The priority ladder

“So now that you know who the first target market is, your marketing purpose needs to get out there and start pounding the aisles, cubicles, break rooms, and conference tables, looking for prospects who are just dying to be sold on the vision you have for the business. If you meet resistance to this notion, it is because you have not made it a priority in the past, and people will always resist change.”

• John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing Revised and Updated: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide

The goal of your marketing is simple. It’s to make sales.

That’s harder than it sounds.

There’s a good chance you’ve tried some things online already, and been disappointed by the results. A helpful frame for solving this is the priority ladder.

Results at the top of the ladder are prioritised over results further down the ladder.

This means if the number at the top is healthy, you don’t need to stress about things further down the ladder like clicks or video views.

If sales aren’t happening however, you’ve got a way to go down the ladder and check things as well.

Troubleshooting from the top-down isn’t the only way to solve digital marketing challenges, but it’s the most robust for ensuring you’re focusing on the elements that matter the most before getting caught out sweating the details on things that are less relevant.

So let’s look at the priority ladder:

1. Sales.

The lifeblood of any business - if you’re making sales you’re bringing money in, and what you’re looking for further down the ladder is activity that directly contributes to this result. This goes for social enterprises and emerging non-for-profit organisations as well - your impact and ability to grow your impact is directly attributed to results. There are other things that need to happen to deliver impact as well - but without a way to raise funds success will be limited.

1. Offer considerations.

Any time a proposal is sent, a sales is call and offer is made, an appointment booking page asks for a deposit, or someone gets to your sales cart. If everything below has been done well - this happens smoothly. Things below are communicated in one way, and then a potential customer is surprised by the ask here. This point provides a lot of useful information on your pricing, how primed a customer is for your solution, and how well the rest of your marketing is working.

1. Number of times your offer is seen.

This is any time a potential buyer has visited your offer page and considered buying. It can be your landing page, a private offer made in a webinar, a flyer inviting someone to book with a code, and any activity that will lead to a sale. If things above the ladder are working well (sales and offer consideration) then all you need to increase sales is increase the number of times your offer is seen. Conversion rate is the amount of sales you make divided by the number of times your offer is seen.

What’s a good conversion rate? It depends on so many things. Getting familiar with your numbers is the best way to learn. By tracking the activity you do - you’re going to develop a feel for what works and what doesn’t in a way that separates you from your competitors. Knowing when and how to ”turn on the tap” is a powerful skill.

My sister runs a beautiful side-hustle selling art of bouquets and favourite animals (chuck her a follow - @katmarshallart) and she does this intuitively. When she’s busy she’ll dial back her posting on Instagram as she’s got too much to do, and then when she’s got some room she will put up some recent pieces of work and the orders will roll in.

I’m not sure if Kat’s ever heard of the term conversion rate, but she understands that putting out a number of posts will invite consideration and sales.

The next three rungs of the ladder are less substantial, but need to be observed if the above is happening.

1. Clicks on marketing activity.

When someone comes to your offer page from somewhere else - that’s a click. The term is a weird hangover from the early days of online marketing - over 50% of what’s a “click” today would now be a tap (mobile).

Clicks deliver traffic, which is usually a good thing. I’ve added the qualifier here as it’s also where a lot of people slip up. Advertisers love predictability, which makes paying for clicks very popular. If you can guarantee that 1,000 people will click-through to your offer page, and that a percentage will convert then you’ve got a predictable way of calculating sales.

There are a lot of things wrong with this when you’re starting out.

One - if you’re paying for clicks, you’re competing with everyone else who is paying for clicks. That’s how online advertising works. It’s an auction-based environment where the person willing to pay one cent more than you gets to show their ad to the person you were going after.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this. Once you start however, you’re betting on yourself to be able to make a sale more cost-efficiently than anyone else bidding for that click. This means you are betting that you offer page is clearer, you’re making more profitable sales, and you’re delivering a more effective service than anyone else bidding for that click.

That’s impossible - especially as someone starting. It’s also why I urge founders to introduce paid clicks much later as they develop their marketing processes than they think.

If people are seeing you mentioned elsewhere and clicking - that’s great! You can make sure things are happening above the ladder and continue on your merry way.

1. Comments on marketing activity.

I still get clients that would get very upset by negative comments. They’re a part of the process and I would put online reviews in this category as well. First and foremost - nothing beats delivering a great service. So make sure that part is on lock, own your mistakes, and have an appropriate escalation and feedback process.

The next consideration is that once you hit a certain number, there’s a certain amount of Negative Nancies that come with it.

The flip of this is positive comments. People enquiring about a product publicly is a good sign, and answering it is a good idea. Over time you might notice common questions, and creating a FAQ for managing them will help. It also might point to your marketing activity not being clear enough on what’s being delivered.

Don’t sweat too much - if someone really wants to buy, they’ll click through and buy or DM you a real enquiry. Some people just like asking questions. Remember the priority ladder - things further up matter more.

1. “Likes” and similar engagement.

Think of these like “clues”. They’re not direct indicators of anything, but if you see good things happening above that correlate with these clues then it’s time to listen.

I also wouldn’t worry about engagement on any one piece of marketing activity. Remember the 1-10-100 rule? It’s going to take time before anything really good happens - so focus more on volume than individual metrics.

Once you’ve created a good amount of activity, then start poring over these sorts of details with more attention, yet only if you know it’s influencing the above.

The next three are necessary pieces of the puzzle, but only to help inform the above.

1. Reach.

This is the number of people that has seen your marketing. It’s a hard number to accurately come by, and the reason it exists is because a person can see your marketing activity more than once.

1. Video views.

Some platforms deliver this more accurately than others, and unless you’re a YouTube or TikTok influencer it’s not going to be that important. If a video helps drive activity further up the ladder then great - and if it doesn’t, figure out a way to create more videos that deliver more effective results.

Don’t obsess over metrics like video completions. Think about this from a practical point-of-view - how many times have you been scrolling and stopped a video? It’s rarely because the video is so good that you need to. It’s more likely because you’re in a passive environment like your couch on an ad break or a doctor’s waiting room with your headphones in.

1. Impressions.

These are the views of a piece of marketing activity and how most online advertising is bought. An impression is a view of something once. A thousand of these is a mille which for every thousand bought is called the Cost Per Mille (CPM).

If nobody is seeing your marketing activity, figure out a way to get it in front of more audiences that are relevant to you.

Hint - that’s never just following people and posting on your own social media channels - you want to be appearing in other partner’s channels where the audiences (and available impressions) are far larger.