strategy Archives - McLellan Marketing Group

2021 Planning Deconstructed

September 23, 2020

Big, small, for-profit, or not for profit – every organization needs a marketing plan, and that marketing plan requires a refresh every year. Now is the time to get your ducks in a row for 2021. The channels, audience expectations, and possibilities are changing faster than we can keep pace. A three-year-old marketing plan is absolutely obsolete.

Many businesses don’t even venture down the marketing plan route because they assume it has to be complicated and complex. The truth is, for most companies, even if they had such a plan, they wouldn’t execute against it because it had too many bells and whistles. I’d much rather see you oversimplify your plan and actually use it.

I want to look at the big picture vision of your marketing plan. If I asked you how confident you were that you could hop in your car and get to the destination, what’s the first thing you would say? It depends on the destination! If it’s Minneapolis, no problem. If it is Hong Kong, we have an issue. In that context, it seems absurd that I would ask you to get to an undisclosed destination, and yet that’s how many businesses run.

Without a doubt, the most crucial element of your 2021 marketing plan is the defined destinations. I use the plural because every plan should have more than one. Ask yourself these questions to define where you’re headed.

What metric will best define success when it comes to new customers for my business? Don’t assume it’s about more. It might be about bigger. Or a different composition. Or a whole new segment.

What metric will best define success when it comes to current customers of my business? Is it that they stay longer (retention)? It could also be that you have a bigger share of their wallet/spend. It might not have anything to do with sales. It could be that they become a more vocal, insistent referral source or an active source of five-star reviews and ratings.

What metric will define success when you look at your department or company’s workforce? It could be tied to improvements and enhancements in their skills or knowledge. For many businesses, the retention of key employees might be vital to a healthy 2021.

Finally, you need to define success in terms of your actual products and services. You might be planning on launching something new in 2021. Or you may want to have more of your customers using a specific service or bundle of products. Success may be tied to how many products or services your average customer buys.

Once you have defined success in these four core areas, you can begin to identify the potential barriers to achieving those goals. Is it a lack of awareness? Price issues? A competitive advantage that you don’t currently have?

If you can’t identify the potential barriers, you have some work to do before you can decide which marketing tactics will help you. It makes no sense to execute marketing if you don’t understand both where you are trying to go and what’s in the way of you getting there.

The more specific your answers, the better. Don’t just say the marketplace is crowded. List the key competitors and their position or influence on the market. Don’t just say your customers are hard to reach. Define what is in between you and that decision-maker.

If you put in the time and effort in these four core areas, I promise that you will have a great start on a marketing plan that you can dive right into executing.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Are you ready to pivot?

May 20, 2020

Iowa is readying itself to reopen for business, and some parts of the state have already done so. But just because people can dine out, stroll through mall stores, or start holding face-to-face sales meetings does not mean that they will.

If the behavior of consumers and business buyers in other countries and states that are ahead of us is any indication, our return to what we define as normal will be slow at best.

And even if your customers come flocking back in droves on day one, how they come back, how many come back at once, and how you interact are all going to require, at the very least, a temporary change or pivot.

Many B2C and B2B consumers are saying that they’re not ready to go back out into the world as before. They’re going to continue to either stay at home or only go out or have contact with others when it feels essential.

Are you ready? Depending on what you sell, you may have to look at adopting and adapting to some of the shifts that we’ve watched other businesses make as they worked to continue to serve their customer base through the pandemic.

E-delivery: Are you used to sitting at a conference room table with your prospects and clients? Is that face-to-face contact how you sell or how you deliver your products or services? Many businesses that believed face-to-face was the only option have been forced to admit that there is another way. It may not be the ideal way to deliver what you do – but it may be more convenient for your customers, and they may not be excited to go back to the old way, at least for a bit.

Reaching the end-users: Many brands who have worked through distribution channels in the past have used COVID-19 as an incentive to connect directly with their end-users. If you typically sell through a dealer network or some other intermediary, you may want to consider augmenting your marketing and brand activation to include those end-users who are looking for brands to believe in.

Contactless delivery/concierge offerings: This is one of the business pivots that I suspect will last long after C-19 is gone for good. We have all gotten very used to everything being delivered to our front door. For some businesses, like Pizza Hut or Amazon, this has been their model from their inception, but now just about everyone is delivering or modifying their product or service so you can take advantage of it without ever leaving the convenience of your home or office.

