The Virtual CMO
The Virtual CMO podcast discusses growth marketing strategies for SMBs and how new technologies are improving marketing effectiveness. Hosted by Eric Dickmann, founder of The Five Echelon Group and a fractional CMO, the podcast focuses on building strategic marketing plans and executing successful growth marketing programs. It includes interviews with industry thought leaders who share their experiences and insights. The show highlights new marketing automation platforms, AI-enabled tools, and other cutting-edge technologies that can enhance marketing campaigns.
The Virtual CMO
Marketing Metrics and Turning Insight Into Outcomes with Chris Mercer
In episode 108, host Eric Dickmann interviews Chris Mercer. Over the years, Chris has been helping companies measure their marketing metrics, so they know what’s working and what’s not. Today, Chris serves as a Measurement Marketer at MeasurementMarketing.io.
MeasurementMarketing.io helps businesses know their numbers to secure better, profit-generating results. Their services are focused on Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Data Studio, and Measurement Strategy.
Chris Mercer is recognized for his ability to simplify even the most complex ideas for his audience. He can be found speaking at various conferences and events across the country.
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/marketing-metrics-insights-outcomes-s7ep8/
A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.
The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at:
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. Hey Chris, welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm so glad you could join us today.
Chris Mercer:Thank you, Eric. I appreciate you having me.
Eric Dickmann:I'm going to enjoy this conversation I think because we're going to get a chance to deep dive a little bit into analytics and to measurement. And I think this is such a challenge for marketers you know? We have so much data, so many platforms, so many different channels that we're interacting with, that this data is literally coming from everywhere and it can be very confusing. And so I'm anxious to get into the discussion with you. But before we do that, can you just give the audience a little brief introduction to yourself and a little bit about the company that you founded?
Chris Mercer:Sure. Absolutely. So my name is Chris Mercer. Everybody calls me Mercer, there's always another Chris in the room. We founded a company called MeasurementMarketing.io, where it's our job to help kind of what we call the normal people, not necessarily the numbers people, but the normal marketers out there how to use tools like Google Analytics and Tag Manager and Data Studio, and all these tools that are freely accessible. They are amazingly powerful, but most marketers just don't understand how to use the tools and they sort of have a fear of them sometimes, you get overwhelmed and frustrated. And it makes sense as to how they're using them. So our job is to help them figure out how to use those tools and to make sure that the companies are starting to build measurement muscle in their organizations, because that is not just a nice to have thing anymore, I think it's a requirement for going forward in business.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah, you're right. It's complex and there are some great free tools out there. But I think for many businesses, you know we focus a lot of content on this program to small and mid-sized businesses. Many of them don't have a very big marketing team. If they have a marketing team at all, and you know, they may have a digital presence, they may have a website, but it's something that's been designed years ago and really hasn't had a lot of activity since. You know, if you were designing a website today from scratch, what are some of the very first things that you would want to make sure are embedded within that website? I'm talking things like tracking pixels and things like that. So that somebody could begin to analyze the data, analyze their traffic, and figure out where their leads are coming in.
Chris Mercer:It's such a good question. Because it really does depend. And I think that's almost the first thing to think about when it comes to using tools like Google Analytics or any sort of measurement in general, is that there are stages to this. So what I might say I would do today is not necessarily what I would recommend somebody do who's starting out on day zero, right? Because I know more about how to use these tools. So for me to say, well I would, wouldn't start a brand without Tag Manager, without Google Analytics, without data student reports. That's easy for me to say, cause I've already been through this a bunch of times. I understand how to use the tools, I understand what I'm doing with them. So if you're just starting out in kind of a day zero mentality where I'm just trying to figure out what my offer is. And I'm just trying to figure out how to use an email list and get a form on the page. Like I think you should put analytics on your site, for sure, at least Google Analytics in however is the easiest way for you to do that. For some people it'll be a plugin. For others, that'll be a built in integration to use in a platform like Shopify or something, Other people might just copy paste the code, right? Whatever is necessary to get it up and running. The one thing I would suggest is that remember there are stages to this. So in the beginning is what we call the cave. That's where everybody's sort of walked around in the dark. They're not quite Sure. what's working or what's not. And when you're in the cave, it's just get the tool up and running, and start to use it in the best way that you can at that point in time, make progress, right? Just get good enough to get going, come back and make it better later. And then you eventually, when you activate these tools, which is again where you're sort of putting the code on the pages that you can plug in or something like that, then you will come back and you'll go through it again and you start to customize it. Because the belief is, and this is true where most marketers look at Google Analytics and they look at that and they go, if I only knew how to use this, I know that it's trying to tell me something, I know there's insights that are right there in front of me, but I just can't see them. And it's because I'm a bad reader, right? And I'm rephrasing like the numbers person dilemma, where they're like, I'm just not a numbers person. And if I only was, if I knew how to read these reports, they would bestow upon me all of these fantastical insights that would change my world forever, right? And that is to some extent true. But the reason that you're not able to read those reports is because it hasn't been customized and that is a necessary step that Google kind of doesn't really tell a lot of people. And you don't realize that. And so it's not your fault if that's happened to you, it happened to us when we first started. You load up the code, you see data in the reports, and you're like, well, I must use that data.
