It’s a weird side effect of loving systems to be enthralled with money & metrics in a business setting. For me, it’s the proof that the work done in a business with both strategy and processes can pay off in big ways.
It’s one of the reasons I hate results like “more confidence” and “feel better” when I really want to know if a strategy added more followers, sold more units, retained more sales and created more upsells.
So let’s talk about metrics and why most entrepreneurs are not connecting this nerdy look at the numbers with their income.
First, I will concede that I nerd out on numbers. When working for online businesses over the past 12 years, it was commonplace to create 4 or 8 landing pages and test them against each other to find out what converted best. Was it the page with lots of copy or the one with a few bullet points? Was it the page with a video at the top or on the bottom? This headline or that one?
Measuring what works is the ultimate expression of curiosity. You don’t go in assuming you know it all and ask yourself, continually, what’s working right now?
Second, most people only want to know a few numbers: how many people came to my free webinar and how many people bought? Hence, how much money did I make?
But that’s just setting yourself up for disappointment. Imagine you’re making a world famous cookie recipe and the only thing you pay attention to is how much flour you’re using and how many cookies come out of the oven. Oh… how many things can go wrong in between!
If you’re not looking at your traffic, conversions, open rates, engagement numbers, upsells, payment plans, customer service requests and so much more than you’re not looking at the whole recipe and you won’t know what went wrong so you can fix it or make it better.
Third, somehow metrics feels big and scary to a lot of people, especially when you throw in Google Analytics, tagging and social media. It’s not that bad, I promise.
With most of my clients we start with questions – lots of questions. What information do you want to see? What numbers will tell you how we’re doing? What should we be paying attention to?
Once I have those queries, it’s a lot easier to understand how to find the right numbers.
An Example
Let’s say you’re heading into the last 48 hours before the cart closes and you want to send an email to only those who are most interested in joining. How do you measure interest and find those people to email?
I would go to your CRM (email tool like Keap, Active Campaign, Mailchimp, etc) and look at sales emails which have already gone out. Who received that email, opened or clicked it, but didn’t buy? If I can see that someone clicked to the sales page or communicated with a customer service inbox, they go higher up the list. If they clicked on the email to unsubscribe, they’re off the list!
Now, what do you do with that information? If you’re experienced in managing a launch you’re seeing these numbers in real time and allowing them to inform your strategy.
>> Oh, we have 5,000 people who have been on the wait list and joined a free call or watched the replay, who have not purchased yet but clicked on the sales page? Let’s host an impromptu Q&A to encourage them to buy before the deadline.
>> Hmmm, it looks like 80% of our buyers are choosing the 3 month payment plan which might make cash flow tricky. We’re adding a pay in full bonus and sending it retroactively to the 20% who have already paid in full.
>> The launch is over and there’s over 1,000 people who wanted to learn more but never purchased. I’m going to design a nurture sequence to send them some encouragement and then re-open for just 24 hours in 4 weeks to bring them in.
As you can see, there are so many opportunities and pivots you can make in real time if you’re watching the numbers and considering what people need.
Even the best launch plan should be adaptable to real life results, in real time.
If the worst thing you can do is ignore your metrics during a launch, the second worst is to only look at them when things are over.
Like that silly example of baking the cookies. Why would you wait until charred and inedible cookies are out of the oven to ask if you used enough butter? If the oven was at the right temp? If you left these little lumps of coal in for too long?
Pay attention as you go and you can adjust on the fly. Wait until the end and it’s nearly impossible to understand what went wrong.
Recently I shared a Launch Metrics Cheat Sheet with my newsletter list and if you’d like the rundown of the 40+ metrics that you should definitely be tracking in your next launch just add your name and email to the form below and I’ll send it to you.