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EP 9: Using KPIs Instead of Vanity Metrics to Drive Marketing Decisions
138 Plays1 year ago
This week, Lindsay and Betsy dive into the fundamental differences between vanity metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators) and which is best to use measuring results to drive marketing decisions. Vanity metrics, such as follower count, post likes, open rate, etc., may provide a momentary burst of dopamine but are not always the best metric to gauge your strategy. Instead, understanding your KPIs and what metrics will help you reach your business goals matters most. This episode is a great listen for marketing consultants looking to educate clients on proper analytics reporting.
Follow us online & come say hi!
- The Business Playdate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebusinessplaydate/
- Lindsay White's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindsaywhite.co/
- Betsy Moorehead's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betsymoorehead.biz/
- Learn more about Lindsay's marketing agency here: https://thewhitelabelcreative.com/
- Learn more about Betsy's marketing services here: https://betsymoorehead.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Business Playdate
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Business Playdate, a podcast hosted by Lindsay White and Betsy Moorehead, two internet strangers turned business besties. We're two marketing professionals living across the country, raising our kiddos while running our own individual businesses. We built these businesses based on our experiences working in corporate management roles with the end goal to be able to show up for our families first. And we did it. We're so happy you're here with us. Now let's get into this week's episode.
Weekend Adventures at the Moorehead Household
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello. Welcome back to the Business Playdate, guys. Hello. Welcome. So, Betsy, let's just jump in. You prefaced this with a big story. I don't know if big is the correct term or if it's just like exhausting and long. It has been quite the weekend at the Morehead household, but I was like, I'm going to save this and talk to Lindsey about it on the podcast because
00:00:58
Speaker
We're recording on a Monday, um, because things were crazy on Friday and it just didn't work out. So I was like, Oh, fun. We'll have so much more to talk about over the, like on Monday, over the weekend. Um, turns out this is the busiest weekend that we have had all year. Uh, and it was just like one thing after another. And I am so tired this morning.
00:01:19
Speaker
Like planned busy or unplanned? Um, a couple of things were planned and then some things were unplanned. So it was all very fun. I will preface with that. Like it's not like this big dramatic story, but, um, it was just such a busy weekend. So like I had planned for like a well over a month to take my four year old Ellie to see the Taylor Swift air his tour movie.
00:01:44
Speaker
Did she have fun? She did. And so I picked her up on first of all, Friday, like was just crazy. Like I totally forgot that we had this appointment that I was taking both the girls to that morning. And so just threw off my whole morning. And, um, so like Friday, I was just like running around like crazy. Didn't like barely got any work done. I don't think I opened my computer except for like for the 30 minutes. Um, and then by the time I looked up, it was time to go get her from school to get her ready for going to the show. Cause it started at six 30.
00:02:13
Speaker
But I was like, oh, we should probably get there at six because I'm sure there'll be fun stuff to do at the theater. This was the premiere night. It was October 13th. And I'm taking a four-year-old to the movies. She'd been before, but I was like, we're going to need to get candy and there's going to be a new decision making and we're going to have to go to the bathroom a couple of times, all the things. So I was just doing my mom math. I was like, let's leave the house at 5.45. We'll get there at six, whatever.
00:02:40
Speaker
So we do that, right? We get her home. I'm like showing her all these cute little outfits that I had picked out for her and like letting her choose. We put glitter on and like Aeris toured it up, right? Like, so I went to the show, so I tried to recreate it all. I love it. She probably loved that. She did. She loved it. She was very like, I want to wear this dress. I want this, I want you to put these jewels on me. She was so all over it.
00:03:05
Speaker
We get there, we get to the theater and it's not quite as busy as I thought it was going to be. And there's like, like every, all of the different, um, Theaters were showing the errors to her movie. So there's just like Swifties everywhere, right? But it wasn't as crazy. I thought it was going to be, so we get in and we get like seated at six o'clock.
00:03:23
Speaker
And I was like, Oh my gosh, I've got 30 minutes until this movie starts. What am I going to do with this child? Um, and she was great. She was wonderful the whole night. She had so much fun around six 30, like a lot more people started showing up and I was like, Hmm, rookie mistake. Like I should have come right at six 30 with her, but they were just like these tween girls that came up to her and like,
00:03:41
Speaker
We're sharing friendship bracelets with her. She has older cousins. My sisters have older girls. And so anytime she sees big girls ages seven and up, she's just obsessed. She's like, I love the big girls. I want to hang out with them all night. They traded friendship bracelets and they invited her down to come dance with them all night. And she was such a champ. The actual movie didn't start until seven, the actual concert part.