Eric Dickmann:Right.
Chris Mercer:But the way I think about this, it's like if I give you a kid's book and I said, could you read to me this children's book? You could. I take the book back, I rip out the pages. I rip those pages into pieces, smash it in between the covers, give you back the book. Could you read the story? And you could, It just would be really hard.. But I didn't change your ability to read, right? And a lot of people answer that question and go, I couldn't read the story. You totally could, because I didn't change your ability to read, it's just harder. Google Analytics by default is ripped up pieces of paper, it's ripped up pieces. They are all puzzles, puzzle pieces, but they haven't really been assembled properly. So that's why you're not seeing a story. And if you see too much data and going to your point earlier, when we kicked this whole thing off about there's the world of data and there's more data every day. We need less data, not more. But we really need is story, So it's not data that's important. It's the information being collected, it's the story that that information tells. And Google Analytics can be customized in a way. Just follow a specific process we can get into where it will naturally tell you a story. So when you do look at those reports, instead of going like- Geez, I have no idea what's going on and you go like, oh, okay, this is telling me this or this is how Facebook works for us, this is how YouTube then helps us, this is how email then sells them on my product. And Google Analytics will readily show you that again. But again, it has to be customized. And so going back to the original question, which is like, where do you recommend people start? If you're just starting out, you are not at all comfortable with measurement and, but you have to have something. The answer is not cover your eyes and say, I'm not going to have it. You start with the basics, get Google Analytics up and running and just learn the basics of the tool where everything is, and then you start understanding. This is the leap that people don't do on their own, that they should be awakened to is they realize you're not using a completely setup system, right? You have to go back and customize it. So you learn a little nuances and tricks, and you start setting up goals and certain types of goals and Google Analytics, and measuring for certain types of results. And all of a sudden, the tool gets more and more useful, and it gets more and more useful, and it gets more and more useful. But if you don't have an offer, Google Analytics, a perfect Google analytics setup is not going to help you. So I would focus on your offer, get your offer out there, get traffic to your pages. And then when you get traffic, go back to analytics, make it a little better, and then it sort of becomes like you keep the plates spinning, you know? Especially if you're a freelancer just starting out or you have a small team.
Eric Dickmann:Well, I want to deconstruct this a little bit because you talked about a lot there. And I think there are a couple key things that I often see, and I'm going to relate to you what I often hear my clients telling me back. So first of all, there's a lot of confusion as to what the difference is between Google Analytics and Google Search Console, and where do you go, and which one is better for which kinds of things. And you know, you talked about Google Tag manager as an example. Is Google going to find your site if you don't do things like set up Tag Manager, if you don't submit your site through Search Console and submit your site map, is Google gonna find it? There seem to be these building blocks that people get stuck on before they even get started, because they don't know what all this stuff is and how to do it.