Now would be a brilliant time to survey your customers to ask them what elements of how you’ve worked together for the last two months will still be appealing once we open back up. Odds are, you’ve bent over backward to be accommodating during the crisis. It’s highly unlikely that your clients are going to be excited if you go backward and are less accommodating as we work our way back to a post-COVID reality. Why not allow them to help you shape the future of what you sell, how you sell it, and how you deliver it?

There are two irrefutable truths to this moment in time. The first is: It will pass. The second is: It will change us in many ways forever, including the work we do, who we do it for, and how we do it.

Now is the exact right time to be having these exploratory conversations with your team and your customers. Who knows? Maybe the new normal will make you even more valuable and more essential to the people you serve.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

The new rules of engagement

May 13, 2020

Previously, we looked at the results of choosing to advertise or not during economic downturns, and the results were pretty clear. Decade after decade, there was data that showed the brands that continued to communicate with their prospects and customers during a recession or the depression came out of that time with a stronger position, a dominant position in their category and were able to rebound much faster than the brands who stayed silent.

We know you should be talking to your prospects and customers, but how do you do that with sensitivity to the current situation and in a way that your audience is actually receptive to hearing?

Now is not the time for a hard sell. But that doesn’t mean you should be silent. Here are the core tenants we should be wrapping our communication around right now.

Informative: Now is the time for us to keep every stakeholder informed. Don’t forget how vital your internal team is at this point. You can’t over-communicate with them. This is a time of uncertainty, which is disconcerting. The more certainty you can provide by consistent communication, the better.

Service-oriented: Be one of the helpers that everyone is looking for right now. How can you and your organization serve the community? You can and should be sharing useful information, tools, and services. Don’t be shy about inviting your customers to participate in your acts of service. Everyone is looking for a meaningful way to give back.

Sincere and transparent: Everyone is on edge and highly sensitive to anyone trying to take advantage of the current crisis. Be very clear about your offers, motives, and any small print. Do not leave anything up for interpretation. You can lose your most loyal client right now if they misunderstand.

Emotionally intelligent: I’d like to think we’d always be sensitive about our audience’s current state, but it is mandatory right now. You don’t need to go on and on about the crisis. You don’t need to use up two-thirds of your message to thank others. You don’t need sad, somber music. But you do need to be mindful that everyone is feeling less certain, more tender, and a little tentative.

Flexible: Payment terms, pricing options, delivery models – everything in our world is upside down right now. You’re going to need to find ways to zig where you used to zag. There’s a silver lining to this demand for flexibility. It’s like a free research project. Pay attention to the new offerings that get the biggest positive response from your prospects and customers. Some of what we’re doing for clients now because of C19 is going to stick. It may make what you do even more desirable.

Generous: This isn’t so much about your pricing; it’s much more related to your attitude and spirit. Everyone around us is on an emotional tightwire. Things set them off faster; they’re quicker to judgment and emotional extremes. As you communicate with your team, your customers, and your potential customers – tread lightly. Be generous with yourself. Now is not the time for corporate speak or being inflexible around the rules.

The biggest mistake you can make right now is to stay silent. Your employees, clients, and the people who would benefit from what you do all need to know you’re there. Your marketing needs to reassure them all that you’re stable, and you’re ready to help. It’s time to prove your leadership position by stepping out and stepping up.

The second biggest mistake is to communicate or sell in a tone-deaf way that suggests you’re not re-tooling how you’re doing business, given the world’s reality. Weave these five tenants through all of your marketing to ensure your audience can actually hear you.

Originally published in The Des Moines Business Record as part of Drew’s weekly column series.

Not if but when

May 6, 2020

Sooner or later, every business will need to get back to marketing and selling their offerings. Working from home or no working from home, new case counts, or no new case counts, mask or no masks – our businesses cannot survive silence for too long.

Today, let’s deal with the when question.

Here in the US, we’ve been dealing with COVID-19 for anywhere between six and eight weeks, depending on where in the country you are. For Iowans, it’s been about six weeks since businesses started shifting to work from home, restaurants began to close, and we were all focused on learning as much as we could about this infectious virus and how it was changing our world.

The first phase, which is when we’re experiencing the community outbreak of the virus, is winding down. That’s not to say it’s entirely over, just that we’re moving from crisis to containment efforts.

