Dodgeball Marketing Podcast #4: Developing Marketing KPIs

Michael Utley: Hey, welcome again. This is episode four, developing KPIs for your online marketing is our topic. This is the Dodgeball SEO. It's the Dodgeball Marketing podcast.

Chris Raines: Dodgeball Marketing podcast. We need an opener. We need a little stinger.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: Maybe the audio ... It can be the logo, and then the audio is the sound of a bunch of kids getting pelted with dodgeballs.

Michael Utley: Yeah, we'll try and make this better, but-

Chris Raines: And then with, "Dodgeball!" Some kind of monster truck thing.

Michael Utley: Yeah, and I wish I could license-

Chris Raines: It's a work in progress.

Michael Utley: License a little bit of Ben Stiller saying something about Dodgeball.

Chris Raines: “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”

Michael Utley: Yeah. Good. Well, let's jump in. So yeah, what we're going to talk about on this episode is, if you're not a practitioner of online marketing, maybe you're a marketing executive or a founder or an owner or even a marketing director and you're just trying to get a handle on stuff, there's so many metrics that online marketers can throw at you or show you one number that's moving in the right direction and it can be easy to get disoriented. So, what we're going to talk about today is a simple way that works for any marketing channel to develop and measure the most important pieces of information.

Chris Raines: Yeah.

Michael Utley: Your key performance indicators, your KPIs.

Chris Raines: KPIs. Yeah, so it can be really easy, especially when you first get started and you first set up your Google Analytics account and you see the numbers start rolling in.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: "Oh, man. I got 1000 hits last month and this month I got 1500 hits."

Michael Utley: Right.

Chris Raines: But as you know, you can't take a hit to the bank-

Michael Utley: That's right.

Chris Raines: And get money for it.

Michael Utley: Yeah. You can't put hits on the breakfast table.

Chris Raines: The website visit.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: So-

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: Once you're past that part of just being impressed that you can see your numbers and everything-

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: You want to start digging deeper and figuring out what metrics you should actually care about and which ones you should measure.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: So-

Michael Utley: So tell us what a sales funnel is.

Chris Raines: So a sales funnel is different activities, different places people go before they do business with you. So an example might be, if I'm looking for a pressure washing company.

Michael Utley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Raines: I'm going to type in pressure washer, pressure washers near me, pressure washers Nashville. Maybe I'll see an ad, maybe I'll see an organic result, that's step one.

Michael Utley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Raines: You can call it awareness.

Michael Utley: And so they're getting there at the top of the funnel.

Chris Raines: Top of the funnel. [Crosstalk 00:02:29].

Michael Utley: And they're getting exposed to the brand. So, that's branding. Yep.

Chris Raines: Right. So I know who you are now. Previously I didn't. Second is that engagement piece. So they're not just seeing you, they're actually engaging with you, so, that would be a click on the ad. Let's see what these people are about. So then they're going to read the website, look at your guarantee, look at your better business Bureau member [inaudible 00:00:02:48]. So, that's the engagement piece. When you get to bring them to a place that you can control and indoctrinate them into how you do business, why you're better than the competition, what you can offer them, that's valuable. And then always goes in that step, right? You don't do that until you know who they are, right?

Michael Utley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Raines: And then the third step, if you want to look at it just broadly, is action.

Michael Utley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Raines: Right? So they're going to look at you, they're going to see like, "Oh man, look at all these good reviews from customers. Well, I want to know how much it costs for you to pressure wash my driveway."

Michael Utley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Raines: And then there's a little get a quote form.

Michael Utley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Raines: [inaudible 00:03:27] and that's the action, you fill out a quote and then they'll get back to you. So those a really simplified three levels. So I think whenever you look at your site and say, "This is what we're doing." Working or not.

Michael Utley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Raines: You need to measure those three.

Michael Utley: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Raines: However that looks for your business.

Michael Utley: That's right. And it can be different for different marketing channels. And so we're going to end today's session with the simple way to think about any online marketing channel but yeah, this applies to marketing channels. So, for something like SEO, you can think about a handful of things. You can measure how many times you appeared in search results listings. Those are impressions.

Chris Raines: Right.

Michael Utley: And that's a word that we're used to from ads. How many times an ad was shown is an impression. And that really comes from traditional media, if you have a billboard on a highway, they measure how many cars go by during a period of time that a billboard has your ad on it and they call that a number of impressions. And it's really a number of potential impressions.

Chris Raines: Right, you don't know if they're looking.

Michael Utley: Yeah, they sell it as impressions.

Chris Raines: The benefit of digital is you know when the impression happens.