Chris Mercer:Yeah, and rightly so. Because Google is amazing. I love Google because they do offer so many products that are highly accessible because they're free, right? It just takes a learning curve sometimes to use them. But because there are so many, it is very, very easy to get confused as to what do you use for what? So to kind of separate out from the world of measurement, you can start with Google Analytics. Collect some information, it stores that information in its database, and then it builds these reports that you can then use to figure out kind of what's working and what's not. And that's a good beginner way of looking at it, right? And then you get better at using the tool as you go. And that's kind of what analytics does. When it comes to search, right? That's where you have Search Console. And Search Console is there just to focus on the integration of kind of what Google search traffic is doing, meaning when they're on google.com and they're searching for stuff, where did your site come up in the listings? What were they looking for when Google thought your site was worth putting into the listing? You know that sort of stuff. And so Search Console is very focused on what's happening on google.com and how your site is interacting with that particular part of the world. And then Google Analytics is focused on what's happening when they're on your site, on my site.com, whatever your site is. And that's where Google Analytics takes over at that point. And so it's kind of two different sections, both equally important. You got to know how people are using your site and you've got to know how people are using Google, because that might help you. So you might use Search Console to figure out what a better blog post might be or better focus content to generate more search traffic. But then when that search traffic hits your site, what are they doing? Which blog posts are they seeing and are they seeing multiple blog posts? Are they opting in or are they becoming a lead? Are they purchasing your products or services? That's perfect for Google Analytics. That's where that wheelhouse stands. So those are the two separations between Search Console and something like Analytics. But then of course, Google has come in with Tag Manager and Data Studio, and everything else. And so the reason that this exists is because at a certain level, and this goes through the stages, right? Think about what we call the cave, which again one around the dark cause you have nothing. Then you do the valley, which is okay, we've got some basic setups in place and we call the valley of visibility. Like you can look around, you can kind of get an understanding of where things are working or where things aren't, and which traffic sources are better for you. And eventually you go to the summit where it's super complicated, you've got a bunch of stuff going on, but that's for larger organizations. So when you're in these stages, as you improve your measurement, which is a journey. It is not a destination. It's not like, Oh I just set up my goals and I never have to touch Analytics again. Like you're going to be an in it all the time, you're going to ask questions, you're going to eventually get answers to those questions, and guess what that's going to do, that's just going to cause more questions. right? Cause that's what happens. And sometimes you're going to have questions you can't answer. So I'll give you an example of that. So in the beginning, when I'm first starting a business, I might just put basic Google Analytics on my pages, and I want to know which pages people see. Not a problem, Google Analytics can do that. But eventually I might say, Well, I have a bunch of people that are seeing my offer page, but not many people are going to the cart page for some reason, right? They see my offer because analytics is telling me that. But Analytics is also telling me not many people are going to the cart and my question would be what's happening on that page? Are they even sticking around 10 seconds? Are they scrolling halfway down? Are they looking at a particular part of the page for maybe five or six seconds? Are they even seeing the offer? Are they leaving because the headline is wrong and they're bailing after two seconds or are they actually looking at the offer going, No. Right? Because now I have two different problems, one is that may be above the fold copy issue. The other one is an offer issue. And that's something that Google Analytics kind of on its own. Isn't really capable of doing. You can't really easily get that into Google Analytics. That's where Tag Manager comes in. So Tag Manager is one of those platforms that Google developed that you can use to collect different style behaviors, right? So not just what pages did they see, but it can measure time, it can measure scroll, it can measure video interaction. And then it can tell Google Analytics, Hey, here's, what's going on. Here's the actual way we think about it is what's the conversation that's happening between the user and that page and a tool like tag manager will help you level. To, to get a better understanding of that conversation. Like almost like you could listen and hear the words a little more clearly now, and now you can make better decisions as a marketer because you understand, wow, that page is punching everybody in the face right away. That's not a good thing. Let's change that. And we adjust the headline so it matches maybe what the ad was saying. And now they're not feeling like the expectation wasn't matched, and they actually stay on the page a little longer. They our copy, they understand the value of the offer and all of a sudden, now they're going to the cart, right? And so that's kind of an example of Tag Manager. Tag Manager is also good at kind of being one source of truth. So while it's telling Google Analytics, it can also tell Facebook, it can also tell Google Ads what's happening. And now you can coordinate retargeting efforts. Now, when you're just starting out day zero and you're trying to figure out an offer, I wouldn't care about retargeting. I'd be like, let's get the offer. Let's get SEO. Let's get blog posts up. But eventually as your business grows, you will want to start retargeting people who bought certain products or who saw blog posts, but didn't become a lead or something like that. And you can do that again. Tag Manager makes that pretty simple. And then finally there's other tools out there. Again, all of these are free. And believe me, I'm not saying you have to start every single one of these today.
