Gift biz unwrapped episode 340 Measurement marketing is all about listening
Speaker:to their side of the conversation,
Speaker:listening to our users.
Speaker:And then based on that feedback,
Speaker:we adjust our marketing accordingly Tinton gifters bakers,
Speaker:crafters, and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.
Speaker:Whether you have an established business or looking to start one.
Speaker:Now you are in the right place.
Speaker:This is gift to biz unwrapped,
Speaker:helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.
Speaker:Join us for an episode,
Speaker:packed full of invaluable guidance,
Speaker:resources, and the support you need to grow.
Speaker:Your gift biz.
Speaker:Here is your host gift biz gal Sue moon Heights.
Speaker:Hi there.
Speaker:It's Sue.
Speaker:And have I got an important episode topic lined up for
Speaker:you today?
Speaker:Before we get into this,
Speaker:I'd like to ask you a favor.
Speaker:Think of this as an exchange for all the free content
Speaker:you have at your fingertips here twice a week with the
Speaker:podcast. If you haven't done so already in whatever app you
Speaker:use to listen to the show,
Speaker:will you please leave a comment in the form of a
Speaker:review? Just tell me what you've learned from one of these
Speaker:past episodes,
Speaker:short and sweet doing this,
Speaker:help spread the word about this podcast.
Speaker:And I would be ever so grateful.
Speaker:All right,
Speaker:diving into our special topic of the day,
Speaker:Google analytics.
Speaker:I was introduced to our guest Mercer when I took an
Speaker:online course of his,
Speaker:that was offered by social media marketing world.
Speaker:Gosh, I'll say about four years ago or so now it
Speaker:was eyeopening in terms of all that Google analytics can provide,
Speaker:although complex,
Speaker:and to be honest,
Speaker:overwhelming at the same time,
Speaker:but his style of teaching and explanations were totally on point
Speaker:and worth investing the time and brainpower for sure.
Speaker:So when I was approached to have him on the show,
Speaker:I was excited to share his knowledge with you.
Speaker:But I asked him to talk with us about Google analytics
Speaker:in doable,
Speaker:easy chunks.
Speaker:And that's exactly what you're going to hear today.
Speaker:Think of Google analytics as your key,
Speaker:whole peak into a customer's mind by employing the actions Mercer
Speaker:presents to us today,
Speaker:you'll have insight into your company and how people are interacting.
Speaker:That may surprise you.
Speaker:Things you didn't know before about purchasing behavior.
Speaker:That website viewers go first to look at your pumpkin spice
Speaker:candles, but then mostly end up buying vanilla or that the
Speaker:promotion that you have on your banner,
Speaker:isn't doing anything at all too often.
Speaker:We interpret what's happening by intuition versus fact and many,
Speaker:many, many times we're way off.
Speaker:Then what do we do?
Speaker:We make changes that either have zero impact or worse,
Speaker:further us from interested customers wanting to make a purchase.
Speaker:As the saying goes,
Speaker:knowledge is power.
Speaker:And in the case of Google analytics,
Speaker:knowledge will bring you sales.
Speaker:Okay? Mercer,
Speaker:we are set and ready to learn Today.
Speaker:I am a really looking forward to our conversation with Chris
Speaker:Mercer, best known as Mercer who's co-founder of measurement marketing,
Speaker:a sought after measurement marketing expert.
Speaker:He's been helping marketers,
Speaker:marketing teams and agencies plan out what's important to measure in
Speaker:their marketing build measurement systems,
Speaker:specifically using Google tag manager and Google analytics.
Speaker:If you don't understand what that is,
Speaker:stay tuned.
Speaker:He also helps create actionable dashboard reports and finally use those
Speaker:reports to forecast and optimize their marketing Results.
Speaker:Mercer has a knack for teaching and is known for his
Speaker:ability to simplify even the most complex ideas for his audience.
Speaker:He also speaks at some of the top conferences in the
Speaker:industry, such as traffic and conversion,
Speaker:social media,
Speaker:marketing world,
Speaker:and content jam Mercer.
Speaker:Welcome to the gift biz on repped podcast.
Speaker:Thank you,
Speaker:Sue. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker:Thanks for having me.
Speaker:Oh my Gosh.
Speaker:I love all the energy in your voice too,
Speaker:because we need that.
Speaker:When you also combine that with the word analytics,
Speaker:It's a fact you don't think data and like fun stuff,
Speaker:But it can be,
Speaker:and it can lead to really awesome things.
Speaker:So we're going to get into all of that,
Speaker:but I do have a traditional question here on the show.
Speaker:All Right,
Speaker:I'm ready.
Speaker:Everyone. Who's listening is a creator.
Speaker:So we're going to make you go into that creative land
Speaker:too. And describe yourself now as a motivational candle.
Speaker:So by color and quote,
Speaker:what would be a Mercer candle?
Speaker:So a Mercer candle would be,
Speaker:I wear a lot of gray.
Speaker:So at first I was going to go with gray,
Speaker:but I thought,
Speaker:you know what?
Speaker:That's maybe not versatile enough.
Speaker:So maybe kind of one of those beigey looking candles,
Speaker:because it fits in a lot of different decor.
Speaker:So I thought,
Speaker:okay, it's versatile.
Speaker:So I like a parcel color.
Speaker:Beige would be the color.
Speaker:Then the quote would be trust,
Speaker:but verify,
Speaker:because I think that encompasses so much of my mindset and
Speaker:kind of what we teach at measure marketing to IO.
Speaker:And just how to think about the world,
Speaker:which is trust that things are set up correctly,
Speaker:that your beliefs are correct,
Speaker:that whatever it is is done is correct,
Speaker:but you verify that it's not,
Speaker:it was look for where it could be improved or where
Speaker:it might not be.
Speaker:Right. And you can definitely when it comes to data or
Speaker:just life in general,
Speaker:that trust,
Speaker:but verify mindset and motto has helped a ton When it
Speaker:just reconfirms that if you should still do what you're currently
Speaker:doing or else you could go on for years doing something
Speaker:and not realize that you could be doing so much better.
Speaker:Right. How would you know,
Speaker:if you're going down the wrong path,
Speaker:unless you occasionally ask yourself,
Speaker:is this the right path?
Speaker:Exactly right.
Speaker:Yep. Trust,
Speaker:but verify,
Speaker:Oh boy,
Speaker:I think I fell into that trap.
Speaker:So anyone else who's listening who has done the same?
Speaker:Maybe this'll be a point where we can change that a
Speaker:little bit.
Speaker:So true.
Speaker:Honestly, it's I started the same way.
Speaker:Right? It's one of these things you learn as you go,
Speaker:as you go through.
Speaker:Yeah. And we can always get better.
Speaker:Right. So no,
Speaker:no shame here,
Speaker:for sure.
Speaker:So you always been an analytical numbers,
Speaker:kind of a guy.
Speaker:That's a great question.
Speaker:I wouldn't describe myself as numbers and analytical because I'm not
Speaker:the guy who lives in like data analyst,
Speaker:world or data scientist mode.
Speaker:Like I'm not thinking about terms like quant or linear aggression
Speaker:or statistics.
Speaker:Like, I don't think about any of that stuff at all,
Speaker:but I am a systems person and that for sure has
Speaker:been a thing.
Speaker:Cause I,
Speaker:my background is actually in sales and very quickly moved from
Speaker:field sales into sales management.
Speaker:So for a long period of time,
Speaker:I was managing sales teams and training sales teams.
Speaker:And that's always looking at the process that that team is
Speaker:following the conversation.
Speaker:They're having with prospects at various points in time and looking
Speaker:at that system and how do we improve that system?
Speaker:No, where to improve.
Speaker:You got to measure it.
Speaker:You got to see what the results are.
Speaker:And so that's where the numbers part comes in is I
Speaker:got very good at measuring systems to figure out what's working
Speaker:and what's not so that we could ultimately improve it.
Speaker:That's what I definitely am stepping more of a system.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:And my corporate background was sales,
Speaker:moving into management as well.
Speaker:Perfect. And the one thing that I loved about that is
Speaker:you're based a hundred percent on your performance and like back
Speaker:to your beige or gray idea,
Speaker:you're either performing in hitting your numbers or you're not Right.
Speaker:That's exactly right.
Speaker:Honestly, there is such an amazing sense of peace for me
Speaker:in that either it's green or it's red,
Speaker:right? Lady is green or red.
Speaker:There's no shades of yellow.
Speaker:It says like it just works or it doesn't.
Speaker:And there's beauty in that.
Speaker:It's so nice when you can do things like measure your
Speaker:marketing and know if it's working the way it's supposed to.
Speaker:And if it's not,
Speaker:you know exactly what part isn't,
Speaker:that's kind of the whole beauty of this process.
Speaker:Well, and that's the whole point too,
Speaker:because green or red,
Speaker:like if you're sitting in red and you see other people
Speaker:in green to continue with this color analogy,
Speaker:but you don't know how to get there,
Speaker:then it's not peaceful and calm.
Speaker:And it's super stressful because it's like,
Speaker:why is everybody else in green?
Speaker:And I'm sitting here in red and have no clue how
Speaker:to make it over there.
Speaker:Exactly. Right.
Speaker:And this one is like,
Speaker:to your point,
Speaker:knowing that you're red,
Speaker:right. And the other one is knowing how to get out.
Speaker:And that is where most people break down.
Speaker:They have no idea how to get out of that red.
Speaker:Exactly. Right.
Speaker:And that I think is what your analytics will help you
Speaker:figure. That's exactly right.
Speaker:The whole concept of measurement marketing and how to think about
Speaker:it. Because I realized like there are a lot of people
Speaker:who are not self-described numbers.
Speaker:People. I totally get that.
Speaker:I am of the firm belief.
Speaker:Like it's kind of what we built our company around is
Speaker:helping what we call normal.
Speaker:People learn this stuff,
Speaker:right? Not numbers,
Speaker:people, numbers,
Speaker:people are going to learn all their own.
Speaker:They didn't they're numbers people,
Speaker:but normal people,
Speaker:aren't going to learn something like Google analytics or any of
Speaker:that sort of thing.
Speaker:So what we do is we sort of started a base
Speaker:of changing the way you think about this.
Speaker:So it's not,
Speaker:when people think about Google analytics,
Speaker:they think about data tables and numbers and overwhelm and frustration
Speaker:and not knowing what anything means.
Speaker:And some things seem,
Speaker:they seem,
Speaker:one thing says one thing and something else,
Speaker:that's something else.
Speaker:And you have no idea what to do and you just
Speaker:get frustrated so better,
Speaker:just not to look at it.
Speaker:Right. And that's what a of people do.
Speaker:I remember I did it in the very beginning,
Speaker:but then I realized that the idea is,
Speaker:has nothing really to do about the numbers or even the
Speaker:tool, even Google analytics doesn't really matter.
Speaker:It's the idea that we are measuring for a conversation.
Speaker:And what I mean by that is,
Speaker:let's say I had a shoe store.
Speaker:You came into my shoe store in the offline world.
Speaker:Many of our listeners here have brick and mortar stores.
Speaker:So when somebody comes into the store,
Speaker:you say,
Speaker:hi, you welcome them.
Speaker:What can I help you find?
Speaker:You get them and maybe pick it up off the shelf,
Speaker:try it on,
Speaker:maybe buy another one with a,
Speaker:buy one,
Speaker:get one sale on the way out to upsell them and
Speaker:get them on your email list.
