Why You MUST Have Analytics Data

In this article I want to cover why you MUST have analytics data for everything you do in your business.

You may already be aware of this at some level but it may seem too time-consuming or complicated to set up. I want to address both these issues in this article because this mindset has certainly dogged me in the past.

I’ve even set up Google Analytics on most of my websites but simply failed to login to Google Analytics to look at the stats because the layout of Google Analytics is a bit confusing and the wealth of information provided is overwhelming.

If you set up your products on an affiliate platform like JVZoo or Warrior Plus, then you will automatically get your sales stats and sales funnel conversions but what if you want to setup your sales funnel outside one of these platforms or indeed you want to get conversion stats on a squeeze page on your blog?

Ideally you also need to be split-testing your squeeze pages ans sales pages for maximum conversions. Again you can use Google Experiments or Goals inside Google Analytics but again you are faced with grappling with the interface of Google Analytics.

For this reason, I recently invested in a product called Funnel Trax. But more about that shortly.

First, I want to discuss why you really must have analytics data so you are at least motivated to take this stuff seriously.

Taking action at all is difficult but finding the motivation to take action is even more difficult if you do not get immediate results feedback.

What do I mean by this?

Let’s say that I create a squeeze page and buy a solo ad to send some clicks to the page. Without results feedback, it would be difficult to motivate myself to send more traffic if I didn’t know the results.

If it cost me $35 to buy this traffic and I received no sales from the transaction then my loss is $35 – without further information I might decide to cut my losses.

But if I also knew that, of those 10 subscribers, on average 5 would go on to buy a $47 product as a result of my email marketing follow-up campaign then that would motivate me to buy more traffic and also see if I could increase my squeeze page conversion rate.

See what I mean? Without the right information it is impossible to make sensible and profitable decisions about your business. It is also difficult to find the motivation to take the action you need to take unless you get immediate results feedback – that action might be to cut a loss-making marketing campaign and move your resources into something else that will yield a better result.

You probably know all this at some level already but are you monitoring your stats daily? Probably not.

Do you think this could be the key to making headway in your business?

I think for many entrepreneurs this is the key PROVIDED it is easy to set up the monitoring system and the information it spits out is easy to understand and assimilate.

This what I like about Funnel Trax. It’s bloody simple to set up and use and it enables you monitor all your analytics data in one place.

The key point that you should take from this article is that if you’re not using data to drive your decisions, and paid traffic to help grow your business – you’re in trouble. The writing is on the wall and the people who fail to adapt will only struggle before perishing.

(P.S. With the rise of remarketing/retargeting, one of the key stats is how many pixelled leads you can gather and Cost Per Pixel)

Money For Nothing (& Your Chicks For Free!)

Do you remember Dire Straits and their song ‘Money For Nothing ‘ – this sums up information marketing because all the information that people are looking for is out there on the internet for free.

So why do people buy info-products if they can get the information for free?

It mainly has to do with convenience and speed – if we can aggregate, sort and organise information for other people, who have busy lives, and provide a short-cut to the information they are seeking, this is valuable and well-worth paying for.

However, a lot of the work that we do online is essentially free in order to position ourselves as someone who our readers can ‘know, like and trust’ BEFORE they invest in a paid product.

However, the importance of charging for information cannot be under-estimated and I have therefore copied an extract from a very good article by Michael Hyatt that explains why it is important to charge for our products and services:

[content_box_light_green width=”75%”]

This forced me to get very clear about why charging for my work is not only acceptable but essential. Rather than feel guilty, I’m convinced it’s important for at least three reasons.

Because of how it changes your mindset When you start charging for your services, you go from being an amateur to being a pro. You are suddenly more accountable.
- It matters if you show up. You don’t get paid if you don’t.
- It matters if you do quality work. People won’t buy if you don’t.
- It matters if you are consistent. You won’t get repeat customers or grow your business if you don’t.
In short, when you charge, you respect yourself and your own work more. It creates value in your own mind.
Because of how it improves your customers’ experience. People don’t respect what they get for free. There are exceptions, I’m sure, but not many. I have seen this time and time again.For example, I occasionally give away free tickets to one of my conferences. Often, the people who get them don’t come to half the sessions—or don’t pay attention when they do. Worse, they sometimes cancel at the last minute, not realizing I still incur costs.The truth is that until people make an investment, they are not invested in the outcome. This is why I now always make sure they pay something and have “skin in the game.”But charging also improves the user-experience. Recently, I bought a very high-end marketing course. It cost me almost $2,000.You can bet I just didn’t stick it on the shelf and forget about it. Instead, I rearranged my entire schedule, so I could get up an hour earlier and work through the material.Because I paid so much, I was more focused, more committed to working through every exercise, and more determined to apply the principles to my business.The author of the course promised that it would be life-changing. But it’s only true if the students follow-through on his teaching. The fact that he charged so much for the course improved the chances of that happening.
Because of how it impacts the world. This is the most compelling reason of all to me. Charging for your services is a necessity if you are going to support your family. If you don’t charge, you won’t be doing what you do for long.But even more importantly, making money provides you with the opportunity to share with those in need. The more you make, the bigger impact you can have.In fact, within the bounds of my calling and ethical practice, I believe I have the moral obligation to make as much money as I can. Why? Because there are people in need, and I have the opportunity to help them.