00:04:08
Speaker
But it was like 30 minutes of previews. I was just like, oh my gosh, come on, put Taylor Swift on the freaking screen. Like my child is ready to see this. She did so great. She like very, and the very end, like the last couple of songs of the movie, cause you know, it's like the entire concert and produced movie. She, she started getting kind of cranky and like you could tell she was getting tired. It was 10 o'clock. Like she, it was a full three hour movie. She did so she was dancing the whole time. She had so much fun.
00:04:37
Speaker
Um, so anyway, it was wonderful. So that like kicked off the weekend and that was really
Family and Entertainment Challenges
00:04:41
Speaker
fun. Um, and then Saturday, like we had some things to do during the day, but Saturday evening we had family like pictures to take for, um, it's like a little mini session that our like photographer was doing.
00:04:54
Speaker
No easy feat. No easy feat, especially getting like two children that didn't want a nap ready for pictures and just like praying. Like we have 15 minutes to get at least one good picture that I can put on a Christmas card and two, I'm using them as like the baby's first birthday pictures. And so I was like, can you take some solo pictures of her? Thankfully everyone did great. They hammed it up in front of the camera. I can't wait to see the pictures. I think they're going to be lovely. Then we made the mistake of going to dinner.
00:05:19
Speaker
Everyone was losing their mind, and it was just grandparents all around us, because we were eating at 5.30, which is my preferred time to go out to eat a meal in public. Absolutely, with children, 100%. And my husband's making the joke of, anybody want to babysit tonight? The children are having full-on meltdowns, and they were like, oh. I was like, oh my gosh, let's get these kids out of here. So we did that, and that was fun.
00:05:47
Speaker
you know, we go out to eat with them like once a week. Yeah, it was fine. It was is what it was.
00:05:52
Speaker
And then Sunday morning we woke up and my husband was like, I think I want to go to the Astros, um, ALCS like playoff game. And I was like, okay, cool. Um, let me see if we can get a babysitter. So he like found tickets last minute yesterday morning. They were like, so such a good price for being playoff baseball gate, you know, tickets. Yeah. And I like messaged the babysitter like eight AM yesterday. And I was like, Hey, do you think you'd be
00:06:18
Speaker
five tonight to watch the girls. And she's one of their teachers from daycare. So she was like, of course, like I'm free. I'll come. I was like, thank God, I don't have to like give you the spiel. You know, like you've watched them before. So we, my husband and I like had an very impromptu like date night and went to the game. The Astros ended up losing. It was game one, but they play again tonight. So hopefully, but it's like this huge rivalry. It was like the two Texas teams are in this playoff series together.
00:06:42
Speaker
That's so fun. It was so fun. My husband's a huge baseball fan, huge Astros fan. And of course it's like way more fun to cheer for your team when they're doing really good. And the Astros have been doing amazing. And fun fact, Maggie, my baby was born during the ACLS last year when the Astros, so they've made it for seven years in a row. Like they've made it to the playoffs.
00:07:04
Speaker
And, um, I was literally like pushing this baby out and the, their Astros TV is on, are on the TV. And like Ryan is just like, you know, focused on me, but also like kind of keeping an eye on the game. So we talked about that. But the next night we got home after the hospital was the night that they clenched the game and made it to the world series last year. And he was like, okay, you've done this before a second kid. I'm going to go outside and watch, uh, watch the game. Is that cool? Your mom's here. Your sisters are here. Like everything's good with the baby. I was like, go watch the game. It'll be okay.
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah. So that, if that tells you anything, like how excited he wants to go to the playoff game last night, but it was a lot of fun. I am just so, cause we didn't get home till like almost midnight last night. Cause it was a seven PM game and traffic getting out of there was just crazy, but it was so fun. We like.
00:07:49
Speaker
I'm a one activity a weekend kind of a gal. I don't really like doing a ton of things on the weekends, except for going to the park and stuff like that with the family is good, but like planned activities. Like today, we went to the movies and had a late night, Friday night, and then crazy dinner, and then just like Saturday all together was crazy, and then a very wild and crazy Sunday.
00:08:16
Speaker
I'm going to need to recover. I'm going to need a nap, but my husband is out of town for the next few days for a trip, for a work trip. So I'm like, I have the house to myself during the days because he usually works from home. So I'm like, at least I can maybe like get my shit together and like
00:08:30
Speaker
get laundry, because I didn't get anything done this weekend because we were just blowing and going. I know. We weren't even doing very much, and we still have so much laundry. It's like a never-ending laundry is an issue. It really is. It's an issue. It is insane how many clothes we have in our closet that never get worn, but how I keep rotating the same clothes over and over again. I just need to Marie Kondo everything in the closet. You should. If it doesn't bring me joy, it's going out the window.
