Section Three: The Metrics

Keyword Rankings Don’t Mean S#!T

Did that subheading come off a little harsh? Good, it was meant to. But really, keyword rankings are one of the most useless metrics ever created. They’re used by garbage marketing firms to justify their garbage work.

You know what matters? REVENUES.

That’s it. That’s the one metric you should be following. If your revenues aren’t going up, then something isn’t working. So, start backing your way out of the problem and look at everything leading up to your revenues. Eventually you’ll find the culprit, or culprits.

Now, there are some important metrics you should be watching. Here are just a few:

• Visitors
• Conversion Rates
• Bounce Rates
• Average Customer Value
• Cost Per Lead
• Cost Per Acquisition

But most of all, you need to understand how those interact with your bottom line. You need to become a data hound. You need to track everything and then tie it back into your revenues. You’ll be shocked at how slight variances in these metrics can result in huge shifts in your revenues.

And don’t roll your eyes at this section. I’ve walked into companies that did $50 million in annual sales and they couldn’t tell me how much it cost them to acquire a customer or how much they made off their average customer. In fact, more often than not, companies aren’t tracking most of these metrics.

If your company is already tracking all of these metrics, then email me and I’ll send you a gold star.

Actually Use Your CRM

Honestly, companies spend billions on these high powered CRM’s every year and they use them like a monkey with a chemistry set. Your CRM is the data engine behind your entire marketing machine. You need to be tracking everything when it comes to your marketing. You need to know how a client found you, how long it took them to become a hot lead, and the actions that were taken to bring them to the table.

Do you remember how I mentioned the flawed funnel earlier? (If you need to go back and read, we’ll wait until you get back . . . Good, let’s continue.) The way you combat that funnel and optimize it properly is through data.

Garbage in—Garbage out

We’ve all heard that you get out of data what you put into it. The same goes for data related to leads. A company should develop values in their CRM that cover almost every conceivable reason a lead did or didn’t close. This way, that company can quantify the actions of their sales team and replicate what works.

Once a company has created the hundred or so qualifiers that can be assigned to a lead, they need to create rules on how to handle those leads based on the qualifiers. Was the company too small? Great, we’ll drip them information on a three-month basis, recommend trusted partners that better suit their needs, and give them as much value as possible.

By doing this, you’ve now significantly raised the odds that the lead, even though they’re not a good fit right now, will either refer someone to you or come to you when the fit is right. And what did this cost you? A few extra seconds of data entry and a couple of dozen emails.

And you just rinse and repeat this for the other hundred or so qualifiers. Bad timing, there’s a campaign for that. Went to a competitor, you bet there’s a campaign for that. Went dark for no reason, of course there’s a campaign for that!

Data, Data, Data!

By tracking all of your data concerning your emails, webinars, eBooks, and all other nurturing activities, you’ll notice patterns and outliers that you can now quantify and replicate. For instance, your company might notice that the sixth email in the “bad timing” funnel seems to convert at a 16% rate while all others in the campaign have a 2% conversion rate. The company can now dissect that email and find what makes it work and then roll it out to the rest of the campaign with hopes that all the other emails will improve.

And that “out of the blue” six-month-later phone call that everyone receives; now it’s trackable. You’ll know what the impetus for it was, and you can replicate that over and over again.

The possibilities for improvement are endless when this is done correctly.

Do it Now

This isn’t groundbreaking information. Lead nurturing and marketing automation is on the tip of everyone’s tongue. But too often they’re being used as buzzwords similar to “big data” and “content marketing.” Everyone says it, but no one really knows what it means.

“But we have a newsletter!”

Oh, pardon me. How incredibly original. Clearly this guide isn’t written for marketing wizards like yourself. How’s that lead generation dynamo been performing for you?

The truth is, very few companies are actually using their marketing automation tools and CRMs properly. They’re spending all of this money on a software that can perform like a Ferarri and they’re driving it like a 1985 Yugo.

Conclusion

Goodbyes are Tough.

Look, let’s not make this weird. We had fun while it lasted. I wrote a bunch of words, you read those words, hopefully they helped you in some small way.

But honestly, what I do hope is that you take what’s in this book and implement it into your current marketing strategies. And trust me, this stuff isn’t easy and it’s not an overnight fix. Like I mentioned earlier, once you see the sausage being made, it’s not always appealing.

Start small. Do what you can. And, eventually, you’ll have more leads than you know what to do with (hopefully).

Looking for more great reads? Check out these related articles:

• To Demand Gen ot to Lead Gen; That is the Question
• 4 Lead Generation Tools You Should Be Using Since Yesterday
• Improving Your B2B Lead Generation with Inbound Marketing
• Your Step-By-Step Guide to Generating More Leads for Your Company. Section Two: The Content
• Your Step-By-Step Guide to Generating More Leads for Your Company. Section One: The Why and How