Most people hate math… me included.
I got my first C grade in high school geometry.
Despite late nights studying until I feel asleep drooling on the pages of my text book, I barely – and I mean barely scraped by college Calculus (required for my Economics & Business major) and yet… I became a marketer.
We all think marketing is so attractive and sexy…
For me, the idea of persuasive copywriting and using my creative gifts to dream up “Big Marketing Ideas” was so alluring.
Some marketers are in love with the idea of being a Mad Men character. Boozing most of the day, writing a bit by night and violà! Winning marketing campaign!
Well, guess what Donald Draper Jr… I’ve got news for you.
Wildly successful and scalable marketing is NOT a magical mix of scotch and vintage typewriter ink…
Mega-profitable marketing is ALL about the numbers. Yep, MATH.
One of my direct response marketing heros Dan Kennedy has a saying that I love. You’ve probably heard it.
The keywords here are SPEND and WINS.
I’ll elaborate for you…
When you understand your the core marketing funnel metrics (AKA your numbers) AND know they are perfectly accurate, you are able to make smart decisions with them.
This means you can totally dominate your marketplace and destroy your competitors.
Now THAT’S the power you wield with your numbers.
Doesn’t sound so boring now does it?
In fact, behind the scenes of every marketing funnel – in the numbers – there is a story waiting to be told.
Some stories are successful, and some are failures… and many are on the verge from failure to success.
Plus, it’s always a true story because the numbers… don’t lie.
Don’t worry, you’ll understand exactly what I mean. Just keep reading.
There are 15 key metrics that you absolutely need to know COLD if you want to create highly profitable marketing campaigns.
The first set is your Click Metrics. Let’s dig in.
Part 1: Click Metrics:
Marketing Funnel Metric 1: Total Unique Clicks
Also known as total unique visitors, Total Unique Clicks simply shows how many individuals hit the first page in your marketing funnel. It’s a simple metric that can tell you a couple things:
1. Is your funnel working? If you’re running traffic (buying ads) and Facebook says you’re getting clicks, are they hitting your page?
2. Is there interest in your ad? If you have relatively low clicks, your ad or might not be a winner.
This metric is basic on it’s own, but it’s power is multiplied when you can look at it along with other metrics like Total Leads Generated and instantly know how effective your call to action is for example on your opt-in page.
Marketing Funnel Metric 2: Cost Per Click
Your cost per click is one of the key metrics that plays a big role in the story of your marketing funnel.
Cost per click multiplied by the number of clicks will give your total ad spend. However, it’s not until we calculate how many leads we generated do we know if our cost per click is good or bad… it’s just the first metric in the story.
Knowing your accurate cost per click is important, but knowing CPC alone is NOT enough because it doesn’t tell you to spend more or stop running your ad.
Later in this series you’ll know the bigger role CPC plays in the entire funnel story.
Marketing Funnel Metric 3: Revenue Per Click
Now, this click metric is super duper valuable by itself.
Revenue Per Click (RPC) is simply the total money generated by your marketing funnel divided by the total number of clicks generated.
It’s valuable if you’re doing affiliate or joint venture promotion because you know exactly how much you can offer to your affiliate partners in exchange for driving traffic to your offer.
Alternatively, if you’re running ads with cold traffic you know how much you can spend per click and still make money.
Marketing Funnel Metric 4: Earnings Per Click
Earnings Per Click or EPC is the metric that affiliate partners ask you about to get an idea of how profitable it would be for them to run traffic to your marketing funnel.
EPC is basically how much is left over from RPC after you take your cut (in the case of affiliate promotion) or after you pay for your ads (in the case of cold traffic).
TIP: If you’re working with affiliates, you had better KNOW your exact EPC numbers! If your campaign doesn’t perform anywhere close to the EPC range you’ve given them, they’re NOT going to be happy.
This is why it is mission critical to your business to have precise metrics. Not only can it mean the difference between a profitable and failing marketing funnel, but it empowers you build and maintain lucrative relationships with your affiliates and joint venture partners.
It’s extremely challenging (near impossible) to get accurate EPC data out of most tracking softwares. Why? Because they’re not designed for marketers like you and they don’t care about your EPC figures.
Instead, imagine doing a quick screenshare with your potential affiliates where they can see your dashboard full of clear and accurate metrics.
Now you look like a sharp marketer because you have total confidence in your numbers.
Now your affiliates and JVs trust you. They’ll be impressed by how well you’re tracking your numbers, and they’ll want to do business with you.
Ok, now you know the value of knowing your Click Metrics.
Next time, we’ll go even deeper into your valuable metrics with a discussion on your Lead Metrics.
Stay tuned!