Speaker:And they're out the door and that's sort of the process
Speaker:and the flow.
Speaker:And in that process,
Speaker:they would be a natural conversation.
Speaker:I would be asking you questions.
Speaker:You would be responding back to me.
Speaker:I would be adjusting my compensation based upon the feedback that
Speaker:you're giving me right in that conversation.
Speaker:And all that's very natural.
Speaker:The same thing happens digitally.
Speaker:But most people just haven't realized that they set this thing
Speaker:up to not listen to the feedback.
Speaker:They're not listening to our customers.
Speaker:So what I mean by that is somebody comes to your
Speaker:Shopify store and you don't really know that they're there.
Speaker:They come and they browse a certain product,
Speaker:but you don't know what products they really are looking at.
Speaker:They added a cart,
Speaker:they checked out and then they bought.
Speaker:And at that point you go,
Speaker:oh, they made a sale.
Speaker:Great. But you don't necessarily know how they made that sale.
Speaker:You don't know the steps they went through.
Speaker:You didn't listen to them along the way.
Speaker:You didn't see that.
Speaker:Maybe what the products they are buying happens to be the
Speaker:one that have better images.
Speaker:And these other products that are not buying,
Speaker:maybe just don't have the best quality images.
Speaker:Well, those are the sort of things that you can actually
Speaker:set up measurement for.
Speaker:So we sort of listened to the conversation.
Speaker:That's the whole idea is as a user is using your
Speaker:site, they're having a conversation in their head.
Speaker:And if you think about it,
Speaker:when you're go to a website,
Speaker:you can hear the conversation in your head,
Speaker:right. When you're going through,
Speaker:I'm not sure if I should do this or not,
Speaker:or let me go see what the sizes are.
Speaker:And you're having a conversation between that website.
Speaker:And obviously yourself,
Speaker:measurement marketing is all about listening to their side of the
Speaker:conversation, listening to our users.
Speaker:And then based on that feedback,
Speaker:we adjust our marketing accordingly to kind of keep that conversation
Speaker:going. Yeah.
Speaker:I mean,
Speaker:two things come to mind when you talk about this first,
Speaker:it is a disconnect,
Speaker:I think for the majority of our listeners,
Speaker:because as creatives,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:that whole right brain left brain type thing,
Speaker:being more analytical is the opposite of being a creator.
Speaker:Not to say that we aren't,
Speaker:we all have a little bit,
Speaker:but naturally the majority of us tend to the other side.
Speaker:So it is less comfortable for us.
Speaker:But the other thing I'm thinking based on your description makes
Speaker:so much sense to me is you think about the old
Speaker:focus groups and a lot of us have done focus groups.
Speaker:You know,
Speaker:we've been a participant in the focus groups before where someone's
Speaker:behind windows or something,
Speaker:and they're listening and observing what we're talking about,
Speaker:how we're responding to whatever the topic is at hand.
Speaker:Would you agree that that's very similar to what you're talking
Speaker:about in terms of looking from behind the scenes as to
Speaker:how activity is happening on your website.
Speaker:Exactly. Right.
Speaker:And to put it into a slightly different explanation would be,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:if you owned,
Speaker:let's say your store,
Speaker:right. The shoe store or whatever.
Speaker:And you sort of sit above,
Speaker:you'll see your office was above a kind of looking down
Speaker:at the floor.
Speaker:Right. And you could see how everybody was moving through the
Speaker:store. And when you see that you then know not just
Speaker:based on what they say they're going to do,
Speaker:but what they actually do,
Speaker:the actions,
Speaker:they actually take the behaviors they actually make.
Speaker:And you can see like,
Speaker:wow, my expensive shoes way on the back right-hand corner.
Speaker:But everybody comes in and goes to the left.
Speaker:No, one's seeing the expensive shoes.
Speaker:So maybe you can put up an end cap or maybe
Speaker:you put up a signage that says,
Speaker:Hey, check out the new shoes that we just got in
Speaker:these exclusive offers.
Speaker:We only have 12 pair available.
Speaker:And all of a sudden,
Speaker:you start to see when I do that,
Speaker:oh, traffic.
Speaker:Instead of going in into the left,
Speaker:it goes straight back to the right and the go,
Speaker:perfect. Now I have the behaviors that I'm looking for.
Speaker:And all you did was look at the information and it
Speaker:sort of showed that what was happening.
Speaker:It wasn't what you wanted to happen.
Speaker:So you would change a few things to elicit those behaviors,
Speaker:to encourage those behaviors to happen.
Speaker:And it's the same thing you can do online.
Speaker:I'll give you kind of an example of digital marketing,
Speaker:how this works in digital marketing.
Speaker:Our flagship product is called the measure marketing academy.
Speaker:It's kind of the system we use for do it yourself,
Speaker:training on this.
Speaker:And so the academy offer page,
Speaker:we know to expect a certain percentage will go from the
Speaker:page to the cart.
Speaker:And then a certain percentage of those will go from the
Speaker:car to actually purchase.
Speaker:We sort of have an expectation of what this is.
Speaker:And when we looked at our numbers,
Speaker:we realized one day that for some reason,
Speaker:out of nowhere,
Speaker:the behaviors were very different.
Speaker:So I'm just gonna use round numbers here.
Speaker:But let's say we expected a,
Speaker:roughly 10% of the people to go from the offer page
Speaker:to the cart,
Speaker:right? So one out of every 10 would go to the
Speaker:cart page.
Speaker:What was happening was we would get like maybe half the
Speaker:people go into the cart page.
Speaker:And at first glance you go,
Speaker:wow, that's great.
Speaker:Because half the people are going to the cart,
Speaker:but they weren't all buying.
Speaker:That's what we noticed.
Speaker:It was like this really high,
Speaker:what they call abandonment rate.
Speaker:So people weren't buying,
Speaker:they weren't making it through,
Speaker:but they were definitely going to the cart.
Speaker:So what that told us was,
Speaker:and remember,
Speaker:I'm very rarely using numbers.
Speaker:When I describe this,
Speaker:we're trying to talk in terms of behaviors.
Speaker:And in my head,
Speaker:I'm visualizing a group of people looking at the page.
Speaker:And then some of those people,
Speaker:a smaller group going to the cart.
Speaker:That's what I'm doing in my head right now.
Speaker:So what we noticed was there was too many people go
Speaker:into the card.
Speaker:There can be too good of a thing.
Speaker:Conversion rate can be too high.
Speaker:And so we looked at this and said,
Speaker:why are so many people going to the cart without the
Speaker:intention of buying?
Speaker:Because remember they weren't buying,
Speaker:they weren't making it through the cart.
Speaker:And so what we realized was the page had gone through
Speaker:a recent update.
Speaker:And this was years ago,
Speaker:the page had gone through a recent update and the person
Speaker:who built the page or were updated the page accidentally took
Speaker:off the price.
Speaker:They deleted it.
Speaker:So what happened,
Speaker:where people were going to the cart to find out how
Speaker:much it was,
Speaker:and then they were going back to the page,
Speaker:as we all do,
Speaker:right? You always scroll down to the bottom and see the
Speaker:page and you come back up to the top,
Speaker:see if it's worth it.
Speaker:So that's what was happening.
Speaker:They would go into the cart and they will go back
Speaker:to the sales page.
Speaker:The only reason we knew that was happening is because we
Speaker:were watching those numbers and we had our little report and
Speaker:we went,
Speaker:Ooh, that's weird.
Speaker:There's a bigger crowd of people in a place that should
Speaker:not have a big crowd of people.
Speaker:Let's go see what's going on.
Speaker:Let's go see the conversation that website's having.
Speaker:And we realized,
Speaker:oh, that website,
Speaker:in this case,
Speaker:the academy offer page is hiding some information and it needs
Speaker:to not hide the price.
Speaker:Right? It wasn't,
Speaker:it wasn't on purpose.
Speaker:It was an accident.
Speaker:But as soon as we put back the price,
Speaker:everything came back normal and it worked just fine.
Speaker:Oh, wow.
Speaker:But we could easily tell what was going on by what
Speaker:those numbers,
Speaker:the dashboards in this case we were looking at were telling
Speaker:us. Yeah.
Speaker:And to your example,
Speaker:an abandoned cart sequence,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:to recapture abandoned cart,
Speaker:wouldn't have helped you at all.
Speaker:Not at all because they weren't coming to buy Because the
Speaker:problem was still there.
Speaker:There was no price.
Speaker:That's exactly right.
Speaker:Imagine the frustration,
Speaker:if you,
Speaker:as a user came in and all of a sudden you're
Speaker:getting an abandonment cart sequence.
Speaker:When in reality,
Speaker:you had no intention of buying anyway.
Speaker:So now I'm giving a completely wrong conversation to you.
Speaker:It was like when you come into the shoe store and
Speaker:I say,
Speaker:Hey, welcome to the shoe store.
Speaker:What can I help you with?
Speaker:You're like,
Speaker:oh, sorry.
Speaker:I'm here to get my nails done.
Speaker:I was looking for the nail salon.
Speaker:I'm like,
Speaker:oh yeah,
Speaker:they moved.
Speaker:It's actually across the street now.
Speaker:Great. That's not a problem that would perfectly be fine in
Speaker:the normal world.
Speaker:In the digital world.
Speaker:What would happen is I would then follow you to the
Speaker:nail store and then ask you to buy shoes again for
Speaker:about three days,
Speaker:just to make sure that you are still not in the
Speaker:market for shoes.
Speaker:And that's only because you came to the shoe store and,
Speaker:but that's not at all.
Speaker:You didn't have the intention to doing shoes and you can
Speaker:measure for stuff like that.
Speaker:So that's the idea is like,
Speaker:we want to make sure that the conversation we're having is
Speaker:relevant with our users and the only way to make sure
Speaker:that you're saying something that makes sense to them and that
Speaker:meets their expectation is if you get really good at listening
Speaker:and the best part about this is the customers.
Speaker:I think a lot of people I know for a fact,
Speaker:I did,
Speaker:I used to think this is like a weird puzzle that
Speaker:I have to figure out the market.
Speaker:Cause they're hiding from me and they're being coy and they're
Speaker:pretending, and they don't want to tell me the answer is.
Speaker:And in reality,
Speaker:that was me just not being good at asking the right
Speaker:questions. But the market will absolutely tell you if they like
Speaker:something or if they don't and you just have to get
Speaker:good at asking the questions,
Speaker:but they will absolutely tell you if something's good or not.
Speaker:Like when we hit the price that we knew instantly,
Speaker:oh, the numbers totally changed.
Speaker:The dashboard totally shows something different.
Speaker:They are clearly acting in a way that is not what
Speaker:should be happening.
Speaker:Let's go make that adjustment.
Speaker:Let's go find out where that error is and fix it,
Speaker:you know?
Speaker:And then it instantly went back instantly.
Speaker:It was like within 24 hours,
Speaker:we had the numbers all back,
Speaker:which is pretty cool.
Speaker:Well, that's cool.
Speaker:Yeah. I mean,
Speaker:showing results can change that quickly is very cool.
Speaker:And I also feel right now that everyone is so weary
Speaker:online of getting scammed.
Speaker:Yeah. You know,
Speaker:I heard about someone a couple of weeks ago who purchased
Speaker:a bunch of things and never got them,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:so virtually she sent money off into who knows where and
Speaker:never got what she thought she was buying.
Speaker:So everyone's antennas are way up with things like that.
Speaker:Okay. So I would love to take this conversation to a
Speaker:point where we have some tangible,
Speaker:actionable things for everyone who's listening.
