Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: And welcome to another edition of the YMS podcast. Yep. That's your marketing support. I'm Matt McClure here along with David Belville and Joe Barker. Hello, you two. How's it going?
[00:00:19] Speaker C: Good, Matt. How are you today?
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Doing very well.
Doing very well. Yeah. No, I, I appreciate the, the time that I get to spend with you, Beau, of each and every time we get together because I, that helps me in my everyday life just, you know, as far as my digital marketing goes, because I'm also someone who's in the business, so I appreciate it. And I know that our listeners, slash viewers do as well.
And, you know, today I think we're talking about something that sort of gets, I don't know, a little bit confusing or maybe overwhelming for folks or they just don't quite know how to use the information that they actually have access to or sometimes may not even know they have access to the information. And that's analytics. First of all, set the just sort of the baseline for this conversation that we're going to have here. When we say analytics, what are the kinds of things that we're talking about?
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Well, there's various different analytics we could be looking at, but I think if you're an agent or advisor, you're somebody that, that is looking to grow your marketing efforts, those analytics are going to come into play in measuring results from your website to your social media efforts, to your creating our videos, all the analytics that sit within, even like a video like we're making today or a podcast that we're making today. How long do people watch your podcast? How long are they paying attention? There's so many different metrics and ways that you can analyze all of the efforts that you're putting out there. Really what it's about is it's about identifying what are those key metrics that would really move the needle in your business.
And then where is it that we can, you know, start to measure those and make sure that we have tracking in place so we can get better and better and make more informed decisions instead of just going out there creating whatever marketing materials it is, putting it all out there and kind of going blind and just wishful thinking. It gives us that guide of what's actually happening and who's paying attention and where we need to make improvements or maybe where we're doing great.
[00:02:18] Speaker C: And hopefully by the end of this conversation, you know, talking about data and analytics doesn't sound like such a boring or intimidating terminology because I can really get excited over pouring over analytics and making decisions Based off of what I learn. And so I hope that some of that comes through today.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: I used to tell everybody that the, the data and analytics and, and all of marketing is kind of a video game. And that's how I always treated it. And I was always like, I'm gonna beat my high score today. I'm gonna do it. So if I'm sending an email, I know my highest score and I'm like, no, that open rate is going to go up. This is going to happen.
And I would literally make a game out of all of the practices or all of the different channels that were being deployed of how can I get better and how can I optimize? And you just, you really can't unless you know the numbers. That's the only way to do it. So treat it like a video game and try to get the high score every single time to, you know, to see where those improvements are.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Yeah, and, and for, and I love that by the way, because I'm, I'm like, okay, now I'm gonna have to think about it like video games because I've wasted many an hour playing actual video games. This is like a video game, but it's, but it's actually productive in, in life, you know, it does something for you.
So what are, and I guess, and this obviously, you know, is different for whatever type of marketing we're talking about, whether, you know, like on last week's episode, we're on last time's episode, I should say we were talking about.
And, and so like video analytics, obviously if you're talking about YouTube, then you would get the analytics there on the YouTube platform. But you know, different social media marketing, you know, email based marketing, that all of the different kinds of things that go into an overall marketing mix for someone.
What are maybe some tools that people can use in different places that you can find these numbers that are going to give you the answers that you want.
[00:04:11] Speaker C: So with the rise of the Internet and technology came has come the rise of analytics and data.
Each platform has the ability to dive in. So YouTube Analytics, Facebook meta analytics, to be more general, you have Google Analytics, you have analytics pretty much everywhere that the Internet touches. And so that can feel very, very big and daunting.