Until now, it’s felt a little inappropriate to market or sell. But that didn’t mean we should have gone silent. As we’ve discussed previously, we needed to shift our marketing messages to messages of education, community service, and just being helpful. That was true on your social channels, any paid advertising you’ve done, and your website content.

There’s no doubt that the recession most of us have been waiting for over the past two years is now here. How deep of a recession or how long it will last are questions that are above our paygrade, but as business owners and leaders, we have our marching orders — to do all we can to make sure we weather the recession and come out on the other end.

The good news on that front is we have plenty of data that shows us how to handle marketing during a recession. Let’s look back over the country’s history and our past recessions.

1920s: A study was published in the Harvard Business Review in 1927 that shows that companies that continued to advertise during the downturn, were 20% ahead of their pre-recession market share position. Companies that reduced their activity lost over 7% of their market share.

1940s-60s: A study that tracked advertising dollars vs. sales trends for the recessions during this period (1949, 1954, 1958 and 1961) showed that both sales and profits dropped for the companies who cut back on their marketing. Even after the recessions ended, the companies continued to lag behind their competitors, who kept their marketing active during the downturn.

1980s: McGraw-Hill Research analyzed 600 B2B companies and found that the companies that maintained or increased their advertising grew, not only during the recession but for up to three years later. Within the study, companies who advertised aggressively had grown 275% over those that did not.

1990s: A MarketSense study showed that the best strategy for growth during a recession was to invest in building your brand equity (long-term) and promotional short-term sales offerings. Employing this strategy, Kraft Salad Dressing experienced 70% sales growth.

2000s: Harvard Business School studied 4,700 public companies that looked at their performance during the 1980, 1990, and 2000 recessions. The companies (like Target) who increased marketing/sales expenditures and their capital spending while working hard to cut costs and improve productivity, flourished.

Decade after decade of proof tells us that we need to keep marketing during the recession. We have to be talking to our prospects and customers. In the future, we’ll explore the nuances of what we say and how we say it. But in this case, silence is clearly not golden.

Originally published in The Des Moines Business Record as part of Drew’s weekly column series.

Go Old School – Email Marketing

March 11, 2020

Even though it seems a little old school in the days of virtual reality, artificial intelligence and bots – email marketing is still one of the most effective marketing tactics available to us. A recent study by SmartFocus looked at over 1.4 billion email marketing messages to identify best practices to drive engagement and customer impact. Let’s take a look at what some of those are:

If you want your audience to take action, click on a link or respond to an offer, then Tuesday should be the day you launch your campaign. The study revealed that click-through rates were 30 percent higher than other days.
If you’re sending out a more educational, informative email and don’t care if your audience clicks on anything in your correspondence, Sunday is your go-to day.
The time of day was also reviewed in this study. Interestingly, most marketing emails were opened between six and nine pm. And the time that was least likely to lead to an unsubscribe was 6:30 pm.

Naturally, when you send the email is just one element of a successful email campaign. If you send the wrong content or take the wrong tone, even sending it at the perfect time won’t help. Here are some other best practices that you should keep in mind as you plan your campaign.

Create a relationship: Email can be a reliable way to actually create a relationship between you and your audience. But that requires consistency. Have you ever known someone who only reaches out to you when they need something? That’s what your sales emails feel like to your audience if that’s the only time you write to them.

If you’re going to write on a consistent basis, be sure you invite your audience to write back or to generate more of a dialogue. It’s pretty tough to feel connected to someone if the conversation is just one way.

Be mindful of your tone of voice in your emails as well. A super formal tone isn’t going to help you create a connection. The biggest compliment you can get when you finally meet someone on your email list is that you sound just like your correspondence. That means you’ve successfully adopted a conversational tone in your emails.

Be interesting: Sure, you’re interested in your sale. But your audience may not be. Never hit send if you aren’t confident that your content is going to be useful, interesting or entertaining to your recipients.

The only way to be interesting to anyone is to know them a little bit and put them front and center before you communicate. Building personas of your audience is a really smart way to make sure that your content is truly aimed at being beneficial to them. Personas help you think of your audience in a more personal way – which makes it much easier to talk to them about topics that they actually care about.

Be generous: I know you are sending the emails because you want your audience to do something (click on a link, download a coupon, sign up for a free assessment, etc.) but before you ask, give. Be helpful without asking for anything in return. If you’re consistently providing value, they’ll stick around and eventually, they will be ready to shift from being the recipient of your generosity to a paying customer.