00:08:57
Speaker
That's what I did. I got rid of everything. I got rid of like three huge baskets of clothes and it was like the best thing I ever did. Now I look in my closet and I'm like, oh, there's like nothing in here and it's all stuff I'm going to wear. Well too, like you're about to move, right? So like you're probably like purging and that's just like such a good feeling to like purge and just start fresh and get it all out. I know. I'm staring, I showed you before we started recording, I'm staring at a pile of like
00:09:19
Speaker
Halloween costume options here that I need to try on this. I'm just like, I need to get it together. All over the place. I think that's all of us. I think we all feel like we need to get it together. I always feel like I don't have it together.
00:09:34
Speaker
All the time. I'm a mom of two. I run a successful business. On paper, it says I have it together, but I don't. I know. I was telling you a friend at church, I was like, you always look like you have it all together. I was like, you're so sweet. Thank you. I'm dying inside. It's really easy to look like I have it together for only one hour out of every week. I know. And the children are in kid's church in the nursery and they're not running around like crazy.
00:10:01
Speaker
Right. Um, but anyway, yes, it was crazy weekend. We have a busy weekend coming up to the baby's first birthday's next weekend. So it's just like October and September and October are just crazy months for us. You know, October is going to be insane. Yeah.
00:10:14
Speaker
It's going to be insane.
Understanding Vanity Metrics in Marketing
00:10:16
Speaker
Anyway, so that was my like fun story I was going to share with everybody. I love it. So you're not firing on all cylinders today, but you've got some of them, so it's okay. I do, but we do have a planned topic to talk about, which is better than last week's episode. We do. We have a real planned topic, which I actually think is going to be really good. And it's something that I think a lot of us, especially if you're a marketing professional and you work with clients directly, like this is something that we probably all encounter, but if you're not a
00:10:42
Speaker
person that works with marketing clients and you just do your own business, this is something for you to take into consideration. Today, we're talking a lot about vanity metrics and what they are, what they mean, and what you can do to overcome vanity metric type of issues that you might be having in your own business or with your clients.
00:11:01
Speaker
So let's go ahead and kick it off. Well, and to like to preface why this topic came up, I think you were seeing a lot of people in the marketing space on some Facebook groups that were talking about Instagram specifically. Yes. Like that's how this came to the forefront. You were like, seems like people are very confused about like what's happening. Yes. I have been in Facebook groups a little bit, which I honestly, I don't really like play much in Facebook groups. Um,
00:11:30
Speaker
But lately I have been trying to gauge what's going on in the industry because we create content now every week and I want to see what people are talking about. And so I was in these Facebook groups, I was in four or five of them, and I saw the same exact question posted multiple times in just a couple of different ways. But it essentially was like, hey, what's going on with Instagram? Why is my engagement so low? Why are my followers dropping off? Why are my
00:11:56
Speaker
It posts not getting any action. All the organic metrics and stuff. Yeah, which I think is a very valid question. I think it's a question that obviously you would have, especially if you're tracking your metrics regularly. That said, it might not be the best question to be asking yourself.
00:12:12
Speaker
Or the like best metrics to be tracking. To be worried, to be concerned about. And to like, we're going to get into this, but especially if you're working with clients, you need to educate them. You need to have them understand like what exactly you're tracking and should be focusing on. There is a huge education factor, especially as a marketing service professional. So why don't we just like go ahead and get started with what is a vanity metric?
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so what is a vanity metric? Um, this includes different impressions for organic content. Uh, some I'm sure paid can be in this too, but things like like shares comments, your follower count, open rates on emails can be considered a vanity metric. Um, views sometimes like traffic to your website, bounce rates, all of those are like things that look
00:13:02
Speaker
good and feel good in the moment or feel shitty in the moment if they're not going real well. But they don't actually have a true strategy or leading you to your business decisions or your goals, essentially. Right. They're not aligned with a business strategy or a marketing strategy that's doing something for your business. They're really just like a short dopamine burst. Yes. Oh, yes.
00:13:28
Speaker
Um, and so KPIs are, they're a metric, of course, they're a piece of data, but they're directly impacting your business, your goals, your decisions, and they're guiding your strategy. So they're pieces of the puzzle that you're actually picking out based on what your strategy is or what your goals are. And those KPIs are things that you should be tracking regularly.