Speaker:And then also talk about more of a what's possible.
Speaker:But if we could give them a few things,
Speaker:maybe if you were just starting off doing this and maybe
Speaker:it's even just make sure your analytics are connected up properly,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:I don't know,
Speaker:like going back to that far.
Speaker:Absolutely. Let's talk about the framework because this is a lot
Speaker:of times this stuff,
Speaker:it is overwhelming and it is frustrating.
Speaker:I get it.
Speaker:I get overwhelmed.
Speaker:Frustrated. Sometimes I get it is because Google analytics has got
Speaker:a lot of levers and dials and it is frustrating.
Speaker:So I think first thing is you sorta just,
Speaker:we use the phrase over and over again,
Speaker:get good enough to get going,
Speaker:then come back and make it better later,
Speaker:but give yourself permission to be okay with where you are,
Speaker:but do something,
Speaker:but do something.
Speaker:Right? So to your point,
Speaker:it's okay if you haven't lit up.
Speaker:So we have sort of three stages of this framework and
Speaker:I'll go through the framework in a moment here,
Speaker:but there are three stages to it.
Speaker:The first is the cave set up and we call it,
Speaker:the cave is because that's when people would tell us,
Speaker:they're like,
Speaker:well, I feel like I don't know what's working.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:What's not,
Speaker:I don't have any visibility in anything.
Speaker:And I feel like I'm wandering around in the dark,
Speaker:just making guessing guess,
Speaker:guess guessing at what should be changed.
Speaker:That's a rough place to be in,
Speaker:but that's where most people are.
Speaker:And certainly everybody starts.
Speaker:If you were in the cave right now,
Speaker:your goal is just to light stuff up,
Speaker:find a flashlight and get out of the cave.
Speaker:Right? That's the idea.
Speaker:It does not to be perfect.
Speaker:You don't have to be tracking loan or a LTV,
Speaker:right. Lifetime value in anything else that they talk about that
Speaker:you say one day you're supposed to have,
Speaker:like, don't worry about any of that because you're in the
Speaker:cave. You just need to light things up,
Speaker:start using the tools.
Speaker:So you can get used to the tools once you're out
Speaker:of the cave.
Speaker:Right. Which is again,
Speaker:that is just starting the process.
Speaker:You just do beginner baby-steps then you're going to go through
Speaker:the framework again,
Speaker:again, we'll cover the framework in just a minute here,
Speaker:but then you go into what we call the valley of
Speaker:visibility. Well,
Speaker:now at this point,
Speaker:you've kind of gone through the steps once and now you've
Speaker:lit up things.
Speaker:So now you're walking into analytics and you kind of have
Speaker:an idea of what it's telling you.
Speaker:It's not the perfect answer every single time,
Speaker:whenever you need it,
Speaker:but it's better than not knowing anything.
Speaker:It's kind of like having a prescription glasses where there's a
Speaker:difference between wearing a prescription that's maybe a little old or
Speaker:not wearing any glasses at all.
Speaker:I would much rather wear the prescription.
Speaker:That's just a little bit old,
Speaker:right? Because it's better than not wearing glasses at all.
Speaker:And when You can see things,
Speaker:you also then have a baseline to Work from.
Speaker:It's exactly right.
Speaker:You start to see more of what's there,
Speaker:right? And then ultimately you get to the summit,
Speaker:right? If you think about like a mountain top,
Speaker:and then that's the very complicated stuff.
Speaker:That's the things where people are doing LTV and everything else.
Speaker:But at this point when you get to the summit,
Speaker:it's because you've got all this muscle because you climbed your
Speaker:way out of the cave.
Speaker:You hiked your way through the valley.
Speaker:By the time you get to the summit,
Speaker:you understand measurement,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:the strategies,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:the tools and everything's just so much easier.
Speaker:And that's how we think about it.
Speaker:You think about like a vehicle to get through though.
Speaker:You walk through the cave,
Speaker:right? You bicycle through the valley and use a helicopter to
Speaker:get from summit to summit,
Speaker:to summit,
Speaker:right? That's what you would do in mountaintops.
Speaker:Well, a lot of people do is they try to,
Speaker:they look at the helicopter,
Speaker:which is very complicated.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:It's complicated.
Speaker:It's tough to use.
Speaker:If you don't know anything about transportation at all,
Speaker:it is,
Speaker:but you would never start to learn helicopter right away.
Speaker:You start by learning how to walk.
Speaker:Then you learn how to ride a bike.
Speaker:Then eventually you move into the helicopter.
Speaker:And if you build a helicopter,
Speaker:when you're in a cave,
Speaker:it's not a useful thing.
Speaker:So it doesn't even matter.
Speaker:So that's sort of,
Speaker:the idea is get good enough to get going.
Speaker:And then you come back and make it better later.
Speaker:Give yourself permission to be where you are,
Speaker:no matter what,
Speaker:you just need to be a little bit better today than
Speaker:you were yesterday.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:Now the framework itself,
Speaker:it's pretty simple as three steps.
Speaker:The first is planning.
Speaker:And that's the one I think we focus on today because
Speaker:that's where most people kind of go a little crazy.
Speaker:So planning.
Speaker:Then you do your build out where you're using the tools
Speaker:to measure stuff.
Speaker:So it might be Facebook ads,
Speaker:manager. It might be Google analytics.
Speaker:It might be your Shopify analytics.
Speaker:It might be the Etsy analytics,
Speaker:right? Whatever the thing is that you're using.
Speaker:And that's the build.
Speaker:So first you plan things out,
Speaker:then you build things out and then you act upon the
Speaker:stuff that you've built,
Speaker:which is you look at the reports and then you kind
Speaker:of do the things with the numbers.
Speaker:So plan,
Speaker:build an act are really the three steps.
Speaker:Now in the planning stage,
Speaker:that that particular step is one I want to focus on
Speaker:because a lot of people,
Speaker:this is the part they skip because they don't know how
Speaker:to necessarily plan.
Speaker:They think that it's just,
Speaker:oh, asking a question,
Speaker:but there's actually a couple of steps to that.
Speaker:So the first is asking questions.
Speaker:You got to know what questions are important to ask and
Speaker:get answers to.
Speaker:And the way to think about the questions as you think
Speaker:about your results that you're trying to get.
Speaker:And then you think immediately about how you're getting those results.
Speaker:So in my case,
Speaker:it might be,
Speaker:oh, I'm trying to figure out how many academy memberships I've
Speaker:sold. So that's the Results I'm trying to get.
Speaker:So I need to measure for that.
Speaker:Right? Well,
Speaker:my average sales are how many units I sold that sort
Speaker:of thing.
Speaker:But then you also want to measure how I sold those,
Speaker:or I would want to know that.
Speaker:So I understand how my process works.
Speaker:So I want to know how many people saw the card
Speaker:and bought how many people actually started the offer page,
Speaker:right? Or in the case of an e-commerce store,
Speaker:maybe the product detail page of a certain candle and of
Speaker:those, how many added to cart of those?
Speaker:How many started the checkout process of those?
Speaker:How many finished,
Speaker:right. That sort of thing.
Speaker:So it was just Results in how questions is all you
Speaker:do in the beginning.
Speaker:I remember,
Speaker:and we were talking about this a little bit in our
Speaker:pre-chat about a program that I took from you several years
Speaker:ago. And I remember specifically you saying,
Speaker:don't just go in there blind because you're going to get
Speaker:overwhelmed. You're going to shut it down and never go back
Speaker:again. Right.
Speaker:See what a good student I am Here.
Speaker:Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker:So you were paying attention.
Speaker:I was paying attention,
Speaker:but how detailed of questions should you get?
Speaker:I mean,
Speaker:obviously they have to relate to our own business.
Speaker:And maybe,
Speaker:especially as we're just getting acquainted,
Speaker:you take an example or two,
Speaker:like you were just talking about,
Speaker:but how many questions and how detailed should we be as
Speaker:a beginner?
Speaker:So this is where that rule comes in.
Speaker:And this is how overwhelm happens is because you will start
Speaker:to do it again.
Speaker:And I did this.
Speaker:There's no judgment on anybody that's gone through this process,
Speaker:but this is how overwhelm happens is you will Google things
Speaker:like what are the best questions for an Etsy store owner
Speaker:to ask around numbers?
Speaker:And you will get a million blog posts and a thousand
Speaker:YouTube videos all saying the seven key questions that you should
Speaker:ask, then you end up with hundreds of questions.
Speaker:And now you're overwhelmed because you're like,
Speaker:I have no idea what that stuff means or what I
Speaker:would do it anyway.
Speaker:So when it comes to the questions,
Speaker:you trigger that rule in place,
Speaker:which is good enough to get going and you use the
Speaker:Results and how method.
Speaker:So I get my Results questions,
Speaker:and I get they,
Speaker:how I'm getting the results.
Speaker:And you do it to the best of your current ability.
Speaker:And how do you know that when you're kind of like,
Speaker:yeah, that sounds good.
Speaker:If I know those that would be useful,
Speaker:done, stop there.
Speaker:Does that mean I'm going to ask the same questions?
Speaker:No, because my skills are different.
Speaker:So I'm going to come in at a higher level because
Speaker:I have more muscle built.
Speaker:Cause I understand measurement,
Speaker:but if you're just starting out,
Speaker:just get the Results questions like,
Speaker:so if it's leads or appointments,
Speaker:you're setting or a number of people in the store,
Speaker:whether it's brick and mortar or digital or whatever,
Speaker:number of sales,
Speaker:like whatever the Results are,
Speaker:you're trying to achieve for your business model.
Speaker:And then a couple of the house steps of how you're
Speaker:achieving those.
Speaker:So you understand kind of the journey that happened in order
Speaker:to produce those results.
Speaker:And then that's it,
Speaker:you stop there.
Speaker:Once you have those,
Speaker:then you do your information.
Speaker:And this whole,
Speaker:these parts that I'm about to talk about,
Speaker:they kind of work together to improve each other.
Speaker:So you have the questions,
Speaker:you sort of start with your results and how just the
Speaker:basics just good enough to get going.
Speaker:And remember,
Speaker:that's all it is.
Speaker:You don't need to list 15 questions for three to five
Speaker:is fine.
Speaker:No big deal.
Speaker:It's three to five questions to get started,
Speaker:especially when you're getting started,
Speaker:then it's information.
Speaker:And you can think about this like three columns.
Speaker:So first column is all the questions you're trying to answer,
Speaker:right? Three to five,
Speaker:just to get started because you're practicing,
Speaker:right? This is the whole idea of when you're in the
Speaker:cave is to practice asking questions.
Speaker:So three to five questions,
Speaker:then you do the information.
Speaker:The information is the second column.
Speaker:And what you're asking here is what information will I need
Speaker:to collect in order to get these answers?
Speaker:So your cart system might have the number of sales and
Speaker:the average units and all of that stuff.
Speaker:But Google analytics might be the platform to know how many
Speaker:people saw the cart,
Speaker:right? For example.
Speaker:So you think about what's the information,
Speaker:the behaviors that are happening on the site that I need
Speaker:to actually collect so I can get answers to these questions.
Speaker:And then this is the third and final part.
Speaker:And this is how,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:if you've asked a question that's useful because a lot of
Speaker:people will ask a million questions,
Speaker:but they're not necessarily useful for them.
Speaker:And the way you can tell that is so he's got
Speaker:three columns.
Speaker:We have what we call this Kia process.
Speaker:There's questions.