Michael Utley: Yeah. With digital, it goes from 360 degrees a view down to, maybe eight or 10 degrees a view. So it's better but you still don't know if they saw your search result listing or your particular ad but it's a hugely different thing. So those are impressions and so, yeah. So you can really any marketing channel is going to have a different set of metrics and different set of numbers that are going to basically follow this pattern of general awareness of the branding level and in some kind of interactivity, typically in your environment where they're able to get pricing information or add you to a consideration set. And then, depending on the marketing channel, what the action is you're ultimately trying to do and that action is going to be a very different channel to channel. So, what are some of the channels, like ad campaigns, what are some of the things, Chris, people could want to do?

Chris Raines: What they want to measure?

Michael Utley: Yeah, the action. What are some of the actions?

Chris Raines: Yeah. So a good action might be click-through rate.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: So, that's up there at the top.

Michael Utley: So getting a click.

Chris Raines: Getting a click.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: So if you have a low click-through rate, if your click-through rate is saying 1%. 0.5%, it probably means that your ad doesn't really connect with the viewer if it's a text ad. Same thing with social, if they're [crosstalk 00:05:52].

Michael Utley: Yeah. So, that's a rate of the impression to being on the site. So, that's the click and so you can measure that as a rate and you're saying... So, yeah. So that, I don't think that's an ultimate action but that's an example of one of these metrics you can measure on the way through the funnel.

Chris Raines: Right.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: So another one would be, on the lower end, would be contact form fill or if you're more-

Michael Utley: A form fill.

Chris Raines: If you're more of a B2B that has a longer sale cycle, maybe it's a download in our recent thought leadership report.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: Via email.

Michael Utley: Yeah. And so that's not even money trading hands.

Chris Raines: Yeah. But it's a lead.

Michael Utley: But it could be the ultimate objective of, for example, a paid search campaign.

Chris Raines: Right.

Michael Utley: And so that's the measurable action.

Chris Raines: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Michael Utley: That's the one at the bottom of the funnel.

Chris Raines: Of course. Yeah.

Michael Utley: So let's think about that. We've got downloads, form fills. Phone?

Chris Raines: Yeah. Phone. If you have a trackable phone number on your site, which you can track phone numbers right back into Google analytics with their different softwares, that can be another one. If you're a locksmith or something like that, it's just going to be, just taking phone calls all day long, it's really short sales cycle. That's something that you want to consider measuring.

Michael Utley: Yeah, window repair. Another one would be if it's eCommerce, actual sales.

Chris Raines: Yeah.

Michael Utley: It will come through all the way to a conversion. And then you can back off from there. So you've got a purchase, you've got initiate, checkout, you've got add to cart.

Chris Raines: That's right. So you can work from it backward, if you're getting a lot of add to carts but not a lot of sales there might be something broken in your checkout system.

Michael Utley: Yeah. Yeah. And of course, eCommerce companies, Amazon, of course, is the giant but eCommerce companies that are actively managing an eCommerce platform or are measuring those things and looking at all of those little micro-moments, miniature steps in their conversion process-

Chris Raines: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Michael Utley: To get that good. Let's see, Chris here's a question for you. If somebody is not a digital marketing person but they want to get their bearings, what's a good way to go and just getting oriented to this?

Chris Raines: Yeah. So we have a book called Digital Marketing All-in-One for Dummies, so it's part of the dummy series. The reason this book is cool is because it's geared towards people that aren't just full-time marketing practitioners, our industry and marketing advertising is full of really geeky, in the weeds books about certain channels and certain tactics. If you're a business owner just looking to get a lay of the land, you really just need an intro into all of it, so you can see the lay of the land.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: And so the Digital Marketing All-in-One for Dummies is a really good and you can Google that and it'll pop up, it's available on Amazon and anywhere else but that's what I would recommend, just digesting that.

Michael Utley: Yeah. I feel like a lot of the content that's out there is for people like us, practitioners of marketing.

Chris Raines: Right.

Michael Utley: I feel like a lot of the books, a lot of the blogs, a lot of the podcasts on YouTube are really, we were talking about it before, but they're really like senior-level SEO or senior level paid search. And a lot of our customers that we talk to when we first get on the phone with them, they probably have some familiarity with online marketing but it's easy for them to fall into the trap of not knowing what to measure because they don't have a horizontal and vertical initial picture of how it all works together.

Chris Raines: Right.

Michael Utley: And so it's easy to kind of fall into one thing like search engine rankings or visits. And if all those visits are from out of area, it can be a problem. So, yeah. So next up here, one thing that we recommend staying away from is if you have any one metric, we recommend avoiding falling into the trap of doing things just to move that metric, if it feels that it could be counter to the bigger picture. There was a time when a lot of website traffic acquisition was done through gimmicky stuff like giving away an iPad. And so if you're giving something away, giving away a free item on your website, you're going to have a bunch of people pop in, conduct the survey, fill out the form, do whatever and get their name in the hat for the free iPad.