Email is one of the most effective marketing options that you have. But it can backfire in a hurry if you aren’t careful about how, where, how often and what you include in your communications. Think of your email list like your best pen pal. Find ways to create a genuine connection and keep nurturing it, so it can grow over time.

Email isn’t a quick fix, so be ready to settle in for a long, good conversation with a friend.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Watch the world change

February 19, 2020

Now that we’re a few months into the new year, I hope that you have more than begun to sketch out your plans for 2020 and beyond. As you push into 2020 and map out your plan for 2021, it’s a good time to channel your inner marketer and lean on your curiosity and imagination. You’re going to need them.

Think you don’t need to look ahead and anticipate how your world will change in the next year or two? Consider this: According to the World Economic Forum (in their report The Future of Jobs) 65% of the children entering primary school today, will end up working in completely new job types that do not yet exist.

Another example? According to Forbes, Airbnb is valued at about $25.5 billion, which is more than hotel giants Marriott ($20.90 billion), Starwood ($14 billion), and Wyndham ($10.01 billion). Hilton Worldwide is valued at $27.7 billion. Keep in mind — Airbnb doesn’t own a single hotel room.

The biggest mistake we can make as business leaders and marketers today is assuming that tomorrow will resemble today. That was probably never a wise position to take but today, it’s the kiss of death.

We must be purveyors of what’s coming next. We can’t afford to be surprised. In some cases, businesses have not survived being surprised.

If you want your curiosity and imagination to be firing on all cylinders, you need to keep feeding them new ideas and connections. This is especially true if you’re going to be considering what trends and cultural shifts might influence your company, your customers, your employees or the marketplace.

Here are some books, websites, and podcasts that will give you some additional food for thought as you march through 2020 and work on your 2021 plans.

Books

The Industries of the Future by Alec Ross
A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
Abundance by Diamonds & Kotler
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
The Inevitable: Understanding 12 Technological Forces that Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly
The Truth About Your Future by Ricin’s Edelman

Websites/enewsletters

Trendwatching.com
Trendhunter.com
Springwise.com
PSFK.com
JWTintelligence.com
TED.com
Coolhunting.com
Web.SparksandHoney.com

Podcasts

Trends with Benefits
Trend Following with Michael Covel
Small Business Trends
Stuff You Should Know

I’ve just scratched the surface but you should be able to find a handful of new resources here that will help you and your team explore what’s coming ahead and how you can take full advantage of it.

You might want to keep a few of these as a part of your daily diet. Things are not going to slow down any time soon.

Do you keep score?

February 5, 2020

In marketing, keeping score matters. There was a time when being funny or memorable was enough. Back then, there was an obvious line between marketing and sales and we marketing types didn’t need to worry as much about ROI.

Today, that’s how a CMO or agency gets fired. Every dollar spent needs to contribute to either increasing the bottom line or cost savings somewhere along the way. Big data and digital made it more possible and the recession made it mandatory. Knowing that we need to keep score is different from knowing how to keep score. It’s an area where mistakes are easy to make and expensive to fix.

No matter how large an organization is — no one has an infinite budget. Every dollar spent has to get the company closer to their defined finish line. That doesn’t always translate to more dollars. Sometimes the yield is that we learn something new about our prospects. Sometimes it’s that we get a repeat sale from a happy client. And often, it’s that we’ve moved a prospect a little further in the sales funnel towards their first purchase.

Marketing is an imprecise science for sure. But that doesn’t mean we can’t measure. To survive and thrive, we must start every new client relationship and project by defining what we are going to measure. If we don’t determine what success looks like, how will anyone know if/when we get there?

There are some obvious and easy to calculate metrics like new client relationships and an overall increase in sales and profits. New customers are a win for sure. But we need to dig a little deeper.

It’s easy to get so enamored with chasing after the prospects that it becomes a volume game. Unless you’re the Wal-Mart of your industry, it has to be more refined, or you’ll lose your shirt. If you cast the net too wide, it’s easy to catch prospects that are not a good long-term fit. Sometimes we forget how expensive those first sales can be. The win is exhilarating, but it’s costly. The real profit comes from cultivating an on-going relationship with someone that aligns with your brand and offerings, so they quickly become a repeat customer and a loud referral source. When you land a bunch of “one and done” sales, you can actually lose money in the long run because you never have the opportunity to level out the cost of acquisition.