00:13:50
Speaker
They might make you smile momentarily, but they also have the substance to continue carrying you on. Yeah. And so KPI, Key Performance Indicator, these are like benchmark goals that you, well, not always benchmark goals, but like
00:14:06
Speaker
They can be a benchmark that you're trying to reach like an industry benchmark, something that's specific to like, for instance, like e-commerce, right? Or like retail. Like if there's like a certain open rate that is really like a benchmark, that's a good KPI to try to reach. Like you're trying to continuously get to that open, right? Or better on an email.
Educating Clients on Meaningful Metrics
00:14:25
Speaker
Um, and the cool thing too, about email marketing metrics is a lot of times these email platforms even make it super easy for you to find benchmarks for yourself.
00:14:34
Speaker
Like one of my clients uses constant contact and constant contact has an entire library of what benchmarks you should be using based off of your industry. And yeah, everyone's going to have different benchmarks that you can, you know, you can benchmark against yourself. You can benchmark against a peer, but it is always interesting to see what your specific email service provider is saying your benchmark is for your specific industry. So what like for you and your business and your clients, like
00:15:02
Speaker
how do you educate them around vanity metrics or just like what type of metrics they should be focusing on? Because I know I've definitely had clients in the past that have been like, oh, my follower count is not where I want it to be. And it's like, okay, well, let's not focus on how many followers you have. Let's focus on
00:15:22
Speaker
Right. What the people that are following you are doing and if they're the right people. How do you educate your clients who probably are not in the marketing space? No. None of my clients are in the marketing space. All of them are very undereducated when it comes to marketing.
00:15:37
Speaker
that's why they hire me. So there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. They do not need to be educated in marketing because that's why they are outsourcing it. Um, they are experts in whatever they are doing. So a lot of my clients have a lot of issues with vanity march vanity metrics because you hear about like, we're constantly consuming content. I'm constantly looking at Instagram and consuming something. I'm constantly listening to a podcast and listening about a new marketing idea. Um, and so you hear like these different ideas and it gets into your head like, Oh well,
00:16:07
Speaker
there's this new Instagram strategy and my followers aren't jumping up at all. So why are my followers not jumping up? And then my client will come to me and say, hey, why are my followers not jumping up? My followers should be growing. And it's like, well, let's think about this for a minute. For my clients specifically, Instagram is really a terrible strategy.
00:16:24
Speaker
So I love it when they come to me and they're like, Hey, like my Instagram's not growing. I'm like, well, your clients aren't on Instagram. So that's purely like a vanity project for you. Like, yeah, I won't even work on Instagram for my clients because I'm like, this is not where your clients are hanging out. There's really no purpose for it. So I think a lot of times clients get in their head, like they see these flashy numbers or they hear a podcast or maybe they see another peer that they work with who's like, Oh, I have,
00:16:50
Speaker
a million followers on Instagram or have a million LinkedIn followers. And it's like, okay, well that's great, but how does that play into your puzzle? So I'll try to bring it to something that's like a little easier to understand.
00:17:03
Speaker
I have a client, a past client who does wellness, like a local wellness boutique, you know, IDs, red light therapy, things like that. And so we, they were brand new. We started building an Instagram from scratch and you know, we were very successful in the Instagram that was being built. There were strategies in place, a lot of organic marketing taking place and obviously followers were growing at a slow rate because you're working within a confined geographical area. Right.
00:17:31
Speaker
If they wanted to grow their followers like crazy and that was their goal was to grow followers like crazy, we could have done that by expanding our reach and creating reels that were more viral style for a broader reach, but not something that was Tampa specific. They were a Tampa business.
00:17:49
Speaker
What would the point of that be? And they were not like, we want to grow our followers like crazy. But if they were coming to me saying, hey, why? We want a million followers. Why don't we have a million followers? It's like, well, hey, you can only sell to Tampa people. Yeah, it's flashy. Yeah, it's flashy. What's the point in having a large follower base who's all over the country when you can literally only sell to people in one geographical area?
00:18:12
Speaker
Yeah, I had a past client who was an interior designer and she was valid in this question. She said, how are people going to trust me when they come to my page and I only have 1,500 followers? And how are they going to trust that I am a high end, very good interior designer? And I was like, I understand that and that's a good valid concern to have, but we want to make sure that if we have 1,500 followers that they're the right people.
00:18:41
Speaker
Yeah. You know, you don't want a million followers or whatever of just like Joe Schmoe following you or a whole bunch of bots. Like you want to, you know, you just, you just never know. Like you want to get the right people. Like you were talking about, like your, some of your clients, their ideal person is not on Instagram.