You can read the full article here: http://michaelhyatt.com/do-it-for-the-money.html[/content_box_light_green]

When I was in consulting, I was told that people will not value that which they get for free.

It is totally true.

If you’ve ever paid for information then you will know that you are much more motivated to take action on it and get a return on your investment.

I also think that many of us under-estimate just how much value we each have to offer – we are all unique with enormous potential for creativity. It’s just a question of honouring that potential by taking some action.

Whilst your first product might be slightly horrible, if you keep working on the skill of product creation you will quickly improve.

If you haven’t yet got a product or service that you can offer then you might like to take a quick peak at this video of Marlon Sanders about the need to complete your product – if you’ve got a lot of half-finished projects sitting on your hard-disc, then this could be the kick up the backside that you need:

http://renegade.evsuite.com/marlon-sanders-half-durn-aint-durn/

If you can complete you half-done projects then perhaps you too can start earning money for nothing from the ‘digital dust’ on your computer! On the other hand, you might like to invest in my product – Product Creation Renegade – if you don’t yet know where to start with this ‘Money For Nothing’ info-marketing model!

Shakespearean Copywriting

I’ve been indulging in a bit of Shakespearean Copywriting this week. I completed my eBook entitled ‘What You Can Measure You Can Manage’ and this in now on my site http://measurenmanage.com.

I will be completing this product with an Excel spreadsheet as I develop my own management information system. There is already a nice bonus on the site – 5 videos about mastering Google Analytics. This bonus is relevant because MeasureNManage is all about running your business by the critically important numbers.

I have written the sales page for this site but I now need to create the JV page, list the product on JVZoo and integrate JVZoo with my membership script.

The Ultimate Copywriting Swipe File

I have also created an eBook today on copywriting called The Ultimate Copywriting Swipe File – this is a combination of some PLR material I had about copywriting and a list of copywriting swipes that I obtained from The Warrior Forum. This book will be used for 3 purposes:

as a bonus on a fellow coaching colleague’s (Matthew Houghton) solo ad product
as a bonus on my next product which is called Email-ATM
as a free giveaway on a squeeze page to build my list.

Here is the eCover I designed:

I went with the Shakespearean Theme because of the fact that I live in the town where he was born and died – Stratford-upon-Avon!!

My Secret Copywriting Weapons

Advantage Bot

You can get more details about Advantage Bot here.

Paper Template Plugin

When writing my own sales letters, I mainly use the Paper Template plugin by Robert Plank. It does what it says on the tin – you follow a template for creating your sales letter.

Here is a demo on how this plugin works:

You can get more details about the Paper Template plugin here.

A Content Creation System by Omar Martin

This is a note that Omar wrote in one of the Facebook Groups I am a member of. I thought I would share it here as it looks like a good system. (I use Camtasia (or Easy Video Suite) and Powerpoint rather than Screenflow and Keynote to make my videos because I use a PC rather than a Mac.)

[features_box_light_blue width=”75%” + border=”1px”]The 5 5 5 Method of Content Creation

“I tend to use audacity quite a bit for narration but other than my brain, the most influential tools I use to create content are decisively Screenflow and Keynote.

I use the 5-5-5 method for drafting a quick outline on a particular topic. This means I create 5 subheadings and put them on Keynote slides then I add 5 bullets to each slide. I hit record on Screenflow and press play on Keynote then I talk for at least 5 minutes on each slide.

5 Slides + 5 Bullets + 5 Minutes = A 25 – 30 minute video.

I try to create 3 or 4 of these videos on the same general topic and then hand them over to a transcriptionist or ghost writer that converts the content into a 100+ page book.

Content creation is only as complicated as we chose to make it.”

[/features_box_light_blue]

Creating my Own WordPress Plugins

Creating my own WordPress plugins has long been a goal of mine but I have been reluctant to get involved in an area that I have little or no expertise in. I bought into Peter Garety’s Software Mechanics course about a year ago but Peter seems to have lost interest in this programme which was a bonus to another product.

However, on the recommendation of Andrew Hunter (who is himself a plugin creation expert), I bought Plugin Creation Blueprint for $37 when it was launched on 2nd September. This is an incredible product for the money and made by a coding expert called David Vandenburg. It has been made with meticulous care and the membership site is incredibly good too. This guy calls himself the CodeKing and I can see why.

If you have aspirations to get into the business of creating plugins then Plugin Creation Blueprint is definitely worth investing in.

G-Font Plugin

I also bought the developers license for the G-Font plugin – this plugin enables you to use around 600 Google Fonts on your WordPress sites – it works with most themes. As you can see from this page, I have played around with some of the Menu fonts.

I felt that this was a good investment as it means I can customise the fonts on any theme and make it my own!! I also love fonts – they just make your text so much more interesting to look at! I hope you agree!!!!