Speaker:There's the information that you need in order to get the
Speaker:answers to the questions.
Speaker:And then this is the most important part.
Speaker:What actions will I take based upon the answers I get.
Speaker:Now, this is before you open up analytics it's,
Speaker:before you look at your card system,
Speaker:you're literally just doing this on a piece of paper,
Speaker:if you want,
Speaker:or a whiteboard,
Speaker:you list that out.
Speaker:And so you think to yourself,
Speaker:okay, what actions would I take?
Speaker:So my goal is 10 sales this week.
Speaker:If I get less than 10 sales,
Speaker:I'm going to go to back to that Facebook campaign.
Speaker:And I'm going to see if I can play around with
Speaker:the targeting because it's not bringing me enough people.
Speaker:If I get more than 10 sales,
Speaker:I'm going to go look to scale that campaign on Pinterest,
Speaker:because we know that campaign is doing really well,
Speaker:something along those lines,
Speaker:but you're kind of,
Speaker:role-playing it in your head as you go through now,
Speaker:sometimes when you think about the actions you're going to take,
Speaker:which this case I technically just did,
Speaker:you will find that you need to refine your questions a
Speaker:little bit.
Speaker:So what I did in my actions as I referenced to
Speaker:Facebook campaign or a Pinterest campaign,
Speaker:but I didn't ask questions about Facebook or Pinterest,
Speaker:right? As ask questions about the Results number of units.
Speaker:Well, now I realize what I'm really asking is,
Speaker:is my Facebook campaign generating at least 10 sales a week
Speaker:is my Pinterest campaign.
Speaker:At least generating 10 sales a week.
Speaker:So now I have improved the question I'm trying to get
Speaker:answers to.
Speaker:Then I think to myself,
Speaker:well, what information would I need in order to get the
Speaker:answers? Well,
Speaker:I gotta measure that in my cart system.
Speaker:I gotta make sure that my cart knows they came from
Speaker:Pinterest. And if I can't do that,
Speaker:maybe Google analytics can tell me that,
Speaker:which it could.
Speaker:And then of course,
Speaker:what actions will I take?
Speaker:And then once I get that done,
Speaker:now I've got my measurement plan in place.
Speaker:At that point,
Speaker:I then go into Google analytics or another tool to,
Speaker:to do any sort of measurement.
Speaker:And that's where I look to those answers.
Speaker:And if those answers are not there,
Speaker:in other words,
Speaker:if I'm not collecting the information already,
Speaker:I set it up so that it is collecting the information
Speaker:so I can get answers to those.
Speaker:Does that make sense?
Speaker:Kind of how those two pieces work together.
Speaker:It completely makes sense in terms of the strategy,
Speaker:figuring out what you need,
Speaker:which is the questions then what is the information I need?
Speaker:What is the number?
Speaker:So like the data behind the answers to the questions,
Speaker:if you will,
Speaker:and then based on the data,
Speaker:which way you're going to go,
Speaker:if you're seeing good results,
Speaker:if you're not seeing good results.
Speaker:So like creating the story before you open the book,
Speaker:kind of Right,
Speaker:that's a hundred percent,
Speaker:right? What should this book be about?
Speaker:What should my measurement tell me what is the conversation that
Speaker:I think I'm having with my users?
Speaker:And then we are going to plan all that out.
Speaker:And if the conversation is good,
Speaker:then I'm gonna do this,
Speaker:that the conversation's not so good.
Speaker:I'm going to do this.
Speaker:Then you do your build.
Speaker:And then of course that's where you're looking in the actual
Speaker:reports or set it up so that it is able to
Speaker:answer your questions.
Speaker:And then when you get to the act stage was,
Speaker:is that,
Speaker:that third step,
Speaker:remember plan build an act and the act stage you're looking
Speaker:at your reports,
Speaker:you're looking at it,
Speaker:maybe the source media report in Google analytics,
Speaker:or maybe it's a,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:at the analytics report or something like that,
Speaker:or your Facebook's ads manager.
Speaker:And you're getting the answers to those questions.
Speaker:And you're saying,
Speaker:okay, well,
Speaker:now that I know what my benchmarks are,
Speaker:and I know I average about 10 sales a week.
Speaker:Now you can start to forecast and do some really cool
Speaker:things. So instead of just saying,
Speaker:Hey, what happened last week?
Speaker:All that money I spent on Facebook and you start saying
Speaker:things like,
Speaker:well, here's what should happen next week to the 500 bucks
Speaker:I'm going to put on Facebook and then you start forecasting
Speaker:Results. So of the 500 bucks,
Speaker:I should have at least a say 400 people come to
Speaker:the page.
Speaker:And 25% of those should take my coupon code and opt
Speaker:in for my coupon.
Speaker:And then use that within seven days to purchase.
Speaker:Now you have your forecast or what we call marketing forward.
Speaker:Now you can start to optimize because what'll happen is your
Speaker:measure against what you thought was going to happen.
Speaker:And so very quickly you'll know like,
Speaker:Hey, I spent 500 bucks on Facebook.
Speaker:I thought I was going to get 400 people.
Speaker:I only got a hundred people.
Speaker:So something's probably often a targeting somewhere or something's because they're
Speaker:not clicking.
Speaker:They're not clicking on the ad,
Speaker:even come over to the site at all.
Speaker:So, you know,
Speaker:it's probably on the Facebook ad,
Speaker:but let's say you are getting those 400 people,
Speaker:but then none of them are opting in or taking advantage
Speaker:of your coupon.
Speaker:Well, maybe it's an offer problem,
Speaker:right? Maybe the coupon needs to be improved or the offer
Speaker:needs to be improved.
Speaker:Maybe it's the expectation.
Speaker:The ad generated.
Speaker:Sometimes the ad might say something like,
Speaker:Hey, we've got sweaters on sale.
Speaker:And then you send them into a page.
Speaker:That's got shoes on it and there's a disconnect,
Speaker:right? And so that's the sort of stuff where very quickly
Speaker:you start to see,
Speaker:oh, here's where the conversation's going,
Speaker:the wrong direction.
Speaker:It's this part of my customer journey that isn't matching what
Speaker:they expect to happen.
Speaker:So it's this part that as a marketer,
Speaker:I'm going to go in there and improve and make and
Speaker:change and make my best guests to make sure the conversation
Speaker:goes in the direction that we want it to go in.
Speaker:Right. I mean,
Speaker:because guess what we do when we're,
Speaker:don't have all of this put together,
Speaker:what, we're all probably doing the majority of us right now,
Speaker:which is if a campaign doesn't work,
Speaker:you guess,
Speaker:as to why it didn't work.
Speaker:It's exactly right.
Speaker:And then you might take a totally wrong approach,
Speaker:spend more money,
Speaker:take more time because you really don't have an any real
Speaker:solid data behind decisions.
Speaker:It's all guesswork of why things are or aren't working and
Speaker:you could be way off.
Speaker:That's exactly right.
Speaker:And it's literally,
Speaker:like you saying,
Speaker:like the market's saying,
Speaker:Hey, by the way,
Speaker:I can tell you how to fix this.
Speaker:And you're like,
Speaker:putting your hand up going,
Speaker:no, no,
Speaker:no. I'll figure it out.
Speaker:That's what we're doing.
Speaker:Or we don't remember properly.
Speaker:Right. I'll give you an example,
Speaker:goes back to what you talked about before,
Speaker:about the tendency that people might be a little afraid of
Speaker:being scammed,
Speaker:right? Where somebody buys a product and they ever get the
Speaker:products. Let's pretend for a second.
Speaker:That was the hypothesis I had where I'm like,
Speaker:well, I think the offer's not working because they're just a
Speaker:little concerned and they feel it's too risky to purchase.
Speaker:So what would somebody who has that sort of behavior,
Speaker:if we can role play this real quick,
Speaker:if they have that sort of behavior,
Speaker:what would somebody who's risk averse?
Speaker:And they want to make sure that they're not going to
Speaker:get scammed.
Speaker:What would they look for on the page?
Speaker:What do you think you would look for?
Speaker:What would I look For?
Speaker:Like I say,
Speaker:offer page and you're kind of like,
Speaker:oh, I don't want to get scammed.
Speaker:I wanna make sure this is a real thing.
Speaker:Like what sort of things would you look for that might
Speaker:elicit trust?
Speaker:Quite honestly,
Speaker:first, I'm going to look at the about us page to
Speaker:see who this person is.
Speaker:And if I think they're really an artist,
Speaker:like there's enough built out on the page,
Speaker:but then I'm going to look at probably reviews of,
Speaker:of course the products,
Speaker:pricing, Testimonials they might have Testimonials.
Speaker:And that the checkout process is smooth.
Speaker:There's no hiccups.
Speaker:I'm not going off to some type of funny pages that
Speaker:don't make sense to me.
Speaker:Right. Which a lot of you exactly right?
Speaker:Those types of things.
Speaker:But first me personally,
Speaker:I would do a credibility play with what's on the site.
Speaker:And this is the best part about this process,
Speaker:because you can say,
Speaker:okay, well here's what we think is happening.
Speaker:People in our marketplace that they really are risk averse and
Speaker:they want to make sure that they're making a good decision.
Speaker:So they're going to put a little more research upfront.
Speaker:So what we're going to do as part of our customer
Speaker:journey, as they visit the about page,
Speaker:we are assuming they're doing that well,
Speaker:how would we know if they're doing that or not?
Speaker:That's where Google analytics comes in,
Speaker:because we can go to Google analytics and say,
Speaker:how many people saw the about page and how many of
Speaker:those people went to our offer page after that?
Speaker:And now Google analytics can tell you,
Speaker:oh, here's,
Speaker:everybody's going to the about page and then going to the
Speaker:offer page.
Speaker:And you can say,
Speaker:wow, that's a lot,
Speaker:I guess we're right.
Speaker:There are people who are risk averse,
Speaker:but if no,
Speaker:one's seeing the about page,
Speaker:then maybe they're not investigating that way.
Speaker:And then we would know that.
Speaker:So now we don't put a bunch of work into our,
Speaker:about page making the assumption.
Speaker:That is what everyone's seeing when in reality,
Speaker:nobody is right.
Speaker:And that's the beauty of analytics is because you go there
Speaker:to your point earlier about asking specific questions of Google analytics.
Speaker:You go there with a specific purpose in mind.
Speaker:Like I believe people are looking at our about page because
Speaker:they're trying to research us.
Speaker:Therefore, most of the people that are on our offers should
Speaker:have already seen our about page because that would have been,
Speaker:if I'm right,
Speaker:that would have been a natural part of their process.
Speaker:So then I can go to Google analytics and say that
Speaker:are people who are purchasing or looking at the offer,
Speaker:maybe not in purchasing,
Speaker:but looking at the offer,
Speaker:did they go to the about page?
Speaker:And Google will say yes or no,
Speaker:which is the beauty of it because there's not like,
Speaker:well, it depends.
Speaker:It's no they did.
Speaker:Or they didn't,
Speaker:the market is doing this.
Speaker:And the market's not doing that.
Speaker:Not the market's not doing that.
Speaker:You go,
Speaker:okay, well maybe it's not the about page,
Speaker:but I bet you they're looking at the testimonials and the
Speaker:reviews that we have on our pages.
