Identifying four levels of digital marketing success
When you aren’t getting the results you anticipated, where do you turn for answers?
So you are not getting the number of visitors to your website, the leads aren’t coming in, and the sales aren’t closing nearly to the degree that you would like. And you’re just not getting that return on investment. Where do you point your finger? Where do you go to start getting some answers and trying to figure out what, where to go to kind of fix this thing?
We’ve said it time and time again, but our number one answer to this question is to get tracking in place. Ask yourself if the right metrics are set up. Are the goals and conversion pieces set up to track everything? Remember that this is a big data collection game. How do you know what’s working and what is not if you have no way of collecting that data?
Maybe you don’t need more visitors, you need more conversations and actions from the visitors you already have. You’ve got them visiting your website, now what needs to happen to get them to spend money?
One of the metrics we track is call tracking. If calls are a big metric for a business, then how are we going to track accurately without call tracking in place? How do you know if once visiting your website, they then turned into a paying customer?
Here’s a quick story about a call tracking customer we had:
We had been working with a plumber in North Carolina for a few months. He had been spending way too much on his SEO and paid ads. Plus, he didn’t have any tracking set up. We got all of that in place and were producing some great results.
One day he calls us up and says that he is going to cancel. We were doing so well with him that I couldn’t understand why he would be upset and cancel the service.
Through call tracking and through our Google analytics we were able to discover what an issue was.
We knew we were producing the phone calls, we got them ranking better than they ever had. All the awesome details were happening for this guy. They were actually a case study for us because of how well we were doing.
You know how you hear the message “this call may be monitored for quality assurance” or something of that sort? We had that set up and went back to listen to some of the calls that had been coming into the business. We found out that some of his receptionists were not allowing the sales process to happen.
The owner was good friends with these receptionists and never in a million years thought they would be sabotaging any of the sales calls.
With tracking, we found out that during three quarters of the phone calls that came in the receptionists were saying things like “you got the wrong number”. It sounded like they were busy doing something else and not helpful with the customers.
There was a third receptionist that was answering calls and she was helping sales go through which is how the business was even surviving.
Once we presented the data, the facts, we were able to show him the results we were producing and he was able to find a solution to that roadblock on his end. We didn’t approach it as “I feel” or “I think” because in his mind he didn’t think we were doing a good job. We collected solid facts to show where the downfall was happening.
Once he got new receptionists in, all of a sudden sales just started cruising. He went from three service vans that would make calls to houses to eight in about two months because he was so overbooked. He could even raise his rates a little bit.
We were able to decrease his Google ad spending from over $20,000 a month down to $8,000 a month all while he was seeing eight or nine times the conversions he saw prior.
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Tracking Matters!
It’s not always about increasing revenue. Sometimes it’s about improving your profitability, lowering your expenses, lowering your cost to acquire those phone calls or those conversions. Ask yourself if there’s an efficient way to use the money.
We are told all the time “I need to improve my traffic”. Why? Is it to grow revenue? What if in order to grow your revenue you didn’t need to grow your traffic at all? You could just increase the number of people that follow the call to action, to become a conversion from the traffic you already have.
Then what if we could take it a little bit further and as a third step and get those people who are already customers, already spending money with your company, to spend just a little bit more?
What should our attitudes or perspectives be when it comes to reaching certain marketing goals?
One of our best tips is to focus less on the finish line and more about the journey to get there. You can’t set a goal and expect to get there without having little benchmarks and tasks along the way. And even when you do get to that finish line, now what?
Years ago we were working with an AutoCAD company out of California. They sell licenses for software that are not cheap. Like $25,000 plus per license. They sell to architects and engineering firms with say 15 people at their company that all need licenses.
It’s not a small sale.
This guy we were working with had been approved for a certain region that he could sell in. He didn’t think people knew who he was and so through just SEO we got him to rank really well for any of those common keywords that would draw leads in for the licenses. After we got him fruitful in around eight cities he came to us and told us how happy he was with the results and I guess that all good things come to an end. He was ending his work with us.
He was happy with the fact that we had set a goal and had reached it. He was pleased with the results and he was making really good money. Guess it was time to stop.
NOT!
Once you reach your goal, it’s time to set new ones.
We talked about raising the budget and continuing to bring in other areas or locations outside of our original eight cities. He agreed and we went through this process about two or three times and got to the point where he was ranking number one for around 24 cities. Major cities in California.
He was outselling the corporate entity. Just his area in California was outselling the rest of the country. The corporation ended up buying him out, for a very healthy sum. Ironically he did start another business and brought that business to us and we did the same marketing there. We were very successful again.
The lesson here is to set marketing goals. Set specific benchmarks that you can track and measure. Then keep track of your growth and progress. But then when you hit those, be ready to create additional ones and stay focused on continual improvement to your marketing. Always look for new ways to grow through the four levels.
- Increase revenue per transaction
- Repeat rate
Set your goals, hit your goals, and then ask yourself what’s next
Be thinking about that all the time. What’s the next step? Because a lot of times the actions we take now will affect what happens in the future.
It’s not always about spending more money. You don’t have to increase your ad spend budget, or your SEO budget. Sometimes just enhancing some of the things you already have, making efficiencies or improvements on what you’ve already done. Find that missing gem that you already have.
Don’t become a marketing victim. Be a marketing victor by scheduling a complementary website analysis and marketing evaluation so we can share with you the best ways to make your marketing work better for you.
Be sure to schedule your complimentary marketing campaign evaluation today by clicking here. We look forward to working with you!
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