From a very young age I was confident with words. At just 7 years old my year 2 teacher, Mrs Small put me in charge of giving spelling tests and tutoring other students.
I naturally gravitate towards words. Spoken and written. I am fascinated by communication and how we can use it to our full potential to achieve our goals. Yes I was on the school debate team and in my spare time you could also find me in the library.
Historically I avoided numbers. As a result I failed accounting 3 times at university. I have had more debt than savings. I never saw the value in numbers.
It wasn’t until almost 30 years later I could see the importance of numbers to measure success, that I finally started to focus on them. I then started putting key measurements in place across all facets of my life.
Yet to become a good marketer and enable financial literacy and sufficiency personally, it has started with my understanding and focus on numbers.
Numbers are a measurement. The context we give our numbers is critical to our understanding of whether we have succeeded or not.
Numbers and having an understanding of them has enabled correct pricing for my services and enabled business sustainability.
Business Growth has been enabled through cash flow and an understanding of the business numbers.
It has opened the door for me to say yes. By having cash flow, understanding what is going out and coming in has enabled clarity to evaluate new opportunities that have continued to fuel business growth.
This new financial literacy and focus on numbers has then flowed (pun intended) to all marketing activities. First for Serena Dot Ryan and then for all clients.
The ability to be open to numbers and treat them as a living thing is a game changer. I love the BlitzMetrics concept of Metrics, Analysis and Action #MAA. Doing these 3 steps systematically and regularly has enabled continuous optimisation of campaigns and achievement of business goals.
Key learnings:
Don’t assume what you like is what your audience likes
I have learned to create videos and put them out for review. As long as the video covers the essential 4 components of a one minute video, I go with the premise, done is better than perfect. Once a video is live the key thing is to review the metrics. It is there you can get an understanding of what is working (or not).
One of my videos I didn’t like because of my makeup and outfit, has become one of my best performing videos on Facebook.
No one is more stunned than me that it has a relevance score of 9 and steadily building a warm audience of leads.
Be clear on what you’re measuring
It can be easy to be lulled into vanity metrics of page likes and reach. What is key here is, engagement. Video views, Comments and Shares are more important. These measures indicate engagement and that your content is resonating with your audience.
The hidden metric
Video views are not immediately obvious. Whilst it takes just 3 seconds of viewing your video to register as a view, 10 second views are not immediately obvious unless you go into the video metrics. The beauty of this metric is that it show that someone has taken longer than the average of just 6 seconds to stop scrolling and view your video.
The power of this hidden metric of video views is that this can be used to create warm custom audiences of people who have viewed your videos for more than 10 seconds. Then in the ads manager you can create custom ads specifically for these warm audiences. The power of this is immense. It gives you an incredible opportunity to build relationships with customers and potential customers using Facebook functionality!
Analyse in context of what your goals are
The Facebook Ads Manager sets goals in 3 Phases and you should too. Rather than have one goal of Sales or Leads. Break your goals into Awareness, Consideration (Engagement) and Conversion. Be really clear on what you want to achieve.
Take action based on your goals.
This is a critical step. Campaigns, much the same as business are not meant to be set and forget. They need regular action to be able to work.
This logic fuels my passion to work with businesses and key business decision makers obsessed with numbers.
When businesses are focused on what their goals are, have key metrics in place to track their progress and then regularly review their set up, essentially treating their marketing campaigns and businesses as living breathing things that need regular care and attention, then we all have the opportunity to reach our potential.