Speaker:In that case,
Speaker:you could set up your measurement system to literally this is
Speaker:kind of a little bit more advanced,
Speaker:but it's cool because it goes into the world of what's
Speaker:possible. You can literally say when the review comes in,
Speaker:when that review section shows,
Speaker:like when they scroll down to where the reviews are and
Speaker:they stare at it for at least the say seven seconds,
Speaker:when now,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:they're probably really looking at reviews,
Speaker:they're investigating reviews versus just scroll past it.
Speaker:So you can measure for very specific behaviors that would essentially
Speaker:to you sort of communicate the intention of the person right
Speaker:there, side of the conversation.
Speaker:Because if they are looking at your reviews for 10 or
Speaker:15 seconds,
Speaker:they're probably looking at them.
Speaker:They're probably really investigating them.
Speaker:If you have videos,
Speaker:you could tell if somebody interacted with the video and watched
Speaker:a specific testimonial,
Speaker:you can see how far they made it through the video.
Speaker:So it's that sort of stuff where you can confirm instead
Speaker:of to your point earlier about guessing,
Speaker:instead of guessing,
Speaker:well, maybe it's the headline or maybe it's the design,
Speaker:or maybe it's I got to switch to some new platform
Speaker:of the day.
Speaker:What are the platform is it's none of that,
Speaker:the market will tell you and say things like,
Speaker:Hey, we really were concerned because we weren't sure if this
Speaker:is going to be a real product,
Speaker:not if people really liked it,
Speaker:the about page,
Speaker:didn't do it for us.
Speaker:It wasn't our thing.
Speaker:But mostly what we care about is really good quality reviews.
Speaker:And if we look at reviews,
Speaker:we're more likely to then go to the cart and you
Speaker:go, aha,
Speaker:cool. Now I got to make the page so that there
Speaker:are more reviews.
Speaker:Maybe there's an above the fold review because we know how
Speaker:important that is that above the fold space.
Speaker:And now you're making design changes to your marketing page,
Speaker:right? As based on what your customers are telling you that
Speaker:they want.
Speaker:And that's based on the measurement because you're listening to them.
Speaker:If that makes sense,
Speaker:It makes total sense.
Speaker:So what about people who have like a lead page or
Speaker:something that goes into many of the people who are listening
Speaker:here also do courses,
Speaker:your training courses,
Speaker:that type of thing that might come in through a lead
Speaker:page is that also something that you can monitor?
Speaker:Isn't it exciting how much understanding behind the scenes can lead
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Speaker:It is,
Speaker:there are some times you are limited by your tech.
Speaker:Not every platform that's out there is easily measured.
Speaker:Lead pages is pretty easy to measure.
Speaker:So you can tell things like that.
Speaker:As long as you can get code on pages.
Speaker:And if remember,
Speaker:it's always,
Speaker:it's kind of like the level I was thinking about that
Speaker:the glasses prescription we talked about earlier.
Speaker:So there's the difference between not knowing anything in other words,
Speaker:not wearing glasses at all and bumping into walls or it's
Speaker:do I have an older prescription?
Speaker:That's maybe not the greatest,
Speaker:but at least I'm not bumping into walls anymore.
Speaker:Right? And then you do that long enough until maybe eventually
Speaker:you say,
Speaker:okay, our company is big enough.
Speaker:Now we don't need to use lead pages.
Speaker:We'll build our own platform,
Speaker:abuse, WordPress,
Speaker:it's a laser measure.
Speaker:We can now answer this,
Speaker:this and this,
Speaker:right? But you do that more advanced stuff.
Speaker:As you grow out of the level you're in,
Speaker:I would never try to do level seven just because,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:level seven exists.
Speaker:You just don't do that.
Speaker:You gotta work your way up through the levels because every
Speaker:level that you go through,
Speaker:every time you go through that framework of plan,
Speaker:build and act,
Speaker:every time you do that,
Speaker:you build muscle and you get better at planning.
Speaker:The next time you plan,
Speaker:you get better building.
Speaker:The next time you build,
Speaker:you get better at acting on the stuff.
Speaker:The next time you take action on it,
Speaker:and then you go through it again and you come back
Speaker:and you build a plan and you're gonna ask bigger questions
Speaker:now, because now you already have answers to the basic questions.
Speaker:Now you're asking bigger questions.
Speaker:That's how this process works.
Speaker:Okay. Let me take another example and tell us what we
Speaker:could do with this.
Speaker:I'm a candle maker.
Speaker:I've added three new sense to my line just in time
Speaker:for the holidays.
Speaker:I've put them on my home page because there are new
Speaker:products. So I want them front and center where people can
Speaker:see them.
Speaker:They of course linked to the product page where people could
Speaker:check out.
Speaker:I also have decided to run Facebook ads to that section
Speaker:of my website,
Speaker:right? And now I've run it a couple of weeks.
Speaker:I'm wondering if the Facebook ad is working because I've also
Speaker:been at craft shows and I've directed people just to come
Speaker:to the website and I've done some Pinterest posts,
Speaker:no ads on Pinterest,
Speaker:just some posts story behind how I created these products.
Speaker:Why decided that I was going to make do these cents,
Speaker:et cetera.
Speaker:Now I'm trying to decide what I should double down on
Speaker:of all these things that I've done,
Speaker:Whether it's Facebook or Pinterest,
Speaker:or just doing kind of the face to face Or not
Speaker:do either of those and just really hammer it home face
Speaker:to face.
Speaker:Yep. So in your Google analytics,
Speaker:this is kind of the good part about Google analytics.
Speaker:Remember there's always levels and versions to all,
Speaker:but we'll start with the basics.
Speaker:Google analytics by default will tell you if somebody came from
Speaker:Facebook, it'll say something like if there's a report called the
Speaker:source medium report,
Speaker:anybody who would you go to analytics?
Speaker:You can just start typing in source medium in the search
Speaker:box. It'll pull it up,
Speaker:but it'll tell you what are the different traffic sources.
Speaker:In other words,
Speaker:who's sending you traffic.
Speaker:It'll tell you how much of that traffic they're sending you.
Speaker:It'll give you some engagement signals about how engaged that traffic
Speaker:is. And then it'll tell you the results of the traffic,
Speaker:whether you're measuring for sales or leads or whatever the thing
Speaker:is. So in this case,
Speaker:Google analytics,
Speaker:if you have that already set up on your store,
Speaker:then it already knows they came from Facebook and it would
Speaker:already tell you how many you've sold.
Speaker:Assuming that your analytics is set up to do that.
Speaker:Pinterest, same thing.
Speaker:It'll tell you Pinterest,
Speaker:and then sold the one thing it will not tell you
Speaker:is the face to face.
Speaker:And that's probably because it's what they would call direct traffic,
Speaker:which means you just gave me a card or the website
Speaker:address. And I typed it in and I came directly to
Speaker:the page without coming in through another ad or anything else.
Speaker:So to Google analytics,
Speaker:it doesn't know that I was at a face-to-face fair because
Speaker:obviously it can't manage that at the farmer's market.
Speaker:Doesn't know that I'm there,
Speaker:but it just knows that I showed up one day.
Speaker:So it would be direct none.
Speaker:Now that in of itself can at least answer.
Speaker:This is out of the box.
Speaker:You don't do anything to analytics for that to tell you
Speaker:this part,
Speaker:right? It'll tell you how many came from Facebook and making
Speaker:Pinterest or how many people came in direct.
Speaker:And that's the three main ways you can do that.
Speaker:The next level up,
Speaker:this is one of those things like the cave style setup
Speaker:is where you sort of light up analytics and get used
Speaker:to the reports and what they look like.
Speaker:Then you level it up.
Speaker:When you get into that valley visibility,
Speaker:we talked about and it's something called UTMs.
Speaker:So anybody can Google these UTMs,
Speaker:but there are these little parameters that you add onto the
Speaker:end of a URL.
Speaker:So instead of going to like my site.com
Speaker:and to go to my site.com
Speaker:and then you'll see these things to say,
Speaker:question mark UTM,
Speaker:underscore source equals blah,
Speaker:blah, blah.
Speaker:And it sort of identifies what they call them UTMs.
Speaker:Cause they always start with UTM,
Speaker:but they identify the source of the traffic.
Speaker:So they identify which brand is sending you the traffic.
Speaker:They identify what type of traffic is coming from that brand.
Speaker:And they identify the purpose.
Speaker:Like why are they even coming over there in the first
Speaker:place? So you could see it was Facebook paid traffic.
Speaker:If you're using UTMs,
Speaker:you'll see Facebook paid traffic,
Speaker:you will see Pinterest paid traffic or in your case,
Speaker:social traffic,
Speaker:right. It's just plain social.
Speaker:So Pinterest social,
Speaker:the stuff that you're not boosting or paying for,
Speaker:and you would also see your face-to-face traffic.
Speaker:It might even say something like farmer's market because you can
Speaker:set up a redirect,
Speaker:but you redirect them to a UTM.
Speaker:In fact,
Speaker:at the end of this,
Speaker:we'll use a redirect to measure how well this podcast is
Speaker:doing. And if it's sending us traffic,
Speaker:we'll know very specifically,
Speaker:even though there is no computer and you're not having to
Speaker:click on a link,
Speaker:you can type the link directly in and it'll automatically tell
Speaker:us if this podcast is generating traffic,
Speaker:same way with a farmer's market or a live event that
Speaker:your marketing app.
Speaker:And so that's kind of the next level up.
Speaker:And what I would do is I would go through that
Speaker:planning stage first.
Speaker:So you're thinking about,
Speaker:okay, and this is kind of another way to think about
Speaker:the planning process is how is this supposed to work?
Speaker:So of the money you spend on Facebook,
Speaker:how many people was Facebook supposed to send to your site?
Speaker:How many of those were supposed to buy?
Speaker:Same thing for Pinterest.
Speaker:How many eyeballs were you supposed to get from Pinterest over
Speaker:to your site?
Speaker:How many we're supposed to buy and then the farmer's market.
Speaker:How many am I supposed to meet?
Speaker:How many are supposed to show up,
Speaker:how many we're supposed to buy and you sort of pencil
Speaker:those out and then you measure against what you thought was
Speaker:going to happen.
Speaker:So that's when you would set this up,
Speaker:you look in your analytics and it will very clearly tell
Speaker:you, Hey,
Speaker:Facebook, they're not even clicking on the ads.
Speaker:So if that's the case where you spend a hundred bucks
Speaker:on Facebook,
Speaker:but nobody's coming over to the site,
Speaker:then you know,
Speaker:it's something with your ad.
Speaker:It doesn't mean Facebook necessarily doesn't work.
Speaker:But that particular ad definitely isn't.
Speaker:So you should probably work on the messaging and the targeting
Speaker:there. Pinterest,
Speaker:let's say,
Speaker:as an example shows,
Speaker:there's a bunch of people coming to your site,
Speaker:but none of them are buying in that case.
Speaker:It's something we call the expectation engine,
Speaker:but you want to match the expectation.
Speaker:So you think about what's that Pinterest posts that they're clicking
Speaker:on and that particular post is it setting them up for
Speaker:the expectation to investigate buying holiday candles.
Speaker:Right? And if it's not,
Speaker:if it just says,
Speaker:oh, you know,
Speaker:here's some candles,
Speaker:but then you come over and it's like,
Speaker:oh, here's holiday candles.
Speaker:Maybe that's the disconnect.
Speaker:And you should send them to a more generic candles page
Speaker:and then put the holiday candles a little bit lowered to
Speaker:highlight that feature.
Speaker:And then there's the direct clients,
Speaker:right? The ones that otherwise show up as direct nun,
Speaker:if you can use UTMs to measure them,
Speaker:ideally, but you can say,
Speaker:oh my farmer's market traffic.
