© 2024 Melanie White
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Are you fearful of marketing, not sure if you’re doing it right, or wondering how much effort is required? This episode helps to take some of the emotion out of it and shows you how to win at marketing via some key numbers – what they are and how to use them. By the end of this episode, you’ll be a lot clearer on how to market your business so you can succeed and grow.
Marketing is often referred to as a numbers game, simply because it is about reaching as many people in your niche as possible and engaging them to buy your product or service. If you want to assess the success of your marketing and improve it, you’ll need to gather data and metrics to guide your strategies and measure your success.
Numbers help you to do business with your eyes wide open, and to plug leaks, and make decisions that will grow your business faster.
By now you are probably wondering; what are these data and metrics? What are the numbers?
Let’s answer these questions and in doing so, help you get a sense of how to rocket fuel your own marketing efforts and create more clients.
One of the basic principles of marketing as a numbers game is “conversion rates”.
Your conversion rate is simply the percentage of people who take a desired action, such as liking your post, signing up for your lead magnet, or booking an enquiry call, out of the total number of people who were exposed to your marketing message.
In this episode, we are talking specifically about the conversion of leads to sales.
For example, let’s say you write a blog that is a case study of how you helped someone, and at the end of the blog, there is a link to book a discovery call.
If you shared a link to that blog on your social media profiles, which have 1000 followers in total, then 50 of those followers visit your website and read the blog, 10 of them book a discovery call, and 5 of them buy a coaching program, then your conversion rate (from initial share through to the sale of a service or product) is 5/1000 or 0. 5%.
Conversion rates are important because they give you a clear indication of how effective your marketing efforts are. The numbers tell you where to focus your effort; on things like adjusting your messaging, being more targeted with your marketing, using tactics to acquire more followers, developing more helpful copy, and improving your sales conversations.
If numbers drop off at any of these points in your sales ‘funnel’, then you can easily see the key areas for improvement.
Depending on how you are marketing, you might also look at other metrics.
For example, if you’re using Facebook ads, you’d be interested in tracking things like organic reach, click-through rates, and cost per lead.
Or, if your marketing focuses on live webinars or in-person workshops, you’d be measuring the number of enrolments, number of attendees, and number of enrolments on the day.
A key takeaway here is that you’re not measuring anything, then it’s like trying to shoot a target in a dark tunnel!
I encourage you to consider what you’re doing in terms of marketing, what the steps are in your sales cycle, how you will measure conversion and then….. get started!
Another key number to know in marketing is the return on investment (ROI), which is basically the financial impact of your marketing effort.
A high ROI means that your marketing is generating a lot of revenue for your business. If ROI is low, you might need to look at your marketing strategy and tactics to see what can improve.
A simple formula to calculate ROI is:
(sales growth – marketing cost) / marketing cost.
For example, you might be investing $200 in local promotion (e.g. flyers, posters) and spending a lot of time networking to get people to your live workshop, and you reached about 300 people in your direct and indirect network. Then, you have 20 people book in and 18 of them show up on the day. Let’s say that of those 18 attendees, 15 of them buy a discovery call for $100.
Firstly, let’s look at your conversion rate. You had 15 attendees who bought a discovery call out of roughly 300 leads who saw the marketing for the event. The conversion rate is 15/300 or 5%.
Now let’s look at the return on investment of your marketing efforts.
In other words, for every dollar you spent on promotion, you got 650% back in revenue.
Great! That was a winning campaign, and worth repeating. What’s most impressive is that in the workshop itself, most of the people who attended bought a discovery session. That means you must have done well in building rapport and trust in the session, and offered something valuable!
If you are using other marketing tactics as well as workshops, you could also compare the ROI of different tactics, like Facebook ads, and see which had the higher ROI.
This would shape the future direction of your marketing.
It’s one thing to measure numbers after the fact, but when you’re starting or growing a business, you’ll also need to set some targets.
This is much like helping your clients to set a vision for their future selves.
What is the outcome you want? Once you define that, you can use metrics to monitor progress and change course if needed.
How do you set targets?
I’ve talked broadly about some of these before in earlier episodes, so this is a nutshell of the key steps.
(1.) First, set your sales target: Set a clear goal or target for how much revenue you want to bring in from marketing.
Let’s say that after the success of your last workshop, you wanted to bring in a bit more revenue – let’s say $2000 in sales from the workshop. That’s your new sales target.
(2.) Next, work out your conversion rate: Based on historical data, work out what percentage of leads typically convert into paying customers. If you don’t have historical data, ask someone who has done this before to help you work it out. This will help you estimate how many leads you’ll need to generate to reach your sales target.
In the last workshop, your conversion rate was 15/300 leads, which is 5%.
(3.) Next, calculate the number of leads you need to reach to achieve your sales target.
In our example with live workshops, if you want revenue of $2000, this means you will need 20 people to buy your $100 discovery call at the next workshop you run.
Last time, your conversion rate was 5%.
In other words, in this new workshop, 5% conversion equals 20 people who buy.
That means you’ll need to reach 400 leads this next time to get 5% buying from you.
(4.) Next, monitor and adjust:
(a.) As you start generating leads, monitor how many sign up for your workshop and adjust your targets as needed. If you get many more signups, you may be able to generate fewer leads in future to achieve your sales target.
(b.) If on the day of the workshop, your conversion rate ends up being lower than expected, you may need to generate more leads to hit your goal.
Finally, you’ll need to consider the quality of your leads. Some may be more likely to buy than others, depending on factors such as their level of interest, budget, and timing.
In the workshop example, you might find that most of the workshop participants who buy were referred by one or two people in particular, whereas other referrers may send people who don’t.
One thing is for sure. When you start looking at marketing as a numbers game, it takes some of the emotion out of it and can reduce your misgivings or fear.
You’re using the logical part of your brain to make decisions, and you are using data to inform your actions.
Having marketing metrics and data is incredibly powerful and something that is worth looking at from the get-go.
As we’ve discussed today, marketing is a numbers game because it relies on data and metrics to guide your decision-making.
There are two key takeaways from today.
Firstly, by focusing on key metrics like conversion rates and ROI, you can learn about what works and what doesn’t in your business more easily, and therefore optimize your marketing tactics.
Secondly, by setting clear targets for leads, you can ensure that you’re generating enough interest and engagement to achieve your sales goals.
By monitoring your results and adjusting your approach as needed, you can continually improve your marketing efforts and maximize your return on investment.
Understanding who you are and what you need will allow your business to thrive! If you’re truly ready to break old habits and get out of the rut I encourage you to check out the Habitology membership.
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© 2024 Melanie White