That’s why you shouldn’t set those success metrics before you define who your ideal customer is and what they need and want from you. Take a look at your current client list. Identify which ones are the top 20% in terms of both profitability and repeat business. It isn’t helpful to build your target audience profile on the very profitable but very occasional client. It’s also not smart to create that profile based on the frequent buyer who cuts your margin too thin.

The other element of realistic goal setting is that your budget is going to have a significant impact on how quickly you can get to your goals. I know this sounds rather obvious, but you’d be amazed at how many organizations do not connect those two data points. It might be awesome to double your customer base, but if you have a meager budget, that’s going to take a while.

We have to keep score, there’s no doubt about that. But there are some pretty costly mistakes we can make if we don’t factor in the understanding that every customer is not a good customer and that the resources we have are going to play a significant role in timing. Combine those elements wisely, and you’ll be much closer to scoring a win.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Now can we get to work?

January 22, 2020

Well, here we are, a few weeks into January and everyone is raring to go and ready to work hard for a few weeks. Until some distraction surfaces to take your eye off the ball. And before you know it, it’s June 1st and the summer holiday hits with vacations, the 4th of July and company picnics and then it’s back to school and Labor Day. You would think that with the official wind down to Summer that, in theory, we would all be ramping up.

And in September, people will gear up. Until early November and then the holidays will be looming and people will say, “once Thanksgiving is over, we’re going to push hard to the end of the year.” About December 10th, people decide no one is listening to them anymore so they shut down for the rest of the year.

The reality is – whether it’s because several of your team are on vacation, or you’re traveling or it’s not your company’s peak season – we can excuse away going at half speed just about any time of the year and many people do.

It’s a little like dollar-cost average investing. If you wait for the optimum time to deliver your messages, advance your next project or launch something new – it will never happen. It’s impossible to time your marketing precisely. Sure, there’s a seasonality to some work and messaging, but for the most part, it’s about being in front of your key audiences every day, delivering help and insight whether they are actively listening or not.

How do you keep the momentum going, even with all of the holidays, vacations, Super Bowls, and general sports excitement going on all around us?

One of the answers to that question is to operate in sprints. A sprint is a defined period of time (typically 2-6 weeks) where the entire team is focused on a single objective or project. It doesn’t mean they stop doing their day-to-day jobs. It just means that the entire team is working together on a new initiative as well.

The beautiful thing about sprints is that they force us to take action. Many teams get stuck in the discussion/discovery stage and never seem to be able to move from talking to doing.

To work through a sprint, you need to include these five elements:

A set time frame for your sprint
A planning meeting to determine goals and assign roles
Daily stand up meetings to keep the team on track
A tracking system that everyone on the team can access and update. Keeping it visible (like a big whiteboard in your conference room) is ideal.
A post sprint review

Some best practices you should implement include:

Once you set the sprint’s length, you can’t change it. Otherwise, you will find yourself in one never-ending sprint as you allow excuses, distractions, and surprises derail your efforts.

You can’t kick off your sprint until you have SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-specific) goals defined.

In your daily stand up meetings (which should not last more than 10-15 minutes) each team member should quickly answer three questions. What did I do yesterday? What will I do today? Are there any issues/impediments that the team needs to know about?

A side benefit of working in sprints (all part of the scrum methodology) is that your team is likely to love their work even more. They feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in moving things forward.

The point of these sprints is that you and your team get into a groove every 2-6 weeks, regardless of what the calendar says. You may adjust timelines or team members based on vacations or a company-wide holiday, but you don’t let the “seasons” become excuses to get in the way of your progress.

Be productive no matter what distractions are trying to steal your focus.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Where will you be a year from now?

January 8, 2020

I know you’re barely getting used to writing 2020, but I want to get you to think about 2021 for a few minutes because before we know it, it will be here. Will your organization be in the same spot a year from now?

As the slow start of January wanes and everyone is gearing up for a busy Q1, my fear is that you’re going to get so caught up in the day to day grind and before you know it’s going to be December and you’re going to wonder where the year has gone.

I’m a firm believer in you achieve what you measure, so let’s talk about creating a simple dashboard that will help you ensure that you are where you want to be in 2021.

You may have an elaborate business plan but in many cases, once it’s done and approved – it sits in a filing cabinet or a folder on your laptop and never sees the light of day again.

But this simple dashboard can literally be posted in your company’s break room or a single sheet document that gets updated and shared monthly. It becomes a working tool rather than a plan that you dust off every so often.