00:19:01
Speaker
Facebook or whatever. I think we've all gotten into this, I mean, how long has social media been around? Like 15 years maybe? Yeah. And we've all kind of gotten to this spot where it's so normalized that social media is just a piece of our lives at this point, most people's lives. And we get this
00:19:18
Speaker
weird validation from social media and then you bring it to this business perspective where she's wondering okay well how are people gonna take me seriously family of fifteen hundred followers and it's like well. Your work should it stands up for itself without followers right yeah yeah it's like you don't need the validation of.
00:19:35
Speaker
20,000 people to be following you on social media in order to be able to put out a good product or service. Right. And I'm sure influencers have not helped the situation either when businesses see a random fashion influencer with thousands and thousands of followers. And it's like, well, how are they doing that? It's two different business models.
00:19:57
Speaker
Exactly. Two different target audiences. Yeah, their business is social media. You're using social media as a marketing tool for your business. Your business is not social media. Oh, I had something and now I've lost it. This is where I am today.
00:20:16
Speaker
I do think that that's where KPIs come into play, where it's, okay, you as a business owner or you as a marketer for your clients need to identify what are the data pieces of the puzzle? What are the metrics that you need to be tracking that are actually making a difference in your business? What are your business goals? Let's align that marketing to those business goals and the KPIs should be all in that same lane with you.
00:20:44
Speaker
Yes, so something I was reading recently said if you are trying to decide whether a KPI, a key performance indicator, is a vanity metric or not, what you can do is you can look at that metric, like let's say it's open rates, just using that for example. And if you're open rate, if that metric can lead to a course of action or inform a business decision,
00:21:05
Speaker
and the answer is no, then it's a vanity metric. That's a really good question to ask yourself or ask your clients. You could take just something to take away from this. You could look at your clients, all of the metrics, across all the different platforms and really audit them and say, okay, is this metric? I'm trying to think of another one. Is the number engagement rate or whatever?
00:21:31
Speaker
which I think was probably going to be a good decision making one, but like is the engagement rate on social media helping us to make informed business decisions? And if the answer is yes, then cool. That's a KPI that you need to track every month to make sure that you are constantly reaching your goals. But if it's like, man, then you need to reevaluate like why, you know, why what's going on there? So, um, anyway, yeah. So can this metric lead to a course of action?
00:22:00
Speaker
or inform a business decision. If the answer is yes, then it's a good trackable KPI that you should be looking at. And if it's just bringing you a momentary smile, it is not. Yes. It is not.
Marketing Strategies and Decision-Making
00:22:12
Speaker
I love that. That's super helpful, like a good takeaway to take as you're asking yourself that question, asking your clients those questions. A lot of times I get into this with my clients, a lot of education on
00:22:25
Speaker
What is the right marketing move? Are we wasting our time doing this? Are we not wasting our time doing this? Is this just a tactic that's bringing us a smile? Or is this something that we actually are using to drive business growth? And I think that's where a lot of these metrics come into place. Obviously, social media and email marketing all have a time and a place. But coming down to making real choices and real decisions on what you're going to do with your marketing,
00:22:51
Speaker
is where you need to spend your marketing efforts. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I agree, too. And it comes back to, it always comes back to the marketing strategy. Yes. And what
00:23:09
Speaker
knowing the business and knowing your business goals and knowing what marketing tactics to do to reach these goals. Um, I mean, it's the most important thing. I know it's, it's the most important thing. And I think that, and I mean,
00:23:27
Speaker
We'll talk about this a billion more times, but the reason I work with my clients with a marketing strategy first is because it helps guide these educational conversations. It helps us guide our tactics and figure out, okay, like we're straying the course right now and obviously things are going to change or the wind is going to change directions and we're going to have to change with that. But we have to be able to have some like guiding light of where we're going to inform ourselves of these decisions that are being made.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, like, I think, I think too.
00:24:01
Speaker
Like back to like the flashiness of it all. Why aren't we going viral is a question that I know people get and, or, you know, why did this real take off and this one didn't. And it's like, there's just so much noise too. And I'm probably because maybe our feeds are on Instagram or a little different where it's a lot of like other service providers providing their takeaways and their tactics and their strategies.
00:24:29
Speaker
Everybody does everything different, but the true metrics, the true numbers, the true value doesn't lie. When you are trying to make a major business decision, whether something is going to get you where you need to go, your follower count is great, but that's not the end all deal. No, it's not. How many of your followers are engaged?
00:24:55
Speaker
Just as a blanketed thought, how many of your followers are engaged? I've seen accounts where they have 40,000 accounts following them and their posts are getting five likes. It's like, okay, well, we're having a mismatch here and I'm not here to audit their marketing and maybe that's not part of their...