Thank You Tsahai

One of my colleagues, Tsahai de Silva, sent me a message this week – this is part of what she said – it means a lot to me:

[features_box_red width=”75%” + border=”2px”]You are quality and you deserve to be successful. Don’t give up I believe in you Mark. You can do it! What are you doing to get sales? Please let me know if I can help.[/features_box_red]

I have some superb friends online – this is vitally important to me as internet marketing can be lonely at times. With friends like this I am rich indeed!

Measurement Drives Action

One of the important business principles that I have learnt and re-learnt over my business career is that ‘Measurement Drives Action’. Let me explain…

As a corporate bank manager one of my tasks was to enforce the receipt of management information from customers on a monthly basis. This ensured the following:

that the customer was monitoring their financial performance for themselves
that the bank could monitor the business performance and ‘step in’ if the business was deviating substantially from the plan that gave rise to the lending in the first place
that better decisions could be made by both the customer and the bank in relation to the business and its performance.

When I left banking in 2001, I established my business consultancy on the basis that one of the services I could offer was to create and establish management information systems for business to improve their business performance. One successful project that I undertook was to create a management information system for a £6 million turnover business that had 40 different profit/loss centres!

My system enabled the operations manager to see quickly which of the centres were profitable and which were not. Within mere days of producing the information for the first time, the operations manager was planning the closure or amalgamation of loss-making activities.

Within the space of just weeks, the business had turned around from losses into substantial profits – it literally added several hundred thousand pounds to their bottom line almost overnight. This was a perfect illustration of how ‘measurement drives action’.

As a result of this success I was subsequently offered the job as interim chief-executive of that business. Hopefully, that illustrates just how powerful management information can be.

I saw countless examples of the beneficial impact of management information systems in my banking and business consultancy career – often the best businesses were those that had the best management information systems.

Why then have I signally failed to create a meaningful management information system for myself and my business?

For the last 4 years in internet marketing, I have been totally absorbed in learning the skills of internet marketing and ignoring this basic business principle of measurement (or as some say ‘know your numbers’. ) I think I put my knowledge of numbers to one side to learn a totally new skill, ‘forgetting’ the critical importance of numbers to any business.

‘Flying by the seat of my pants’ has to stop right NOW!!

I’m now determined on putting this right and as I do so I am going to create a very, very important product called ‘Measure ‘n’ Manage‘ based on the principle that ‘what you can measure, you can manage‘.

I’m hoping to bring increased insight and clarity to this important topic because I am perhaps uniquely qualified to write on this subject from my previous 35 year experience in the business consultancy field and my knowledge of internet marketing.

My purpose will be to create a simple management system for my own business and to help others to do the same for their own internet marketing business. In doing so, I will clearly identify the key performance indicators and how to measure and monitor them.

One of the problems with internet marketing is that a number of the tools, like Google Analytics, spew out tons of potentially useful information but I find that it is bewildering in the complexity and amount of information that they produce. If I am bewildered, and I like numbers, then goodness knows what others think!

I also think that this will be key to me taking action on my own marketing activities because ‘action without measurement is always sub-optimal’ i.e. if you don’t measure the results of your actions, then how do you know what the best action is to take in future?

Surprisingly, very few internet marketers have produced any training on this important topic – probably because they think that it won’t sell – but in my opinion, without a good management information system you are unlikely to succeed in business.

Also, I don’t think you can delegate this task without at least understanding the information and numbers for your own business and how they are calculated. I have seen that happen and it never works. (I turned one business down for a loan flat within 5 minutes because the business plan they produced was two inches thick with computer print-outs (- needless to say, they were enraged!) I knew there was no way they could properly understand the information they had produced and neither could I – they were trying to blind me with science and chose the wrong person to try it on with. They went to another bank, got the loan and went bust within 6 months!)

If you want to run a business, then you need to know the numbers whether numbers are your thing or not. It is compulsory in my opinion.

Changing the Topic

One of my areas of weakness is email marketing but I have recently completed Marc Milburns’s Email Cash Siphon product. To re-enforce my learning on this topic, I am also planning a product called ‘Email ATM’ – here is the outline of the product:

This product will be produced after ‘Measure ‘n’ Manage’ but before ‘Business Storyboards’, which is my product on online business strategy.

Plugin News

I implemented the ‘Attention Grabber’ plugin on this site this week. It’s a plugin I acquired a long time ago but never took action on. You will see it in the corner of my web pages advertising my latest product – hopefully it is ‘grabbing your attention’ haha!

This brings me on to a brand new plugin that one of my coaching colleagues, Aaron Webster, has just launched which is a page-peal plugin for adverts called One Ring Plugin – it looks extremely powerful and I hope to give it a trial over the next week or so – here is a link to this new product if you want to check it out.

I also lashed out $6 on a new plugin launched this week called G-Font plugin that enables me to enhance the fonts on my websites (I can now choose from 600 fonts!) – pure indulgence but hopefully it will improve the presentation of my products. I am in the information marketing niche after all!

That’s all for this week, but in the meantime please remember ‘MEASUREMENT DRIVES ACTION’!

Mark Salmon

Post Category → Finance & Information Systems