Speaker:It won't be a lot of traffic.
Speaker:But what I would expect is that traffic converts.
Speaker:And so you should see,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:a good 20 to 30% of those may be purchasing.
Speaker:And if they're not doing that behavior or you're not even
Speaker:seeing them show up,
Speaker:then it's like you talking to a hundred people at the
Speaker:farmer's market,
Speaker:then none of them actually show up on the site.
Speaker:Well, and you're like,
Speaker:okay, I'll,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:I'll still talk to them,
Speaker:but I'm not going to count on it as a traffic
Speaker:source because that's not how it works.
Speaker:That's where analytics can kind of light up and say,
Speaker:and you're always asking the question about analytics.
Speaker:Here's what should be happening?
Speaker:Is it happening?
Speaker:And that's different than jumping to analytics to find out what's
Speaker:happening. And I know it sounds,
Speaker:it's a subtle,
Speaker:subtle difference,
Speaker:but it's monumentally different in your head.
Speaker:One, if you say,
Speaker:Hey, what's happening,
Speaker:analytics analytics gives you the world and it overwhelms you with
Speaker:all this stuff.
Speaker:And now you leave confused and frustrated because you're never sure
Speaker:what anything means anymore because it's giving you too much information.
Speaker:But if you say no,
Speaker:no, no,
Speaker:I don't need to know everything.
Speaker:I just want to know is my Facebook traffic sending me
Speaker:at least a hundred people last week and did those hundred
Speaker:people, did I at least get three sales analytics can be,
Speaker:and then we'll say yes or no.
Speaker:And then,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:okay, here's what I need to adjust because I didn't match
Speaker:expectations or it didn't.
Speaker:And that's where you go through that key process.
Speaker:Think about the actions you're gonna take.
Speaker:And then at that point you would take those actions to
Speaker:improve the,
Speaker:Yeah. I mean,
Speaker:I see so much application to this too,
Speaker:because if you get a lot of people,
Speaker:regardless of where their sources and they're jumping over to your
Speaker:product pages,
Speaker:but then nobody's buying,
Speaker:is it your photos?
Speaker:Well, first off,
Speaker:is it the right product?
Speaker:You know,
Speaker:are they coming and seeing something they weren't expecting to see,
Speaker:that would be first,
Speaker:but are your photos really grainy?
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:So that is the quality of your product too.
Speaker:I mean,
Speaker:it relates unconsciously.
Speaker:If you have bad photos,
Speaker:do you not even have a description?
Speaker:It just says vanilla candle price.
Speaker:Well, what's enticing to me about that.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:So you have to build all those things out.
Speaker:Like if people are coming over,
Speaker:you're getting the audience.
Speaker:You're not convincing them that they should buy.
Speaker:So that's a very different thing than if people aren't coming
Speaker:over at all.
Speaker:Then the other thing I'm thinking Chris,
Speaker:and do a strategy check with me on this.
Speaker:You're doing a farmer's market this week,
Speaker:two weeks from now,
Speaker:I'm doing a craft show another week from now,
Speaker:I'm doing a different show.
Speaker:So let's say that first one,
Speaker:the farmer's market got a ton of sales at this farmer's
Speaker:market. So face-to-face selling was awesome.
Speaker:I didn't have very many people coming over to the,
Speaker:did you just go,
Speaker:yay. But you didn't see many people.
Speaker:You didn't see your organic traffic what's call it like the
Speaker:average, because you already have your average of how many people
Speaker:are coming on a regular base And you didn't see like
Speaker:a spike coming into your right.
Speaker:You didn't see a spike,
Speaker:right? So you know that for farmer's markets,
Speaker:I'm going to pretend like they're all the same.
Speaker:Okay. But that's where you're going to sell product.
Speaker:So then you want to look at it pretty quickly,
Speaker:right? After that time to vent,
Speaker:then you go and you see what happens.
Speaker:You see where your Results you do.
Speaker:Exactly. Chris,
Speaker:what you said,
Speaker:like you've got your question.
Speaker:Did the farmer's market bring any additional online traffic and additional
Speaker:sales based on the behaviors you see,
Speaker:then you form your actions and some of the actions might
Speaker:be okay,
Speaker:I get it.
Speaker:Farmer's market great.
Speaker:In-person doesn't really convert for me,
Speaker:which could be very different from the neighboring booth at the
Speaker:farmer's market.
Speaker:You know,
Speaker:this is very individual,
Speaker:At least they're not engaging with the conversation as it now
Speaker:stands. Right.
Speaker:That's exactly right.
Speaker:Right. Exactly.
Speaker:So you'd want to look at those numbers in close enough
Speaker:time to the event for the example I'm describing now.
Speaker:So then in two weeks from now,
Speaker:I go to a craft show.
Speaker:I don't sell as many at the craft show,
Speaker:but I come back and my traffic and sales skyrocket,
Speaker:and it still looks like it's organic because to your point,
Speaker:the face-to-face and I'm giving them the website from my cards
Speaker:or a brochure or something.
Speaker:But because of the timing of that event,
Speaker:I can pretty much say that there's been a huge boost.
Speaker:And I just did that craft show.
Speaker:So my thinking with all of this talk is that you
Speaker:can understand what you're doing overall in a lot of your
Speaker:business and how the sales are coming in and understand farmer's
Speaker:markets face to face.
Speaker:Yes, they'll have exposure to your site,
Speaker:but they like to buy from you in person.
Speaker:They want to see your products because that's the audience that
Speaker:goes there.
Speaker:That's the idea of a farmer's market,
Speaker:right? You want to know the person you're buying from Craft
Speaker:shows may buy from you there,
Speaker:but a lot of people might decide they want more later
Speaker:after they've been there.
Speaker:Want to think about it,
Speaker:follow up and purchase it online,
Speaker:Coming for inspiration and ideas maybe.
Speaker:Yeah. So then you would no longer be saying this craft
Speaker:show didn't work for me.
Speaker:Like I just covered my cost of the booth,
Speaker:but then really that's not true because you really generate all
Speaker:these other sales later by being at the craft show,
Speaker:then it just gives you so much more perspective on what's
Speaker:really happening with your business.
Speaker:It's exactly right.
Speaker:Especially if that's a repeatable trend,
Speaker:the truth is in the trend,
Speaker:the power's in the pattern when it comes to all of
Speaker:this stuff.
Speaker:So if you saw like every craft show or,
Speaker:or most craft shows,
Speaker:there was always a little bump in the traffic after the
Speaker:craft show for the next week or so,
Speaker:you're like,
Speaker:Hmm. Now I can start to forecast how a craft show
Speaker:should work.
Speaker:I'm going to show up,
Speaker:I'm going to make a little bit,
Speaker:I'll pay the costs of the booth.
Speaker:But then a week later with the next week,
Speaker:I'm going to make an extra percentage of sales based on
Speaker:who I'm talking to at that,
Speaker:because that's how craft shows work.
Speaker:You could also then compare craft show against craft show too,
Speaker:to see which ones are the right ones for you.
Speaker:Exactly. Right.
Speaker:Exactly. Right.
Speaker:And to your point about the farmer's markets,
Speaker:I think it goes back to this thing,
Speaker:we call the expectation engine,
Speaker:right? Which is always,
Speaker:you have to match every step that we take anywhere in
Speaker:life, but specifically digital marketing.
Speaker:When you go to click on a Facebook ad or whatever
Speaker:the ad is,
Speaker:or the email you're about to open it,
Speaker:you click on the link or you're about to click on
Speaker:the link.
Speaker:There is an expectation of what you think is about to
Speaker:happen. That's the only reason you are about to take the
Speaker:action you're about to take is because you've already forethought.
Speaker:What that expectation is.
Speaker:So when you click on that link and then the expectation
Speaker:is matched,
Speaker:you stick around and now that place,
Speaker:that draft,
Speaker:maybe it's the offer page or something like that.
Speaker:It has a chance to sort of,
Speaker:obviously it matches the expectation and then it creates a new
Speaker:expectation for the next step,
Speaker:right? So it gives him an offer page.
Speaker:It might be building the value of the candles so that
Speaker:I can mention to get you to the cart page.
Speaker:The cart page is the expectation.
Speaker:I'm going to give you a payment information.
Speaker:And the cart page is going to look like it's got
Speaker:some authority to it,
Speaker:and it's going to take your credit card and make it
Speaker:a smooth process and eventually get to a thank you page,
Speaker:et cetera,
Speaker:et cetera.
Speaker:So in the farmer's market example,
Speaker:you might be doing the exact same communication and both the
Speaker:craft fair.
Speaker:And this is kind of a fascinating example because it's offline,
Speaker:which I love.
Speaker:So it's to get the craft fair model,
Speaker:you've got the farmer's market model,
Speaker:you're doing the same thing to both markets.
Speaker:But to your point,
Speaker:the mindset is very different of a farmer's market person,
Speaker:because they're all about the relationship and the craft beer person.
Speaker:Cause maybe they're all a little bit more about research and
Speaker:inspiration. And they're naturally going to go to the site more
Speaker:often. So the farmer's market one,
Speaker:you can go,
Speaker:well, I'm going to sell out in the farmer's market and
Speaker:I'm not going to get a lot of organic,
Speaker:at least doing it the way I'm currently doing it because
Speaker:they're not likely to do that.
Speaker:However, what if I gave all of those people who bought
Speaker:a little thing that said,
Speaker:Hey, go to the site and leave me a review.
Speaker:And if you can do that within three days,
Speaker:I'll give you like this little mini candle bonus or something,
Speaker:right? Some reason to leave,
Speaker:or now you're giving your buyers a reason to go to
Speaker:this site so they can sign ups and get them on
Speaker:a list or whatever.
Speaker:And they're leaving reviews,
Speaker:which is now going to help for the craft fair.
Speaker:People were coming over to investigate.
Speaker:And now you're leveraging the same activity of farmer's market.
Speaker:So even though you may be getting sales from them directly,
Speaker:you are getting other things from them,
Speaker:encouraging that way.
Speaker:And that's the beauty of measurement because it could have been
Speaker:that farmer's markets worked just like craft markets or craft fairs
Speaker:do, in which case you're like,
Speaker:cool. I like doing both,
Speaker:but if it's not,
Speaker:you go,
Speaker:what else can I do?
Speaker:How can I adjust the conversation that I'm having to get
Speaker:them to do something different and something that's going to be
Speaker:a little more useful for the brand that you're managing.
Speaker:Yeah. And I love this example because you're using one to
Speaker:boost another two,
Speaker:Leveraging These aren't just separate entities.
Speaker:You can build them on top of each other to strengthen
Speaker:the whole.
Speaker:Yeah. And again,
Speaker:it's all of a sudden you start realizing,
Speaker:wow, my marketing is it's pretty good.
Speaker:Marketing gets a pretty good plan.
Speaker:And you can pull drone at a mastermind group when you're
Speaker:talking with your friends.
Speaker:Right. And they're saying,
Speaker:well, what are you guys doing?
Speaker:Here's how we do it.
Speaker:We go to farmer's markets and we do this.
Speaker:And that ties into this and that knocks down this domino.
Speaker:And that's what causes this to happen.
Speaker:And you can measure for all of it.
Speaker:You'll know if it's working or not.
Speaker:That's the beauty,
Speaker:because if they don't come to that specific page,
Speaker:you set up for them to do testimonials.
Speaker:You will see it.