00:25:17
Speaker
an intern project that they're doing, and it's like a passion project. That's great. There's totally space to build out marketing tactics that may not align with your marketing strategy plan, but it's more from, at least in my perspective, it's more from a professional growth standpoint or a passion project kind of standpoint, less of something that's future serving. I'll do marketing tactics on my own business that make no sense, but it's more for me to learn something. Right.
00:25:45
Speaker
so that I can take what I've learned and put it into practice with clients who it might be a strategy that does make sense for them. Well, it's all constantly testing, right? Like AB testing. I mean, we talk about this in advertising a lot too. It's like, how do you know what's going to work unless you test it against something else? Um, so yeah, you have to do that kind of stuff as well, but you can't, can't just like put something out there or, or I feel like too, you can't,
00:26:13
Speaker
create a piece of content and it for the hope of going viral to increase a vanity metric that makes absolutely no sense because let's say something does take off and you get a bunch of views or you get a bunch of followers from it.
00:26:29
Speaker
What's the conversion? Yeah. What's, do you, is revenue coming in from that specific piece of content? Is there a conversion taking place? Because if there's not a conversion, if you have a real go viral and it hits, you know, a million views, that's awesome. Maybe you get some new followers from it. Awesome. What are those followers doing? Are they coming to your page and converting? Cause if they are great, then that serves you a purpose. But if they're not, and they're just dropping off, then you didn't reach the right people in the first place. Yeah.
00:26:59
Speaker
Um, okay. So we've talked in depth now about vanity metrics. So what about KPIs? What are some good KPIs that people could track? Like what have you seen specifically? I mean, I think that looking at the marketing strategy plan is important. Looking at your plan, looking at what your business goal, even if you don't have a marketing strategy plan, you need to know what true North is. What is your business goal?
00:27:22
Speaker
Is it to increase your sales? Okay, great. So now we have a actual goal that's tangible that we can track. So of course you need to track revenue coming in. You would want to track those numbers each month based on whatever factors you're looking at.
00:27:36
Speaker
But from a marketing standpoint, you need to look at maybe your emails. What's converting? What is your conversion rate on different types of emails? Or what is your conversion rate on different types of social media content? But conversion rate is going to be a huge one. And the thing about conversion rate that I just want to point out is conversion rate tells you that
00:27:59
Speaker
that the percentage of people that are converting, doing whatever action you want them to take, if that percentage is a good industry standard, is reaching those benchmarks that you want it to reach, that means that your email, your content, all of that is hitting home with the right people. So an example that I can use is like,
00:28:21
Speaker
a conversion rate on an e-commerce store. If they've got thousands of people coming to their website every day, great. But if only like 1% of those people are converting and making a purchase, then we don't have the right people come to the website or the website's not set up for success. The landing page isn't really telling people what to do. So your conversion rate can help you make informed business decisions when it comes to
00:28:45
Speaker
Is the information tracking? Is what I'm trying to tell people to do working? Is the user experience good? I mean, there's all different things that you can look at if your conversion rate is low. I just wanted to point that out because that was something that took me a while to grasp, especially once I got into the marketing world was
00:29:08
Speaker
or the advertising world was like, conversion rate is a massive one to track KPI. Huge. And I mean, your KPIs, they need to be measurable. They need to be something that you can go in. It's not just like a gut feeling, like, are we doing well?
The Role of KPIs in Business Growth
00:29:25
Speaker
They need to be realistic data pieces that you can track, like that conversion rate. And so I mean, that also goes into making sure that your back end processes are really clean. Because sometimes when you have a bunch of different
00:29:37
Speaker
Maybe you have a social media platform and you have an email platform and you have a sales platform. If they're not talking to each other, you're going to need to get pretty clean and clear on how you're tracking those KPIs because you can only be as good as your KPIs are showing. How often do you look at your KPI metrics? I pull them on the first of each month for the previous month. Then I'll look at them for each year.
00:30:05
Speaker
Some of my clients will go into court really. So I think that those are good cadences to take a look at them. I always use KPIs when I'm planning out the next year's plan. So I'm a big fan of benchmarking against yourself. Yes. If you can benchmark against yourself, it gives you a much more realistic and actual direction to go to see if you are growing or if you're falling back.
00:30:33
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree. One of my clients as in, uh, is not in the e-commerce world. And so it's hard to track like a true return on ad spend with them. So we like dove in and I mean, this was like nerd out like for a whole week, I was like diving into the metrics. We were building out like what.