Eric Dickmann:With all of them. Yeah.
Chris Mercer:Always start with analytics and then you eventually, I like growing out of the tool into the next tool. That's how I'd like to do it. But there's a tool called Data Studio and that is for anybody who's ever kind of gone to these Google Analytics reports, and you're like, I just don't want to see a bunch of rows of numbers, right? Some people are just allergic to that, and I get that. Cause sometimes Google's great because a lot of information in Google Analytics, sometimes it's little more than what you want and you're just trying to find this simple thing, like how many people saw the page. And then sometimes Google Analytics fractures it out and you get, and you can't really tell what's going on. And you're like, oh, just come back to this thing later. Well Data Studio is a platform again free where you can create dashboards. you can very quickly create almost like if you think about like a flow chart, that's what lot of ours are. Where it's like, here's the people saw the offer, here's where people saw the cart, here's what people purchased, and now I can measure conversion rates in between steps, I can make sure that the machinery is working the way it's supposed to. And that's kind of like the next level is you go from like, let's get this boat in the water to let's make this boat work better. the engine. Is the site doing the job it's supposed to be doing? And you would look at a Data Studio dashboard or something like that. So, yeah. It's doing exactly what it needs to do. In which case the answer is go get more traffic. But if it's not doing what it needs to do, then maybe you work on the machinery a little bit before you go in and spend more money on Facebook because you're not going to get a drastically different result until that happens. And so you sort of grow into these. So again, if you're just starting out in your freelancer and you just got your offer in, I would say absolutely have analytics on the page and that's it, start there. Eventually as your list build grows and you got some important questions to try and answer, and you are trying to sort of debug that machinery, maybe Tag Manager come in cause it can give you a little bit more visibility into something like that. thenthen eventually, when you're trying to get reports done, I like Data Studio a lot. I'm hesitant to say I'm a numbers guy. Cause everybody goes like, oh, I can't do it cause you're a numbers guy and I'm not. I am numbers comfortable. I'm tolerant, right? Ibut But I would much rather not be in the middle of a spreadsheet. I want to see a flow chart that shows me what's going on because my brain needs to see a shape and go like, oh, that makes sense.. Perfect, I get it. It's working like it needs to. So I use Data Studio constantly for that. So it makes it very fast. I go there, I see my high level reports, and I know what actions I'm supposed to take next, which is the ultimate idea, right? All the stuff is for is so that we can go take actions and improve our marketing results.
Eric Dickmann:Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO consulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. So one follow-up question I'd have there is that a lot of tools that are out there somewhere in the process, like if you're setting up a WordPress site, maybe you install the Yoast SEO plugin or whatnot, they usually ask for your Google Analytics ID, but are you recommending that that's not the place for it, that you would install it instead in a Tag Manager and always have Tag Manager present on your side? What are sort of the pros and cons of it being individually there or in Tag Manager?
