Last week I talked to some of my marketing friends and a couple of them were telling me about how they were experiencing some great success with their direct mail and marketing pieces.
As I listened, I heard numbers like this marketing campaign had a 25% opt-in response rate or another campaign had a 16% rate of return and both of these people really felt that their campaigns were a success. I came across another study of network personalities and they had a list of the most effective people on twitter. The numbers were based on the number of people they were following and the people following them back.
I really believe people are spending too much time J-U-S-T-I-F-Y-I-N-G their numbers. Shouldn’t all of us be measuring how many new accounts we are opening. Are sales increasing each week or month. Which numbers would you want to report to your boss?
I really believe if you focus on tangible numbers, you will see results, if you do not see results you might want to change things. Let me explain. A few years ago, I bought paid ads on Google. I gauged my success on how many people I was reaching with my ads and keywords. I was paying more for keywords in order to move up in the rankings, and my goal was to get more clicks. In the end, these ads I later found out did not have any effect on my bottom-line. The reason – the people clicking the links were not the people who were interested in buying our company’s products or services. The people were attracted by the words and once they saw it was for a particular service they did not want, they stopped going any farther.
With social media, I, too started out wanting to build my follower and follow numbers. I quickly learned there were some good and not-so-good software to do this. As my numbers grew, I did not notice any changes in new accounts or sales. My first thought was that my follow numbers and like numbers were too low and I needed to pay to bring them up through automated follower software and Facebook Ads.
Finally, I decided to take a different approach. Focus on content through blogging and engaging more on social media sites. In addition, I worked at maximizing my biggest resource, (Time). I reduced the number of social media sites down to three: Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. I have since added Google+ and Pinterest. Now by focusing on engaging and content, I actually think about what people might be interested in and I try to find a natural way to connect our services to that content. This approach has worked in fewer numbers, but more accounts and sales.
You will not see this type of approach in very many social media or marketing books. I am convinced that people are smarter today and very selective wi th what they read and act on. People know what Google Ads are. When was the last time you clicked on an ad? Give people what they want…Better content and value. Look for ways to execute this at a show or through a direct mail campaign. People like free giveaways, but are these the people who are ultimately going to do business with you.
What does your company offer that people should be interested in? Answer this question and set some goals that matter. Start with sales or new accounts. Bosses always like to see this and show how you use your time to accomplish this.
STOP JUSTIFYING SOME RANDOM NUMBERS AND CREATE SOME REAL NUMBERS!