00:30:52
Speaker
How are we actually determining what our return on ad spend is because there wasn't revenue and we're probably not selling a property from a Facebook ad? It was fun to look into those and figure out, okay.
00:31:08
Speaker
What is our cost per click or what is our click grade and you know, how many new users are coming to this site? You know, so it was like, we were, I really get to dive into Google analytics, which we haven't even mentioned that, but like a lot of this, when it comes to your website or your email, like if you can't track it. When it comes to email, like if you can't track it right there, like using Google analytics, yes, to look at.
00:31:34
Speaker
the all these metrics um like from a KPI standpoint not a vanity metric not like you know all that good stuff but like to look at it from no get familiar with Google Analytics if you're a marketing professional offering marketing services and you aren't familiar with Google Analytics it has changed because GA4 came out this summer but like
00:31:54
Speaker
Um, get familiar with it, play around with it. I actually love being a Google analytics and I try not to get in there too often because then I'm just like, well, what's going on? But charts and graphs just make me happy. And it's really stepped up the game. Oh yeah, it's definitely has. So I was working with a client this morning actually on diving into their email analytics and.
00:32:16
Speaker
As I mentioned, I have a lot of clients who really look at those vanity metrics because they thrive off that short burst of dopamine, which I get. And especially if you're not a marketing professional, you
00:32:27
Speaker
You might really get happy from those vanity metrics. The things that make you happy are watching. It's what they can see, right? Yeah. Because they're not looking at the back end half the time. No. Things like looking at their list count. Your list count's great, but how many unsubscribes have you had? Why are those people unsubscribing? Can we look at that? Can we dive into that a little bit? Unsubscriber count is honestly just as important as your list growth. Different things like that I think are really important to look at.
00:32:57
Speaker
One of the conversations that I was having with him today was about Google Analytics and how we can look at all of these metrics coming through on your email service provider platform. But once they click over to your website, the clicks are obviously important. We want to see if people are clicking and converting. That's a conversion point of converting from email to your website. But once they're on their website, what are they doing?
00:33:23
Speaker
That's where you go into Google Analytics and you can see, okay, now I can see what those people are doing on the next half of their journey with me. This is getting a little Google Analytics heavy here, but where are people coming from? Is social media organically working for you really well or is it a waste of your time?
00:33:44
Speaker
Definitely. Or if you really want to grow social media as a website driver, then what are you doing there? What are the metrics you want to track there that make sense to get people to your website to convert them? Or whatever goal you set up in Google Analytics? Where is your conversion point? And it's all going to depend on what kind of business you are.
00:34:06
Speaker
Like what you're selling, what your offer is, are you a social media influencer? Because as we mentioned, that's going to be dramatically different than if you're selling a product or a service via social media or email or whatever the case may be.
00:34:18
Speaker
I just love metrics and I never thought that I would be this person until, I don't know, like five years ago, probably. And then it was just like, oh my gosh, really understanding, like really having a good understanding, a grasp on the like tangible pieces of information that can inform decisions is like,
00:34:45
Speaker
bar none. Yes. The best skill you can have. Marketing is just a numbers game. Like if you don't know your numbers, you're not a marketer. You're not like, I mean, if you don't know how many people, let's say you're a very funnel based, like you have a funnel and that's kind of it. Like that's what your business structure looks like. If you don't know how many people it takes at the top of your funnel to get them to the very bottom of your funnel, then like, what are you doing?
00:35:15
Speaker
I still get lost sometimes when people just like start rattling off about funnels and I'm like,
00:35:21
Speaker
There's so many different kinds of funnels out there, but it's true. I think true. I mean, this is a totally different tantrum for another day, but I think bring it on. Let's just, you know, we're already at like 35 minutes. Let's just keep going. I think funnels can be, I think when people start talking about funnels, it gets a little like bro marketing. I started writing down some of my marketing icks that like maybe we'll have an episode on later down the road. Right. That's definitely one of them.
00:35:49
Speaker
I think that people can funnel serve a place and talking about them serves a purpose.
00:35:59
Speaker
If there's so many nuances, right? Like so many businesses have different structures than just like what a very, and like, that's why I tried to say with that example, like it's a, you have a very basic funnel. Like it's a very funnel oriented business with like one, one top of funnel and one bottom of funnel where that's not always the case. But I feel like people can get so icky.