First, you need to decide what matters most. Take some time and answer these questions.

If you can only accomplish one thing this year – what would matter most to your business?
What system or process improvement (or addition) would impact your business the most?
What is the most single most important financial metric you should monitor to gauge the health of your organization?
When you think about your workforce, what one metric (retention, employee satisfaction, etc.) could you measure to track the stability of your team?
How will you track/monitor how you’re doing in terms of customer delight? (Don’t shoot for satisfaction – that’s like working hard for a C.)
Last but definitely not least – what is the one thing you, as the leader, could change, learn, or add to your skillset that would really be a game-changer for your organization?

Once you’ve answered these questions, identify a monthly metric that you could easily use to measure your progress on achieving each of those mini-goals. You may have to implement some measurement mechanism, like a monthly employee satisfaction survey but if you can’t measure it – it doesn’t count.

Once you’ve decided what you need to measure and how you’re going to get those monthly metrics, you need to decide when you’re going to review/discuss the monthly results. Odds are you hold some sort of leadership or management level meeting on a weekly or monthly basis. You need to build this dashboard into that meeting’s agenda.

But don’t stop there. Share these six metrics with your entire team. Yes, even the leadership goal you’ve set for yourself. Let them know that these are the barometers you’re going to be using to track how the company is doing throughout the year. I think you’ll be surprised at how interested they are in helping you hit these metrics.

If your organization doesn’t have a good meeting process that allows you to focus on making progress on key goals, rather than just a status report, I highly recommend the book Traction by Gino Wickman.

The book has a brilliant framework for taking on large, internal projects that normally get lost in the shuffle or drag on forever – and actually getting them done quickly and well.

Here’s the amazing thing – if you actively watch and work on moving the needle in the six items on this list, your organization will be healthier, stronger and more profitable a year from now.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Metrics that matter

October 16, 2019

One of the most famous quotes about advertising is from a merchant named John Wanamaker and he said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Back when I started in the business much of the work we did was difficult to measure all the way through the sales cycle. For example, if we bought a TV spot during a Cheers episode, we could count on certain demographics and the size of the audience but that was about as detailed as we could get. We often tried to link exposure to the message to a behavior but unless they were redeeming a specific offer or calling a campaign-specific phone number, we could only hypothesize that a surge in sales, inquiries or some other behavior was tied to the marketing efforts.

Today, we have the opposite problem. The volume of things we can accurately measure is staggering, especially if you are communicating digitally. It’s easy to get paralyzed by the data because you can’t possibly sift through it all before making a decision.

One of the phrases I’m sure MMG clients get sick of is “Just because we can measure it, doesn’t mean it matters.”

I thought it might be useful to identify some digital metrics that are actually worth watching and using as a bellwether for decision-making. We’ve previously discussed the importance of owning your own digital hub. For most organizations, that’s your website. I’m going to assume you’ve built your marketing strategy in a hub and spoke model, with your web site being one of your core hubs.

Given that assumption, let’s talk about metrics that matter for most organizations. You may find that one or more of these aren’t relevant to your business so don’t assume you should track all of them. But for most of us, these are pretty spot on.

Let’s look at metrics focusing on two factors – are you bringing the right people to your site and once they arrive, what do they do there?

Prospect attraction: Are you capturing the attention of the people you’d like to talk to about your products and services? Are you holding their attention long enough to get on their radar screen?

To measure your effectiveness in this area, you might look at:

Bounce rate: Bounce rate is the statistic that measures how many of your unique web visitors go to your home page and then immediately leave the site, rather than digging into the site to learn more. Your goal should be 30% or less.

What do people do on your site: Odds are you have a lot of pages on your website. Do you know which ones get visited most often? Or which ones capture the attention of your visitor for the longest period of time? Do you understand the traffic patterns (people go from what page or link to what page or link) that show up again and again?

To get that kind of insight, you might look at:

Page depth: Page depth is a stat that shows you the average number of pages your visitors view during a single visit.

Top viewed pages: As it suggests, it lists the individual pages of your website in the order of visit frequency.

In-page analytics: For your top viewed pages look at this report and analyze the click patterns. It will help you understand navigational patterns and issues on your website. You’ll also get some insights into your visitors’ intent.

Marketing is all the better because we use data to be more helpful to the people we want to serve. But to do that well, be careful that you’re looking at the right data and not drowning in meaningless numbers.

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