Chris Mercer:It's a great question. So it goes back to where you are in the stages. If you're just in the cave, you're trying to figure out your offer and you're trying to figure out traffic, having the perfect measurement system, even a measurement system like ours, like ours was incredible, right? I'm super reliant on ours. But if I took all of that time effort, energy as an entrepreneur, and did all of that, but didn't focus on offering traffic, it's doesn't matter. I'm just wasting my time., right? It's a lot of busy-ness, but not real, any sort of results. So I wouldn't do that. I would just use Yoast and be like, yep. plug it in, get it lit up, because that's not my thing I have to solve right now. Now that said, if I'm past that stage, I have a working business, I've got offers coming in, I've got reliable traffic, I have an actual business cause I've got a team member or two. I will get to a point and I would imagine most people would where you just can't answer the questions that you're trying to get answers to. And it'll be questions like that, or be questions like, well why isn't the offer sending people to the cart? Why are they bailing? What's going on? And you're going to reach a point where it feels like there's a black hole where it's dark and you just can't hear that conversation anymore. And you go, okay, at that point, you now level up your measurement and that's where you do Tag Manager, you know, and eventually then Data Studio. And I would do it in that order. You use Analytics, get comfortable with Google Analytics first and understand how to use the tool, there's a report called The Source Medium Report, which is the one you can use 80%, 90% of the time to get most of the answers you will ever need if you do it properly and can get used to setting goals and get used to using goals, get used to what they call UTMs in Google Analytics. Terminology to set up and track your traffic, things like that. Then you get really good at that stuff because those are foundational levels of measurement. And if you don't do that and you just add on Tag Manager, you're just going to have more of a mess. You get really good at analytics, then you layer in Tag Manager when you outgrow that. Now again if I'm starting a brand next year, let's say as a new business. I will do Tag Manager Analytics, and that's because I have that muscle already, I already have that measurement muscle. So if you're comfortable with it, for sure that is the better way to do it. But the only reason I hesitate to answer, like Yes. you should definitely do that is because I don't think you should. It depends upon where you are in your organization. So if you already have business analytics, you understand analytics, and now you need to get a much more nuanced detail of the conversation, bring in Tag Manager because instead of a flashlight, you have this big, giant spotlight, it's like the sun. Tag Manager lights up everything, it's amazing. It's an incredibly powerful tool, but it has its own learning curve. And you've got to make sure that your organization has the resources to go through that learning curve, right? It's gotta to be worth it, I promise it'll be worth it, but it's there. So you can't just think it's going to, it's not necessarily plug and play. So that's how I would answer it. So again, if you're starting out, get really good at analytics, grow into using Tag Manager, and if you of course already have those skills and you can comfortably do both at the same time, it is the better way. And it is the way eventually I think all organizations will go, so it's not a question of, if we use tag manager? It's a question of when you roll that platform into your organization. Because in the beginning you probably don't need it. But you will eventually want it because there are so many benefits to having that platform. Well I think that's a great explanation, I appreciate that. Because I think too many businesses, they look at it and it's one number. What's my website traffic, right? It's not really that valuable a number, because if you have offers, if you've got product pages, you know other landing pages, if you're not tracking sort of the individual performance of those, you really don't know where people are going on that website, what's being successful? I can tell you one of the most common mistakes I see with a lot of clients is that they do end up running some ads and they send their customer back to their home page. Right. Exactly.
Eric Dickmann:What are you tracking there? very hard to judge the effectiveness of your ads if you don't really have any conversions there. There's nothing that you're following, there's no funnel that you're following there. Do you see that a lot as well?
Chris Mercer:Yeah, we do. And that goes back to, so we can cover this kind of quickly, but we have a framework to follow. And I think that's a lot of the mistake people have is they don't have a framework that sort of encourages them to ask the right questions or to think the right sort of most useful thoughts when it comes to this process. So our framework is really three steps. You plan out your measurement, you build out the measurement, right? And then you use it, you launched a measurement system. So when you're planning it out, it's three things. What we call QIA is cause Q I A. So you think about the questions you're trying to answer and you just write them all down. And this is where people get caught up because they're like, well, I don't know what my questions are. There are no wrong questions, there's just questions then you get the more you ask questions, the better you get at asking questions. So get used to asking questions. The hint I can give you or the tip I should say that I can give you when it comes to that is you ask questions about the results that you're getting, and