However, it's also a huge opportunity for you and your business. And so really wherever you're uploading content, you're likely going to have a window into how that content is performing. And so from there it's just a matter of knowing what you're looking at and understanding it. And then Developing key performance indicators and choosing which data point is most relevant to you and your business.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: So it's almost like putting pieces of a puzzle together. So when you're out there, if you're an agent or advisor, it can seem overwhelming where you have, you have social media, you have all these pieces where, where analytics is sitting and you kind of have to figure out what is it that's going to move the needle for you and what is it that's most important to track. So if I was a brand new agent or advisor and I had multiple channels out there, I would start with probably my CRM. So if I have a CRM and somewhere where I'm tracking all of my clients, I want to make sure that I know how many leads are coming in. I want to know, you know, what is that average rate for them to convert into a client, what does that look like and where are those, where are those leads coming from? So from there I would then start connecting where those leads are coming from. So I would pull the analytics from my website. If I'm driving a lot of traffic to my website, I want to know where is that traffic coming from. Google Analytics is a free tool. It is simply putting a code behind the scenes of your website that's tracking all the traffic that comes in there. That's literally all you have to do to set up Google Analytics. You go in, you set up an account, you pull a pixel code off of there you go, toss it on the back end of your website and it starts tracking every single person that comes over there. It may not know right away, it may not tell you exactly where the source is that they came from, but it's going to track what they're doing on your site once they're there. That's critical. It's key. Social media, all the social media platforms have full tracking and capabilities of analytics within those platforms. All of those can easily be tracked. But what I think it's more about is, is really setting those goals to understand where is it that you're trying to get to? Is it that you know that now that you need X amount of leads to come in. So that way you know your conversion rate of 10 to get to your, you know, your cost per acquisition of X. I mean, that's where the numbers really start to come into play and you can really start to optimize. But I think it's just starting with the basics of getting tracking everywhere. And worst case, you work with somebody that really helps you put those puzzle pieces together a little bit quicker.
Especially if they've done that puzzle before. But you can do it all yourself. It's just a matter of picking the channels that you're going to start with. I would definitely start with either a CRM or your website to get you going and then move on to your social media channels.
[00:07:15] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
Just to build off that point a little bit further. Talking about data and analytics being perceived as a video game, you know, when we are pouring through the data and we start to find things and patterns and, and we can make a connection.
For example, you were talking about where traffic sources come from. If, if ultimately we identify organic social media as being a major driver to our website, then that is telling us that we need to also be paying attention to our organic social media strategy.
So as it's almost like a choose your own adventure, once you start going down the path, you start to see more pathways that you can travel down. And that can honestly be super exciting when you're searching for answers on how to grow your business.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: We had a call last week with someone who was, they were, they were so confused because they couldn't figure out where, why they weren't getting as many leads as they used to get. And it was, it was funny when we started talking to them because we're like, well, let us see the analytics, let us see the numbers. And they're like, oh, the numbers are great, the numbers are wonderful. And they bring in the numbers of the email campaign that they were running and they were right. The open rate, the click through rate, everything was great.
But then what was so funny is then it was like, all right, well where are you sending them and what are the analytics of where you're sending them? And it was almost like an eye opening experience for them. And they're like, oh, well, we should probably look at that. It's like, yeah, let's look at that. And then you go over and look at it and the landing page and the experience that they were sending them to was not good. And it was, it was the time for the page to load and so many factors that went into it that when you looked at the conversion rate of that page then you could see very clearly why, you know, you had this great, amazing email that was taking you to this spot that wasn't performing and, and it could have easily been fixed before you kept sending more traffic there, but it was never caught. And so that's where I think analytics really comes into play because it, it really is finding the gaps and then optimizing. So now we can look at that page and say, oh, well, let's fix that. And now it gives us my video game of like, all right, let's see if that conversion rate's going to go up and we're good to go.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: So I love it. Well, yeah, it's like, you know, we've used the video game analogy. It also brings to mind for, for me anyway, because I've always loved, like, you know, detective movies and, and TV shows and all that kind of thing. And so it's like, it's, it's. You're doing an investigation, too, and this, this is the evidence that you need to pour through to then find the answer to whatever the question is, you know, and that's a perfect example of it. I feel like, okay, we're getting this, like, everything looks great up until this point. So what's going wrong there that's leading to our conversion rate not being what it should or whatever the issue might be. And David, I know that you, you talked about or you mentioned a few minutes ago, you know, just sort of loving that sort of aspect of it, like getting the data and pouring through it and just, and, you know, really uncovering different things. Are there pieces of, of data that maybe you sort of consistently across, maybe across different platforms or across, you know, different, different sources or, or whatever the case may be, just pieces of data that maybe you sort of generally find can be the most useful in different scenarios?
[00:10:35] Speaker C: Yeah, a few come to mind. But generally speaking, I'll say time spent, and that can mean something a little different depending on the platform we're talking about. But if I'm investigating how my website is performing, I want to see how much time is being spent on specific pages. If I have a high time spent on my homepage, but I'm not getting, they're not bouncing around to other portions of my website, I might identify a problem there.