00:36:21
Speaker
Yeah. Oh yeah. Uh, bro marketing jargon makes me like, I get like a visceral feeling, you know, like response from it. It's just like, Oh, what are you talking? Like, can we just use like actual words and not just throw out all these different jargons and terms? And like, also let's not make people feel bad about the fact that they have a different business model than others. You know, what is like, again, here we go. But you know, what is like,
00:36:49
Speaker
the biggest place on the internet where all these bro marketing terms are is Reddit threads. Reddit threads are the worst. I sometimes feel like if I have a question about advertising, like a very specific question, I do have to go to Reddit sometimes because that's where a lot of really good information is, but oh my gosh, I read them and I'm like, oh, that's the worst.
00:37:18
Speaker
I can just see the person sitting behind the computer, like typing it out. They get to hide behind their little username. They don't even have pictures. Just like, please explain this in terms that some normal human can understand. If you are, I'm sorry, like we're not saying all like bros and marketing are bad, but I think we know what we're referring to here. Yeah. There's a very specific sub segment here. Oh my gosh. That's so funny. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
00:37:47
Speaker
Um, well, what else? Any tangible tips? I know we talked about like auditing your KPIs for your clients. Yeah. I mean, I think that that's a great, that's a great tangible tip. Like if you haven't audited your client's KPIs or your client is someone who loves vanity metrics and is constantly coming to you and you needing to educate around that. Audit their KPIs, do KPI audit. Yeah. Tell them. Ask the questions for each KPI. Is this informing a business decision? If so, what? You know, get the receipts.
00:38:16
Speaker
Yeah. And I even like make it a point to have these conversations with your clients like once a quarter, like, okay, guys, like, and one of my clients, we do this, we're very quarterly focused and it's like, okay. And it's not the same every year and it's not the same quarter to quarter week, you know, like, so we will at the beginning of that quarter or the end of the previous one, we will say,
00:38:40
Speaker
Okay, what are we focusing on next month and what makes sense? And then, okay, well, what are we tracking with that? What do we want the goal to be? And just sit and make it a point to have these conversations, schedule them on your calendar. That's another tangible tip. We were talking about this an episode or two ago. Get these recurring meetings on the calendar. Just continue to be open in your conversations with your clients.
00:39:01
Speaker
They've hired you for a reason. You are here to be like the marketing expert for them. And a lot of, I will say a lot of my clients do understand marketing and they do understand like the fundamental needs that they, that they want to have happen. And they've hired me to come in and be the expert to tell them like yay or nay to things essentially as well. So, and then, you know, they're, they're relying on us to
00:39:25
Speaker
not lead them astray and to make sure that we know what's happening. I think before we started recording, we were talking about Apple just changed their security settings again.
Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement
00:39:35
Speaker
They did. I mean, all my clients were shocked because their open rates doubled and they're like, what did we do? It's working. I'm like, eh, let's dive into this. Yeah. iOS 17 came out about a month ago, I think. Yeah.
00:39:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's crazy. And that's another thing is a lot of the time, all these algorithms are changing all the ways that data is being read is changing and you need to stay up on it. And it's totally okay if you aren't regularly reading the data blogs and stuff, you know, like I'm not, but when I noticed something is changing and I don't have a reason why I look into it. Yeah. Go to Reddit and get lost in the pro marketing terms. There you go. There you go.
00:40:13
Speaker
They're so helpful. Well, this has been fun. I have about two brain cells left that I need to put into getting some stuff done today. I'm glad we talked about this. I'm feeling motivated. Monday, I tend to go in and look at all my accounts and review the metrics.
00:40:35
Speaker
It's perfect. That's what I'm going to do here. A fun little kickstart to our Monday. It is. It is. Well, thanks for tuning in and make sure you're giving us a follow at the business play date on Instagram. Um, and as we were just talking, you know, follower count doesn't always matter, but we'd love your.
00:40:54
Speaker
We'd love your follow. We'd also love a written review on our podcast. I was about to say, you know what does matter is a written review. That's a KPI for us, not just a vanity metric. You know what I saw someone do at the end of a podcast that I think would be really fun? I'm going to do it right now, so bear with me. They read a review.
00:41:16
Speaker
that someone left on, and I was like, what a fun idea. So here I'm going to go. I'm just going to pull up one of our reviews that we have here on Apple podcasts. Um, okay. Right here. Uh, it's a five star review from B Kirkwood. It says relatable and full of tangible tips. Love, love, love this podcast. Betsy and Lindsay have great chemistry and are so relatable. Uh, it feels like a conversation with friends that just so happened to be full of tangible tips. Can't wait to listen in every week.
00:41:44
Speaker
I love that so much. I do too. Thank you for that. So yeah, go leave us a review. If you love this, take a screenshot, share it on Instagram, give us five stars, leave a review. We would be forever grateful. Forever grateful. All right. Thanks guys. We'll talk soon. Bye.