Michael Utley: Those are not your people. And so if it feels silly, it's probably something to throw it out. You might move that lever and man, that lever might be something that you're judged by and that your bonus is based on. There could be some hard decisions about this stuff but I would just say, if you're really committed to the success of your organization, avoid anything that works for one of the pieces in the sales process but intuitively isn't helping value, not just hurting but is neutral to the others. If it's neutral to the others, it's probably not a good tactic.

Chris Raines: Yep. Yeah. Ultimately it's about deciding what you want. If you're a carpet company and you're giving away iPads, doing an iPad giveaway, well, those people don't really have a need for carpet at that point in time, they just wanted a free iPad.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: And so it's thinking about what you want. Do you want more people to download a piece of content via email that you've created? Do you want appointments? Do you want reach out for pricing? Do you want donations?

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: You're a non-profit. And it might be that you only want branding, maybe you run a business-

Michael Utley: You could just want awareness.

Chris Raines: Yeah. If you're running a site that's advertising monetize-

Michael Utley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Raines: You're just looking for eyeballs.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: So your KPI might be, how many people visited five pages or more?

Michael Utley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Raines: So as you know, how much money you're going to get from all those impressions.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: So it's deciding what's the key thing. For most businesses, especially local service businesses, it's going to be that lead.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: Get pricing, get a quote or general contact, give me more information.

Michael Utley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Raines: It's going to be something like that. So-

Michael Utley: Yeah. And for our healthcare companies and a lot of other companies, I think, falls into two categories, either a patient or customer acquisition or a big-ticket B2B sales that are a longer sales cycle.

Chris Raines: Right.

Michael Utley: So, that's going to fall into booking appointments and feet in the door or thought leadership, content engagement.

Chris Raines: Right. And then-

Michael Utley: That sort of thing.

Chris Raines: And then you nurture them via email to get to the sale.

Michael Utley: Yeah. Right, so I'm going to wrap up with this. Over the next couple minutes I'm going to give you the simple way to identify your KPIs and this works for any marketing channel. This works for SEO, social media ads, paid search ads, social content, video content, a podcast [crosstalk 00:12:29].

Chris Raines: Putting things on the internet that you control, that you want people to take action on.

Michael Utley: That's right. Every set of KPIs... And this has two parts and this concept of these two things can be applied to any channel or your overall business itself. Every bit of online marketing, every channel you can be acted in, consists of really three things, reach, engagement, and action. So, reach is what's happening off-site or off of the properties that you can control to get out there in the world. So if we're talking about an example of email marketing, this might be how many emails were delivered. So, what was your deliverable? You can't really control whether or not somebody still subscribes. There's some things that are outside of your control. So, that's the reach. Same thing with advertising, what's the reach? What are the impressions? In SEO, what were the impressions? Because conceivably, you did control the content of that search engine results listing. So reach is number one. Number two is engagement. Once they were there, how did they behave and what were their characteristics? Were they in your region or territory? Did they absorb multiple pages of content? Did they spend time on [your] site that seemed to be valuable?

Chris Raines: Did they watch a video?

Michael Utley: Did they consume a bit of video content for a certain number of minutes? And that could still even be off-site but that's engagement with a listing or a page that you have some control over. So number one, reach, number two, engagement, number three, action. And action isn't just your ultimate action that we're talking about with the overall sales funnel for your business, it's for that particular marketing channel, what action did you want them to take? For email marketing, it may just be a click to get to the website and then you're measuring website behavior and you're starting the cycle all over again.

Chris Raines: Or for social, if it's a completely cold lead, you don't expect them to come jump from Facebook or Instagram and then immediately ask for pricing.

Michael Utley: Right.

Chris Raines: You might just want them to, say, view a key page.

Michael Utley: Yes.

Chris Raines: Like “View Our Portfolio”, or something like that. And that might be a win for social. You just want people exposed to your brand.

Michael Utley: Right.

Chris Raines: Maybe paid search, it's more of getting the lead.

Michael Utley: Right. Or maybe even opt in to an email newsletter.

Chris Raines: Right.

Michael Utley: Which then kicks the start cycle again. So the last one is action. So reach, engagement and action. If you understand each of your marketing channels and your business as a whole, in terms of the reach, the engagement and the action that works for that channel, then you can measure two different things, the whole numbers at each step in the process and the rate of movement from one step to the next, each of the steps. And that is a system for measuring any digital marketing channel and developing your KPIs, the whole number and their rate of moving to the next step for reach, engagement and action. And you can apply that to any channel.

Chris Raines: Yeah.

Michael Utley: And that's how to develop KPIs. All right. Hope this has been helpful. We'll see you on the next one.

Chris Raines: Yep.