Conversely, if I have the time spent on multiple pages, then I think that indicates a healthy website where the user feels comfortable bouncing around on Facebook or YouTube. Time spent watching a video. YouTube will take into account how long someone watches a video in terms of how it gets distributed. Same thing with Facebook content or Instagram content. While time spent can be tracked with video, it can't necessarily be tracked in terms of how long someone stays on a piece of stagnant content. However, if you can get the user to stay on a piece of content longer, that's telling the algorithm that this is being engaged with. And so if you can just encourage your audience to spend time, but spend time where you need them to, so many other things will fall into place for you. So it's kind of a long winded answer, but that's the one. If I had to pick one thing, that might be one thing that I, I, I highlight.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And, and Joe, how important, you know, I guess obviously you have to know your audience, right? Where it's one of the things we were talking about last time around in our discussion about video marketing is, you know, you have to know your audience and the people you're trying to reach and all of that. You know, those numbers. As far as demographics go, that, that are, you know, fed to you through analytics, I'm sure that that is obviously a very important thing as well. How does somebody go about sort of, you know, I guess sifting through that information and then deciding, okay, here's the change that I need to make to reach the people that I want to, to reach. Maybe I'm not reaching my target audience. I'm, I'm reaching people who are maybe much older or much younger than I want to reach. How do I go about them changing that? You know?
[00:12:57] Speaker A: Yeah, actually, I, I think this is going to bring up a couple of points. One, if you don't feel like you have analytics or you don't feel like you have a lot of data, do a simple survey to your current client list. And that's a way to quickly get data. So that's a way of saying, hey, how did you find me? You know, if it was a referral, whatever that may be, Ask them those demographic information if you, you know, if you don't already have it within your database, you can ask them, are you male or female, you know, zip codes, they live information like that. You can ask them for age.
If you don't already have that. Those are things that you can do, you can easily look into to start to build that Persona or that ideal target audience for you. What we're seeing more and more right now, which, which is a difficult subject for, for people that utilize social media for advertising, especially Facebook. Facebook is starting to scrutinize the type of ads that they're allowing to go out there.
They're, they're now putting financial services and insurance services and products into a special category.
So what is that doing? That's limiting the age and that's limiting certain things that you can control as far as that target audience. But one thing it's not limiting is the interest of those people.
So if you audience and say, you know, that it's a certain income ratio, you can still go into the interest and find for, for their Persona, those type of interests that they may be interested in.
It could be things such as, I don't know if it's a higher clientele, the, the Miami Boat show, or something along those lines. Like things that you know, like your target audience is going after. If, if you know that your target audience shops at Walmart, put Walmart in there as an interest. It's those type of things that you can kind of work around the system to figure that out. Another thing I'll add is if you have analytics on your website, Google Analytics will actually track and provide to you other interest or other topics that they, that they are visiting or that your target audience is interested in. And so it's pretty interesting if you watch that, it will show you if, if the news is, is super important to them. A lot of the times you see pets, so pets is up there as an interest. So there's a lot of different things that you can learn from Google Analytics. But I think as, as, as far as like the more you know your target audience and the more you know their behaviors and the things that they're interested in, then the, the, when we come across things such as Facebook and other ones who are starting to shut down some of our targeting, you'll be able to still capitalize on those interest and other categories out there.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Ways to sort of not, not game the system, but kind of game the system a little bit so you can actually still achieve those same or similar results as you've always been able to.