you ask questions about how you're getting those results, you have to have both. It's results and how. So you might ask a question about how many sales am I getting? How many visitors am I getting? How many leads am I getting that kind of results oriented? How questions are then? Okay, well, how am I getting those leads? then you go, well, geez, are they seeing how many people are opting in on the block? How many people opting in on the homepage? And then you start, when you know that stuff, now you have an understanding of how things work, how you machinery works, right? So that's kind of the questions process and then of course you collect the information you need to actually get the answers which analytics will do by default depending upon the question you're answering, and eventually you might need something like Tag Manager, if it's super complicated questions. So you ask the questions, you collect the information, and then, and this is the most important part, you think through the actions. What actions will I take based upon the answers I get. And this is important because this is before you open up analytics. It's before you open up your website, you role play this in your head. You think it through, you use a whiteboard, you write it down on a note, but you think to yourself, Okay, I'm going to send Facebook traffic to my homepage. And if I'm not getting at least 30% of those to opt in on my homepage, it's not working. So I need this. I'm expecting 30%. And if it's lower than 30%, I'm going to know something's off. If it's higher than maybe 35 or 40 percent, then that course will be back because conversion rate could be too high. Maybe the audience is too small. So you might go like, okay, if it's less than 30%, I'm going to look at the homepage and think, how can I make that homepage work better or take that hand off and create a better lead from it. If it's higher than maybe 40 or 50%, I might go back to Facebook and think, am I maybe too narrow on my targeting? I can expand it out a little bit and get more eyeballs to the page. And if it's just right, if it's somewhere in the range that I want, then I'm going to figure out how to also scale traffic. Maybe bring another traffic source because that seems to be working just fine. And then I would measure for that. And if the homepage isn't doing you know, maybe I thought it would do 30%, but it turns out not, I would look okay. Maybe why, and then you go and say, well, maybe it's because the offer is at the very bottom in the footer, I've seen things like that, right? Where it's like, wow, we're actually making them screw all the way down to the bottom and do that. Maybe if we make it above the fold, maybe more people will take that offer. And then we, and you could try that and test it, right? But the numbers are what's telling you that it's not a gut or somebody's idea, it's the market. And this is where measurement marketing sort of got its its concept is measurement is how we listen to their side of the conversation. So the better you get at measurement and understanding measurement, and using measurement, the better you are at listening to customers. And I don't know anybody who doesn't want to listen to their customers because the are the only person who knows what to do next, only ones. So we listen to what they're doing. And then marketing is how we adjust our side of the conversation to get the conversation going in the direction we want. So we listen to the customers in terms of the view. We might, again, going back to that example, my guess is a homepage, unless it's very focused on just that offer, it's probably not going to have a 30% and you go, I wonder why? Well, maybe it's because the homepage is not really made to give an offer like an opt-in. It just also does that, but it also says, Hey, go visit our blog or go check out these posts, or can you go learn about us, or go hear what other people are saying. So it's really a directory, right? And so it's like, well, we're sending them to a directory page, expecting it to work like an opt-in or focused opt in offer pay. It's never going to do that, okay? Why don't we then maybe focus it to an opt-in offer page. And if that process happens and it happens through measurement, that's what I mean by measurement muscle, where people are using their numbers, they're hearing what the customers are saying, what their users are saying, and they're going, okay, they're telling us, just tell me what you wanna do, so focus the message. And you're like, oh, let's just focus it on a page on the opt-in. And then you test that, right? You would send that traffic to an opt-in page, expect the same conversion rates, and then you go, okay, now we're getting them. And now you've learned focus page- one, page, one purpose, with the exception of a home page, cause they get is pretty good for a directory page. But that's why most people are going to home pages is to find out what, you know, to explore the organization or the brand, not necessarily to buy something, right?
Eric Dickmann:Well, I love the way you
Chris Mercer:It's job is to get them to another section in the site.
Eric Dickmann:Well, I love the way you described that because you know so often we talk about the buyer's journey and it really is a journey, right? And people come in at different stages, they don't always start at the beginning. But in order to really understand the buyer's journey, you have to be listening, you have to be watching, you have to be understanding what they're engaging with and look for the signals of where they are in that journey so that you can present them with the next logical piece of content for them. And I love this idea of you know, measurement with really listening and understanding what people are doing so that you can make the adjustments that are needed.
