Measurement tools

“What gets measured gets managed - even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organisation to do so”.

• Simon Caulkin

Earlier drafts of this book used the term Measure instead of Notice for the part 3 of this framework.

The problem with thinking about things in terms of measurement - especially when you’re starting off - is that it can become alienating fast.

There’s a lot of jargon in digital marketing already. When you add measurement principles, you can quite literally CAC the LTV out of ROI. And that’s not good for anyone.

What we want to do instead, is Notice what’s happening instead. This approach picks up on patterns, doesn’t look at data in isolation, and feels more human.

That said - there’s some awesome ways to measure what you’re doing, and now is the time to learn about the different ways you can do it.

There’s 3 main ways to measure what you’re doing:

• Reporting tools from software
• Analytics tools for your website/app or tracking
• Click-tracking

Reporting tools.

Most places you post or interact online provide data indicating how your post is doing. Everyone is familiar with a “Like”, and most tools provide further information such as reach and views. The merit of all of these metrics will be debated for decades to come. What you need to do is think of them as clues instead of hard facts. If a particular style of offer receives very little likes and views once - it doesn’t mean anything. But if you’ve made this offer 5 times in similar channels and bombed each time - it’s going to be time to change something.

Some less obvious but just as important pieces of information you can get from these tools is the date and time. Emails will generally work better when set both earlier in the day and in the week, and your well thought out LinkedIn think piece isn’t going to do as well if you’ve posted it at 9pm when everyone is going to bed.

A common trap is obsessing over some of the more sophisticated metrics available when there’s some obvious tells available from the freely available tools we already have access to.

More sophisticated reporting becomes available once you start spending money or using 3rd-party software tools. Some of these start out free, but get overwhelming very quickly. See Stretching what you notice and Recommended Reading and Tools section(s) for more specifics.

Analytics tools.

The main tool for measuring what happens on your website (or app) is Google Analytics.

It’s free, can be set up with a limited amount of technical knowledge, and provides a rich base for seeing what happens on your website and what sort of traffic you’re getting. Almost anything you build on the web will have an integration or wizard for walking you through setting it up, and in doing so - you’ll be able to see information like:

• What’s your most popular webpage
• What is delivering the most traffic to your page
• The impact and effectiveness of any online advertising you’re using to send visitors to your page

While it’s getting better, it can be very intimidating to begin with. Focus your efforts on learning from Reporting tools (and click-tracking mentioned below) and then when you’re ready and have a webpage up, have a go at installing Google Analytics and punching some questions into the search box.

The recent version of the tool (Google Analytics 4) will do its best to answer questions you ask about your web activity - and it does a good job of doing this without laying on too much jargon.

Asking a simple question like this used to be impossible!

Click-tracking.

There’s a tool that’s free that enables you to learn measurement with a low amount of pressure, yet get a good volume of information to notice as you’re starting out. Bit.ly is a tool that enables you to embed your link into a bit.ly link that is shorter, and can be personalised.

For example, instead of posting a link to your well-designed PDF one-sheeter saved on Google Drive that looks like this:

drive.google.com/A74340a8nfkal.html

You can instead post a neat link that looks like this:

bit.ly/one-sheeter-from-marshy

With a little bit of organisation, you can then personalise any links you’re dishing out, and see the date and time they were posted, and how many clicks you received on them - from anywhere.

You can also use different links pointing to the same thing - say you hustled hard and appeared on 3 podcasts with your offer.

You could use a different link for each one. For example:

bit.ly/podcast-kerry

bit.ly/podcast-kerryn

bit.ly/podcast-kezza

Then you would see which one delivered the most clicks from your awesome appearance and knowledge-sharing.

There’s a lot to absorb in this space and it’s easy to forget to think about our marketing like a human.

Later in my career than I would like to admit, we took on a new client that produced baby lights that help infants and toddlers to go to sleep. We were experts on running online ads, and delivered a huge strategy with the best techniques, tracking, and updated ads that looked super-slick and professional.

Our ads were bombing for weeks and we couldn’t figure out why. We’d taken over the account from someone who was doing all himself and self-taught. We were crunching the right data, and setting up all of our optimisations correctly on Facebook.

What we completely missed was the change in the way the ads looked. The old ads were self-made by a Mum and looked authentic and spoke to other Mums. Our updated videos sizzled and looked amazing - but looked too polished and didn’t speak to Mum’s browsing Facebook and Instagram for solutions AT ALL.

Measurement is helpful, but don’t forget to Notice what’s right in front of you.