Yeah, no, it's, it's great. And one of the things too that I want to highlight that I don't think that I necessarily have highlighted enough yet on the show is that if this is one of those things that I feel like our listeners or viewers find super intimidating or just kind of don't know where to start. You know, YMS is, is there to, to help and to, you know, you, you've got the expertise to be able to help people, you know, establish this, you know, sort of system for, you know, really analyzing what is going on with whatever, you know, social media or, you know, website or what, whatever outlet, email campaign, something like that, how that's performing and how to make those improvements. I think that's really something really important, especially with something with something like this, with, with analytics that I think people can get overwhelmed by. It's super important to know that you don't have to go it alone. Right? There's, there's help that's out There.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's kind of funny. People will, will ask us sometimes like, why do you give away all the secrets or why do you, why do you share everything? And the fact is though, is if you're out there selling and you're an agent or advisor out there and you're working with clients and you need your time working with clients. So even if we were to tell you all the secrets there are to know about digital marketing or all of marketing, the, the fact that the majority don't want to have to learn it all and they don't want to have to go figure it all out, they're going to want somebody to tag team with them, to come help them. And that is why we're here. So we're here, even if it's a consult, just to give you a couple of pointers or show you what we're immediately seeing all the way through to running all of your campaigns or running audits on, on your campaigns to figure out where, you know, those conversion metrics maybe aren't where they should be. That's why we're here. And I think we do forget that sometimes because we are so used to just trying to help.
But yes, that's a great call out. If you need any help, contact David. Just kidding.
[00:17:19] Speaker C: We're both here for you, ready for it. But I do, I like to geek out over data and analytics, but I understand that not everybody is the same way. And opening Google Analytics to someone might feel like opening a book written in a different language. And so, you know, that is where we can step in to help. But you know, we, whether it's us helping or, you know, you identify it yourself, you can really boil down really strong data driven decisions to just three or four metrics, you know, depending on the, on what you're trying to achieve. So even though there's data for everything out there, it can be simplified and we're happy to help you find which metrics make the most sense for you.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Could you imagine if, like in a perfect world, if you could take your total sales for the last five years and know every single source that it came from and, and every single, like this is how long it took from the moment I met them all the way through into the moment that they convert it. And this is how like that's a perfect world and nobody, I don't think anybody anywhere is at that world. But that's what, that's what the power of data and analytics brings you, is to be able to get closer to that perfect world to where it truly is a, a formula that you have for success to be able to continue.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: To grow, get you as much information as you can get. Not to, not to the point or not the point being to overwhelm you or to intimidate you at all, but to give you those answers to, you know, help you be that detective or that, you know, video game person who is, you know, beating all your opponents in, in the game and increasing your own high score as you go through like it's, it's great and I, it's so useful and I think that more do need to take advantage of the data that they actually do have at their fingertips.
Anything else, guys, that you wanted to mention before we run that comes to mind?
[00:19:11] Speaker C: My final thought would just be, you know, we live in a time now where we as marketers have sort of relinquished a lot of control to algorithms. We're dependent on, on the algorithms and how they're going to distribute our message. But what we still do have control over is, is how we utilize the data in analytics. We do have a tool. We're not solely dependent on algorithms. If we're utilizing the data and analytics that we have at our disposal to make those educated decisions and get seen by as many people as possible.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I would also say, you know, if, if depending on where you're at in the journey of data and analytics, if you're just starting out, then just get tracking on certain things, Pick what those one or two things are. Pick your website, pick, pick your, you know, go look at your YouTube stats for the first time. Start somewhere and then if you are to where you're more advanced, don't be afraid to utilize AI to help you. So and keep in mind that AI is always out there. If all of the data confuses you and it's just a lot, don't be afraid to lean on AI just slightly to say, hey, can you help me analyze this and maybe identify key areas that I'm missing? And there's, there's things you can do from as simple as exporting your, your Google Analytics and importing it into AI and saying, hey, can you take a look at the last year's worth of data and tell me where there might be opportunities or there could be concerns. It could be something as simple as somebody bouncing from your homepage to the about back to the home. There's something you're missing there. And maybe, you know, AI might be able to help identify some of those key factors for you that you don't even realize it because you didn't know to look for it.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: It's one of those things that, you know, we, like we talked about the very first episode of the show was about AI and about how it can actually be useful and not it's again, one of those things that doesn't need to be intimidating or scary or anything like that, but you can actually use it to make your life easier. And so if you are not someone who geeks out over data and analytics like David, then you can just, you know, use AI. It can be your helper, you know.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:21:18] Speaker C: There's nothing wrong with that. Just as long as you're double checking and you know you're doing the final quality control.
Absolutely. Use it to your advantage.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Yes, 100%. Well, Joe Barker and David Belville, thank you both so much. Really do appreciate it as always.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you, Matt.
[00:21:33] Speaker C: Thanks, Matt.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: Thank you. And thank you for listening and or watching this particular episode of the YMS podcast. And we'll see you again next time.
