next week.