Chris Mercer:Yeah, that's exactly right. So like on our home page, for example, we know it's a directory page. It's not made to get sales because it can't sell anything, it's not made to collect leads because it can't do that. It's there to say like an information booth in the malls back in the old days, right? We used to go to malls, it was like the information booth. And I'm just trying to find this thing and somebody would help you and say, oh, let's go down here. That's what this page is for us. So the homepage is designed for that and we measure for that. So we measure for its performance, how many people are clicking on the top navigation links? How many people are clicking on the body links to navigate to a different site? How many people actually clicking on the bottom? So you know there are sort of mega footers that are at the bottom. We have one of those and we'll measure for that. And the reason we do that is because we weren't sure if people were actually clicking on mega footer links at the bottom, like, cause that some people do. Turns out 30% of our clicks to our main offers come from those bottom links. So it's like, okay that stays. But now we know how the site is, it was supposed to operate how we thought it was supposed to operate. And there was a point where we thought we should probably take out this footer because let's focus everybody on the top nav, right? Cause that makes sense. It's above the fold and we don't really need the footer. It's just a distraction. But it turns out the customers when we ask them when the users, right. We ask them through measurement, we're listening to their conversation. They were like, no, we love this. I'm like, Okay, we keep it there. And now we measure for the offer page once it's clicks go to the offer page. So the homepage's job is get them to the offer page. And then the offer page's job is build value. Because honestly it can't collect a credit card, so it can't sell anything either. So it's job is build value. And so we measure for that. Did the page do its job? My background is a lot of sales, background kind of growing up. I came through mostly sales management. So I always think in terms of the pipeline, because to your point, buyer's journey, right? It's the different stages. Everything's a sale to me. First. I got to sell them into the brand. Then I got to sell them the value of the offer, then I got to sell them the credit card information, then I got to sell them to use the product, right? So, it's everything's a sale as we go through that pipeline of that jouirney. And so with the offer page, we actually measure for, did they see it right? Did it load? Did they stay 10 seconds? Did they scroll halfway down and then also stay at least 45 seconds? Because now we measure what we call it interest. So we say, oh, now they're interested in the messaging. Did they look at the offer where the actual offer is made at the bottom of the page? Did they look at that for at least four seconds. I imagine the power of this when you can do things like this. Because I can look at the page and if somebody is not going to the cart, we know is it because they came to the page and they left within 10 seconds? And they're just not even scrolling down. If that's what's happening, it's because the handoff was wrong. Either the expectation was set in correctly or it was set correctly, but that page above the fold is completely wrong, right? Kind of like if you have an ad for sweaters and then it's like, get your oil changed when you click on the ad. And you're like, well, that's not right, would never stay. I'd be like, this is the wrong place. But we can see that in the numbers, but if they're looking at the offer, and they're not clicking what we call initiate, when they're not clicking to go to the cart, we know they've looked, they've invested, they're interested, they've investigated. It's just not good enough. So now we know, focus on the offer. And we're not wondering, because I think a lot of people do this. They are like- go to the latest mastermind or ask their friends, what would you do? And everybody's got a million ideas.
Eric Dickmann:Right, they do
Chris Mercer:Not hard, right? But when you measure properly, when you hear that conversation that the users are giving you, you can then focus and say, okay, it's in here, right? It's not the page that's broken, it's this part of it that's broken. And our copywriting team will do that. So we've taught them the power of this. And they love it because even though they're not numbers people, they're creatives. But they will look at these reports and in their head, they're visualizing the conversation they're having, just/like you and I are right now. And they're going like, okay, we need to focus on the offers. How do we make it? Why is it that it's not communicating? Because maybe to them, it's an incredible offer, but they're not the buyer, right? The customer is. So they're saying no. So then you go, okay, why they say no? How do we make it simpler? How do we make it even better? How do we make it more of a no brainer to style offer?
Eric Dickmann:It's all about that iteration, right? Making things better over and over. Yep.
Chris Mercer:Exactly, exactly right. But you know where to focus and that's the power of measurement. Your resources get focused and then you can make progress faster than what you normally could and certainly more than what your competition can because they're not measuring for this. So they have no idea why their offers not working. Meanwhile, your currently, I'm just going to keep moving forward and you iterate yours
Eric Dickmann:Well you know, this is such a broad topic and there's so much we could discuss. And you know, before I let you go here at the end of the podcast, there was just one more thing that I wanted to focus on. You know, we talked about all these great tools, free tools within Google. But sometimes you're looking for a snapshot, you're looking for something quick. Is there anything that you would recommend? A lot of users out here have WordPress sites, are there any plugins or things that you would recommend that give people a quick snapshot of how they're doing without actually having to go into the full blown Google tools to be able to see things in detail?