Speaker:Analytics will say,
Speaker:yeah, nobody showed up this week and you'll see it.
Speaker:And you're like,
Speaker:okay, well that,
Speaker:wasn't it.
Speaker:Let me try something else.
Speaker:Right. But that's the beauty is you don't have to guess.
Speaker:You don't have to hope.
Speaker:You don't have to randomly know with the called random acts
Speaker:of marketing.
Speaker:You don't have to try that.
Speaker:You just know like,
Speaker:oh, it's this one part I have to figure out.
Speaker:And you can focus all your energy and resources on the
Speaker:part that is most likely going to move the needle.
Speaker:It's like a puzzle instead of guessing all the time.
Speaker:Right? It's a lot more fun to figure out how to
Speaker:put a puzzle together than it is randomly guests,
Speaker:your way to success too.
Speaker:Especially when it's a picture that I really like When it's
Speaker:a picture that you've created.
Speaker:Exactly. Right.
Speaker:Yeah. So,
Speaker:all right.
Speaker:So all of this happens in Google analytics and if you
Speaker:don't have Google analytics already connected to your website,
Speaker:everyone just go and start doing that because it starts gathering
Speaker:data. Whether you're looking at it or not.
Speaker:Right, Chris,
Speaker:Absolutely. It'll start.
Speaker:As soon as you activate it,
Speaker:it will start collecting some information.
Speaker:Now it won't be perfect.
Speaker:Again, this is like the blurry version of the glasses,
Speaker:right? The prescription.
Speaker:But it will be better than not knowing anything At all.
Speaker:You got the glasses on.
Speaker:Exactly. You got the glasses on and then eventually you can
Speaker:get used to it.
Speaker:Then you start learning how to actually set it up,
Speaker:how to educate it and train it.
Speaker:So that knows how to tell your story.
Speaker:And then it gets better and better.
Speaker:And I'll give you an example again,
Speaker:for the people who are like,
Speaker:I, I'm just not a numbers person.
Speaker:You don't understand.
Speaker:I'm not a data person.
Speaker:So if I gave you,
Speaker:if I gave you Sue a children's book,
Speaker:and I said,
Speaker:read this Charles' book to me,
Speaker:it was like Goldilocks three bears.
Speaker:Chances are,
Speaker:you could read that pretty easily.
Speaker:Now you hand me back the book,
Speaker:I rip out the pages and I rip those pages into
Speaker:pieces. And then I put them on between the covers of
Speaker:the book.
Speaker:And I hand you back the book and I say,
Speaker:read me the story.
Speaker:Now, could you read the story?
Speaker:The answer is,
Speaker:yes, you could,
Speaker:because I did not change our ability to read.
Speaker:You're still a good reader.
Speaker:It's just that I made it a lot harder because everything's
Speaker:kind of split up in different puzzle pieces.
Speaker:And you got to figure out all the different pages and
Speaker:paste them together.
Speaker:And this is going to take you a lot longer,
Speaker:but you can definitely read that story.
Speaker:It's going to take forever and probably get frustrated.
Speaker:Google analytics,
Speaker:when it's first turned on is kind of like a bunch
Speaker:of ripped up pages.
Speaker:It's got a bunch of data.
Speaker:It's got a bunch of stuff coming in from left,
Speaker:right. And sideways.
Speaker:And it's not really trained yet.
Speaker:You haven't pasted it together.
Speaker:You haven't taught it to tell you a story.
Speaker:And so when you first started,
Speaker:and this is for the people who have like,
Speaker:no, I've tried analytics before,
Speaker:but you probably just turned it on when you meaning you
Speaker:activated it,
Speaker:it got a bunch of data.
Speaker:And then you try to use that data to make decisions.
Speaker:It's not quite ready right away to do that.
Speaker:You want to learn how to use the reports.
Speaker:If you're starting out,
Speaker:learn the source medium report.
Speaker:If you just learn that one report,
Speaker:it will solve 80% of your questions that you have.
Speaker:So does something called the source media report,
Speaker:get good at that one and then figure out how do
Speaker:I make this report even better?
Speaker:And that's where you'll learn stuff like,
Speaker:oh, UTMs.
Speaker:I can identify my traffic sources a little better.
Speaker:I can do some cool things with that.
Speaker:Oh, I'm going to set some goals in Google analytics.
Speaker:So I can identify which traffic sources are good at making
Speaker:people aware of my candles,
Speaker:which traffic sources are good at actually selling candles because they
Speaker:may be different.
Speaker:And then you start to really level things up and you
Speaker:get more into it.
Speaker:And the tool again,
Speaker:naturally tells you a story.
Speaker:It can be very much like reading a kid's book,
Speaker:but you got to put the pages together first.
Speaker:And that's the trick that most people just don't realize they
Speaker:used to do.
Speaker:Yup. That's a perfect example because I think we've got a
Speaker:lot of people here who have the cover of the book
Speaker:with all the little pieces inside.
Speaker:And they think to themselves,
Speaker:I'm not a good reader,
Speaker:which is sad because they are,
Speaker:they just haven't put the pieces together.
Speaker:That's all it is for sure.
Speaker:What is Google tag manager?
Speaker:Great question.
Speaker:So tag manager is definitely for that level up when somebody
Speaker:is kind of used analytics and they've got analytics set up,
Speaker:but by default,
Speaker:if we think about measurement in general measurements,
Speaker:really doing three things,
Speaker:first, you sort of collect the information that you need to
Speaker:get to get the answers you were asking,
Speaker:right? So you have to collect that you need a tool
Speaker:that collects it.
Speaker:You need a tool that then stores that somewhere and you
Speaker:need a tool that builds reports.
Speaker:So you can actually see it.
Speaker:Google analytics does all three by default,
Speaker:it collects basic information.
Speaker:It collects,
Speaker:it stores that information in its database,
Speaker:and then it has reports.
Speaker:And that's really where as users,
Speaker:that's where we use it.
Speaker:We're interacting with the report side of things.
Speaker:So that's what it does all three,
Speaker:but it collects basic behaviors.
Speaker:It doesn't collect very specific behaviors.
Speaker:And here's an example.
Speaker:It will collect when they see a page,
Speaker:let's say like your about page,
Speaker:but it cannot really tell us without some advanced developers coming
Speaker:in. It can't really tell us,
Speaker:did they scroll down to the about page and look at
Speaker:the testimonials where people were leaving reviews about how good we
Speaker:were for at least.
Speaker:Did they look at that section for 13 seconds?
Speaker:It cannot tell you that.
Speaker:But tag manager can.
Speaker:So tag manager is a platform that Google created that said,
Speaker:listen, we know Google analytics is kind of limited.
Speaker:It's good for basic stuff for sure.
Speaker:But there's a lot of people who want to know about
Speaker:more advanced behaviors,
Speaker:not just did they load the page,
Speaker:but did they scroll down to a certain point of time?
Speaker:Did they stick around on that page for a certain number
Speaker:of seconds?
Speaker:Did they look at a particular page or interact with a
Speaker:particular widget on that page?
Speaker:Like a video,
Speaker:or did they listen to the podcast?
Speaker:Like the player,
Speaker:audio player,
Speaker:that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Did they interact with our pictures on our Shopify store?
Speaker:Right? You can measure for that sort of thing.
Speaker:And they needed a platform that could do that easily so
Speaker:that marketers could use it.
Speaker:Not just that you had to get a developer to do
Speaker:it. That was tag manager.
Speaker:So tag manager is created as a tool that is built
Speaker:to collect information.
Speaker:And it's really good at that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Like, Hey,
Speaker:I want to know how many people saw my candle pictures
Speaker:and at least clicked on three different pictures.
Speaker:Tag manager can tell you that.
Speaker:And then you tell tag manager when you have that information,
Speaker:send it to Google analytics and then Google analytics stores,
Speaker:but that information in its database.
Speaker:And so that's how these two platforms work together.
Speaker:So tag managers,
Speaker:when you level up and you want to get better at
Speaker:collecting more specific behaviors that are happening on your site,
Speaker:way beyond page views,
Speaker:if you just need page use analytics is fine.
Speaker:If you're just starting out,
Speaker:you only need pages.
Speaker:I promise get used to that level first.
Speaker:Then eventually you ask bigger questions where you require more specific
Speaker:behaviors to be collected.
Speaker:At that point,
Speaker:you've now grown out of your current implementation and you move
Speaker:into something like tag manager adding into the stack.
Speaker:And so you add in tag manager to collect behaviors,
Speaker:you then have Google analytics storing those behaviors in its database.
Speaker:And then let's,
Speaker:I'm going to ask them this,
Speaker:but I'm going to volunteer it.
Speaker:There is another platform that's called data studio that you may
Speaker:have heard about data studio is on the opposite end.
Speaker:It doesn't collect anything and it doesn't store anything,
Speaker:but it is really good at reports.
Speaker:And it's very good at visual reports.
Speaker:So like in our case,
Speaker:I don't have data tables that I look at it I'm
Speaker:comfortable with numbers,
Speaker:but I do not want to stare at a spreadsheet all
Speaker:day long.
Speaker:So I like kind of like,
Speaker:it looks like a flow chart.
Speaker:Whereas here's people that saw step one,
Speaker:here's the people that saw the card.
Speaker:Here's the people that bought.
Speaker:And I can see a flow chart of all that happening.
Speaker:That's because of data studio.
Speaker:So tag manager collects all the behaviors that we want to
Speaker:collect on the site so we can see how the conversation
Speaker:is that the users are having,
Speaker:it sends all that information to Google analytics,
Speaker:which stores it because Google analytics is absolutely amazing at storing.
Speaker:It sits there to store behaviors and then data studio hooks
Speaker:into Google analytics and builds my dashboard.
Speaker:And then that's what I see as the end-user I come
Speaker:in and I look at the dashboards and that tells me
Speaker:what's working and what's not.
Speaker:And if the thing is working,
Speaker:the conversation is going the way that I expect that it
Speaker:should be going.
Speaker:So that's how those three platforms work together.
Speaker:Tag manager,
Speaker:analytics and data studio all completely free.
Speaker:Thank you Google.
Speaker:But remember if you're not doing any of them,
Speaker:just start with analytics because you build your muscles there and
Speaker:then you grow into the other two.
Speaker:Yeah. Don't get overwhelmed.
Speaker:Start small,
Speaker:or get comfortable with a certain level.
Speaker:And then you can add on top.
Speaker:Good enough to get Going.
Speaker:Yeah. And none of this helps us at all.
Speaker:Even if it's free,
Speaker:if we're not looking at it or using it a hundred
Speaker:percent, right?
Speaker:Yep. Yeah,
Speaker:for sure.
Speaker:Okay. So as we're winding down here,
Speaker:what are a couple of common mistakes you'll see people make,
Speaker:so I want to intercept those for people who are gonna,
Speaker:they've gotten interested here and they're jumping off and are ready
Speaker:to do something.
Speaker:What are some things you would caution people about?
Speaker:I would caution people for sure.
Speaker:Doing too much too soon.
Speaker:That's what most people try to do because they see what's
Speaker:possible. And they start going like,
Speaker:oh, well,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:I heard this guy talking on a podcast and Mercer was
Speaker:saying that,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:I could measure how many people were looking at a specific
Speaker:part of a page.
Speaker:And that would be great if I could do that.
Speaker:So I'm going to start doing that even though I haven't
Speaker:used analytics at all.
Speaker:So now you have to learn tag manager and Google analytics,
Speaker:and you got to know UTMs and you gotta know goals
Speaker:and you gotta know event tracking.
