Why You Should Know Your Website Numbers
Numbers scare 90% of people. That is a 100% made up fact. What then happens is the 10% of people who “get it” then scare everyone else with their numbers. So here are some default questions to stick to.
First, should you pay someone to measure your marketing?
I am going to be 100% biased in saying “yes”. Because this is what we do. 🙂 A good measurement person or agency can analyze the data for you and build a dynamic dashboard to give you just the answers you need. Settle for nothing less than that.
We have built dozens of dashboards for companies, ranging from $400k/year to 50 mil/year, and the questions are more or less the same.
The answers to the questions just get deeper and the dreaded attribution kicks in. More on that a different time.
Your “GO-TO” measurement questions
Here are your GO-TO questions for any meeting where numbers are the bottom line. If you are the Marketing Director or VP of Marketing, you might want to dig a bit deeper…
- How much money are we spending every 30 days?
- What is the direct ROI and ROAS for those dollars?
- What is the 7-day attribution for those dollars inside of their platform?
- Where are we losing people in our funnels? Acquisitions & upsell?
- What tests are we currently running and how are they doing compared to baseline?
- What is the number 1 way we are acquiring customers?
- Where are we losing people in our blog content?
- What is our Customer Lifetime Value -> Read Our Philosophy On LTV
- How are we generating awareness > engagement > conversions? is it working efficiently?
These are the main questions I would suggest you ask yourself on a recurring basis and have dashboards built around. You can make them more specific as time goes on. But if you do not know what to ask, then start with these to see what your marketing and analytics team says.
Now that we have a baseline of questions, it’s fairly easy to find someone to answer them.
Going deeper with your measurement team
Now, let’s go one level deeper or Get Really Deep!
Take all of the above questions and add this prefix to it: “In which channel”.
Example 1: “How much money are we spending every 30 days on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc?”
Example 2: “Which channel is generating awareness, engagement & conversions?”
You want to know how you are doing on each of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Email, etc…
Watch out for attribution, here is a video from the marketing giant Hubspot from 2017 that is the most straightforward answer to Attribution that I have come across. If you find a better video explanation, Send me a message
Every channel will have a pro and a con.
For Example, Facebook might be really good at getting people to read your blog, but YouTube retargeting gets them to convert.
Or
You are running different levels of traffic to Facebook but certain campaigns are doing poorly while others are doing amazing.
It all comes down to your questions and how good you are at implementing your tracking procedures.
If you do not know the answers to your questions, feel free to drop us a line and we can see about crafting you a custom plan.
Remember, you decide what matters
As a Marketing Director/VP/Strategist, you get to decide what numbers matter and a measurement team will be able to guide you through that process.
Questions such as “how are we going to measure this?” and “what are we going to do with these numbers?” will be easily answered, but the strategy of moving your business is ultimately on the shoulders of the marketing professionals.