Chris Mercer:Yeah, that's a great question. I would definitely stick with Google Analytics, number one. So there are a lot of great plugins that will use Google Analytics and then put it inside of a WordPress site. So like Monster Insights is a great one where it's like, oh, you can use it for your analytics account and it'll install everything. And then it also has it, so I think Jetpack does some of that stuff now. But it's pulling from your Google Analytics and it's putting it inside your WordPress site. And it's going to kind of customize it as strips out a lot of that distraction, and it shows you the basic information. And that s a great place to start. The one word of warning that would give people is don't get complacent there, because that is, kind of like in the old days of the internet, I'm not gonna able to use this example much longer, I'm sure. But in the old days internet, when you would dial in, right? Bring a band modem or whatever it was, and you would load an image, you know? You would see that grainy sort of image come through and then it would come through again and it would come through a little clear, and it come through again a little clearer. And then finally, after 20 minutes, you see the image. That's what measurement is like in the beginning when you light up that, especially if you're doing it in that way, where you're like, I'm going to use it in my WordPress site, it's going to use whatever my analytics is. And this is going to just show me the pieces that you know, are going to keep it simple for me. That is useful, it is useful, but it is a very, very blurry image. So it's useful because as you can kind of see a forest, right? But you can't make out individual details of what types of trees are in that forest, right. But you know, it's a forest. That's the important part. So that's useful. Just don't get complacent. Don't think that's the ultimate reality. Cause that's just a very blurry version of the conversation. You will eventually still need to focus because all those tools are they're basing the quality of what they can tell you, what we call the useful truth. They're telling you their version of a useful truth, but it's only based on what analytics has. So the better that you get at using Google Analytics and understanding which results to track and how to set up goals and how to use UTMs, and structure those. So you can tell what Facebook does, what email does, what Google ads does, what search does. And sometimes you find that they have personalities. Like Facebook's really good at awareness, but Google ads is really good at getting leads and emails, really good at closing stuff. And when you start to understand how to use your traffic sources, because analytics will tell you that, it makes things better. So again, the word of warning is just don't get complacent. And I think it's super smart because it makes progress. And again, my number one rule- get good enough to get going, then come back to make a better later, because otherwise you get paralysis because you start looking at a guy like me and go, well, I'll never be able to do that. Of course, I could never do what I do on day zero, right? Like I'm doing this for years. Don't judge against me. I'm just much further down the same path that everyone's on. We're just at different stages, right? So you start off in the beginning, get your blurry picture. Because at least it's a picture. And before, you had nothing. So now you have that. And then just remember to every once in a while, take a few minutes and you know, Google something on YouTube or something like that to figure out how would you make this even better? How do you make it even better? Just little, teeny nudges at a time. And all of a sudden you look back a few months later and start going like, wow, actually, it's a much clearer picture now. I see that not all trees is actually a path through the woods. Okay, let's go that way. That's how you do it. So give yourself permission to be where you are, be good enough to get going and always come back and make it better later.
Eric Dickmann:That's great, Chris. I think that's really useful. You know, people do have to take their time I think when they're starting from scratch and building things up, and I think you've given some really practical advice on how they could do that. But there's that next layer where they actually would like some help with this. And I know that's part of what you guys do, so I'd love it. If you could just share with the audience a little bit more about how they could get that help, how they could find you on the web.
Chris Mercer:Sure. So I'll give you a couple of links you can check out. So a MeasurementMarketing.io is obviously our main site. But if you go to measurementmarketing.io/youtube, it'll take you directly to our YouTube channel, we have a ton of free training there. If you are kind of in the stage where you're like, okay, I've kind of used this stuff and now it's time to level up, we have a membership of course, the academy is a paid level of membership. But I would start with our free level to be honest. And so if you go to measurementmarketing.io/virtualcmo measurementmarketing.io/virtualcmo, it'll take you to our toolbox membership and we give out all of our tools for free that we create for members. So you can go there, there's a traffic tracking tool kit, there's a dashboard tool kit, there's different tools there to help you think through, are you measuring for the right things and plan out your tools, and everything else. And so that's why I recommend it if you're ready.
Eric Dickmann:That's perfect. That's great. I will make sure we have all of that linked up in the show notes. I love it when guests share valuable resources like that, because there's just so much to learn. But if you do this stuff right, you know it can really open your eyes to some opportunities that you might be missing. So this has been great, really useful information. Chris, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Chris Mercer:Appreciate it Eric. Thanks again for having me.
Eric Dickmann:Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.