Speaker:And now all of a sudden you're going,
Speaker:oh my God,
Speaker:it's too much.
Speaker:And you're right there is.
Speaker:And you're never going to get it done because what'll happen
Speaker:is you'll get busy.
Speaker:You'll go down the weeds and you'll never get any progress
Speaker:made because you bite enough more than you can chew,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:to use another turn of phrase.
Speaker:So just get good enough to get going,
Speaker:answer the questions that you're currently asking.
Speaker:There will always be time to answer bigger questions,
Speaker:and those will naturally happen.
Speaker:As long as you're asking Results in how questions you'll ask
Speaker:bigger results and how questions the next time you go through
Speaker:it. And then you'll ask even bigger results in our questions
Speaker:and you will naturally grow into that.
Speaker:So that's the first thing don't bite off more than you
Speaker:can chew,
Speaker:get good enough to get going and just focus on that
Speaker:one thing.
Speaker:I'm going to build the skill.
Speaker:I'm going to learn UTMs.
Speaker:And that's all I'm going to do for this week.
Speaker:And you practice UTMs with your emails or something like that.
Speaker:Or you just turn on analytics if you're not using analytics.
Speaker:So that sort of thing,
Speaker:one thing at a time,
Speaker:very tiny bites,
Speaker:good enough to get going.
Speaker:The second piece of advice would be mindset,
Speaker:which is don't discount.
Speaker:The tendency is I'm not going to figure this out.
Speaker:I'm not the type of person who can figure this out.
Speaker:And that's like you telling me,
Speaker:I know,
Speaker:but I can never read.
Speaker:I don't care who you are.
Speaker:You can learn how to read.
Speaker:You can do it.
Speaker:There's you might have to learn differently than somebody has learned
Speaker:it, but you can learn how to read.
Speaker:And it might take you a little longer sometimes,
Speaker:but you can learn how to do it.
Speaker:And the only difference is you have to use a different
Speaker:framework or a different model or different recipe to get there
Speaker:then maybe,
Speaker:but somebody else did.
Speaker:And that's the,
Speaker:you know,
Speaker:the shame of self-promotion,
Speaker:that's what we're good at.
Speaker:We're good at helping people,
Speaker:teaching them in different ways,
Speaker:because what works for one may not work for another.
Speaker:And so that's why we have instructors that can kind of
Speaker:do a lot of handholding.
Speaker:And it's important to have somebody in your corner,
Speaker:but if you don't believe that you can,
Speaker:then you won't right.
Speaker:And so it's important to think,
Speaker:you know what?
Speaker:I just haven't done it in the way that's worked in
Speaker:the past,
Speaker:but that doesn't mean that I'm a bad reader,
Speaker:going back to the stories,
Speaker:right? That kid's storybook.
Speaker:It doesn't mean that I'm a bad reader.
Speaker:Just means the puzzle pieces are ripped up.
Speaker:Of course,
Speaker:it's going to be harder to read.
Speaker:So first in order to read a book,
Speaker:I have to learn how to put the pages together.
Speaker:Then I can read the book pretty easily,
Speaker:you know?
Speaker:And that's exactly what it's like when it comes to this
Speaker:number of stops.
Speaker:Those would be the two biggest pieces of advice I have
Speaker:for people starting out.
Speaker:Okay. Well,
Speaker:I mean,
Speaker:you've clearly demonstrated here and done a marvelous job of explaining,
Speaker:giving us some steps,
Speaker:showing us some examples of how this could really work to
Speaker:our benefit.
Speaker:So how would we learn more?
Speaker:You have classes,
Speaker:you have people tell us that I want to talk with
Speaker:you more Mercer.
Speaker:How do I do that?
Speaker:Because I mentioned earlier,
Speaker:our flagship program is called the measure marketing academy.
Speaker:It's kind of a do it yourself.
Speaker:It's a just in time learning platform is how we mentioned
Speaker:that because we create content faster than anybody could ever watch
Speaker:it. We've got new videos every week.
Speaker:We do courses every month.
Speaker:It's a crazy amount of content.
Speaker:And it's not one of those platforms where you come in
Speaker:and watch everything cause you won't be able to.
Speaker:But the idea is that no matter where you are,
Speaker:if you're in the cave or if you're in the valley,
Speaker:or if you're in the summit,
Speaker:when we talked about those three stages of measurement,
Speaker:you can come in,
Speaker:learn these tools for the stage that you're at,
Speaker:so that you can get to the next stage.
Speaker:And then we have dedicated instructors that are there because I
Speaker:think that's the biggest piece that's missing because let's face it.
Speaker:You can go to YouTube and watch a million videos on
Speaker:how to do this stuff.
Speaker:We've got a YouTube channel you can go to and watch,
Speaker:but there's not the support there.
Speaker:You can't go to an instructor and say,
Speaker:Hey, listen,
Speaker:this video is a year old.
Speaker:And so it looks different now,
Speaker:which it does this stuff changes all the time.
Speaker:So you want an instructor that can go to and say,
Speaker:Hey, let me just create a video and you can set
Speaker:our structures,
Speaker:videos, and then we'll send videos back.
Speaker:It's kind of like having a consultant on call.
Speaker:It's like a whole other level of support.
Speaker:So the academy,
Speaker:if you're interested in really learning as I would definitely encourage
Speaker:people to do that better marketing academy,
Speaker:which you can find out more,
Speaker:just go to measure marketing to IO and you can see
Speaker:that. But the other thing that if somebody just goes back
Speaker:to your point of like,
Speaker:oh, I'm not really sure if I'm ready for this.
Speaker:And I want to kind of get an idea of the
Speaker:training that they have and kind of sample some stuff.
Speaker:We have a free level of our membership,
Speaker:what we call the toolbox membership.
Speaker:And that is where we do weekly training.
Speaker:So some of it's a little more advanced.
Speaker:Some of it's a little simple,
Speaker:cause obviously it's a little bit for everybody,
Speaker:but you can get back there and you can see every
Speaker:week there's a new training that would apply to you.
Speaker:So at least once a month you have something that'll be
Speaker:of interest.
Speaker:And then we give you all of the tools.
Speaker:We've created a lot of our tools for our members and
Speaker:we give all those out to our free members as well.
Speaker:So there's one called the traffic tracking toolkit,
Speaker:which would be the one that would definitely focus on.
Speaker:If anybody's first starting out,
Speaker:it'll teach the whole UTM thing to you and help you
Speaker:organize and plan that out.
Speaker:So that's the toolbox in order to get that,
Speaker:just go to measurement,
Speaker:marketing.io forward slash gift biz to do that.
Speaker:And again,
Speaker:the reason I'm saying go to measurement,
Speaker:marketing.io forward slash gift biz is because when you do that,
Speaker:you will see in the URL of your browser.
Speaker:When you look at it that it's taking you to a
Speaker:different page,
Speaker:it's what they call a redirect.
Speaker:It's taking you to a different page,
Speaker:which is the toolbox page.
Speaker:And you will see those UTMs where we say,
Speaker:oh, okay,
Speaker:I got it.
Speaker:I know him from this podcast.
Speaker:It was podcast traffic.
Speaker:It was one that we recorded in July,
Speaker:2021. And we see all of these different details coming through
Speaker:that tells us yes,
Speaker:podcast traffic is working the way it's supposed to,
Speaker:or it's not.
Speaker:We'll see that.
Speaker:And that's because of those UTMs.
Speaker:So it's another example.
Speaker:Even if you don't get the toolbox membership,
Speaker:at least see that redirect working because you can see what
Speaker:I'm talking about when it's like,
Speaker:that's how you would track or measure it a farmer's market,
Speaker:right. Or if you're speaking in a live event or at
Speaker:a craft fair craft show of some sort,
Speaker:that's how you would measure for that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Right? Cause it gives you the target that they need to
Speaker:land on that then is the ticker for the measurement.
Speaker:And it identifies exactly identifies.
Speaker:It came from podcasts,
Speaker:which otherwise you wouldn't be able to measure.
Speaker:Right. It doesn't do that by default.
Speaker:That's something where customers.
Speaker:Yeah. Okay.
Speaker:You guys make me proud.
Speaker:I want to know you're investing in your business and actually
Speaker:doing all of this.
Speaker:So you're going to go to measurement marketing.io
Speaker:forward slash gift biz.
Speaker:And of course,
Speaker:all of this will be over in the show notes as
Speaker:well. This is amazing.
Speaker:It's so enlightening to see all of these things that are
Speaker:available for us at our fingertips free to use with also
Speaker:guidance from you.
Speaker:Some handholding,
Speaker:if we need it,
Speaker:all of this.
Speaker:So I mean,
Speaker:Mercer, what you've put together is absolutely amazing.
Speaker:I, for 1:00 AM committing to being better at this,
Speaker:cause I know I should be.
Speaker:And now's the time because you have sparked my interest and
Speaker:excitement about this.
Speaker:I'm really looking forward to what this can do.
Speaker:I'll Steady.
Speaker:I can't wait.
Speaker:Yeah. Amazing.
Speaker:And Mercer,
Speaker:thank you so much for being on the show today.
Speaker:I appreciate it.
Speaker:Thanks again.
Speaker:And hopefully ever gets a little value.
Speaker:Remember, just get good enough to get going.
Speaker:Okay. No messing around here.
Speaker:Step one,
Speaker:go to measurement marketing.io
Speaker:forward slash gift biz and grab the free download available for
Speaker:you right now.
Speaker:Second, get Google analytics connected to your website,
Speaker:even if you're not using it yet,
Speaker:because right away it will begin capturing valuable information.
Speaker:Then go back,
Speaker:listen to this all over again and create one simple question
Speaker:you want answered because you see understanding real customer behavior through
Speaker:live data is going to lead you to make adjustments that
Speaker:will allow you to truly move the needle in your business.
Speaker:Keep in mind what Mercer said,
Speaker:start small and easy.
Speaker:And then you can ask more complex questions later.
Speaker:The whole point is to get started.
Speaker:So please don't just listen to this show and then be
Speaker:done. Move on to something else.
Speaker:The information has been served to you.
Speaker:Now it's up to you to do something with it next
Speaker:week. We're building on what we talked about a couple of
Speaker:weeks ago,
Speaker:subscription boxes.
Speaker:That was episode 338,
Speaker:where we talked all about getting your product into a box
Speaker:or setting up a subscription box business of your own.
Speaker:Our show coming up next is about one of our very
Speaker:own gift biz Breezers doing just that next Saturday.
Speaker:Make sure to tune in.
Speaker:Thanks so much for spending time with me today.
Speaker:Be safe and well.
Speaker:And I'll see you again next week on the gift biz
Speaker:unwrapped podcast.
Speaker:I want to make sure you're familiar with my free Facebook
Speaker:group called gift is free.
Speaker:It's a place where we all gather and our community to
Speaker:support each other.
Speaker:Got a really fun post in there.
Speaker:That's my favorite of the week.
Speaker:I have to say where I invite all of you to
Speaker:share what you're doing to show pictures of your product,
Speaker:to show what you're working on for the week to get
Speaker:reaction from other people and just for fun,
Speaker:because we all get to see the wonderful products that everybody
Speaker:in the community is making my favorite post every single week,
Speaker:without doubt.
Speaker:Wait, what,
Speaker:aren't you part of the group already,
Speaker:if not make sure to jump over to Facebook and search
Speaker:for the group gift biz breeze don't delay.