This is a transcript from episode 57 of the OMGrowth podcast

I’m Lanie Lamarre and I wrote a book called Results On Repeat – there’s a link to that in the shownotes – so get your e-reader device or app fired up, get your Results On Repeat, and get your life – because today we’re going to touch on some of the book’s content and talk about what do you do when you marketing efforts aren’t working.

I want to begin this conversation with a very important public service message: CHANGE ≠ IMPROVEMENT.

Just because you change something doesn’t mean you’ll see “better” results than you had before you made that change.

But you do have to make changes if you’re going to see improvements in your results, and that’s what you need to know your numbers for: you need a way to account for which direction things are going in.

A huge mistake I see online business owners make is they try to fix their marketing by trying a new strategy, creating a new offer or moving to a new platform instead of glossing what they already have and know to a high shine. Effective marketing is a wash-rinse-repeat process of gathering information as to how your campaigns work, how they don’t and identifying the gaps where your opportunities for better results are. Over and over and over again.

I’m coming in hot with the disclaimers today, too, because here’s another one: choose a lane.

The truth is that even with a team, it is unreasonable to expect that you will be able to successfully optimize multiple offers, multiple sales strategies, multiple traffic sources, and that you’ll do it all at once. If you have so much going on that your marketing efforts feel like a game of Wack-A-Mole, your first order of business is to make some choices about which offers, strategies and traffic sources you’re NOT going to be focusing on right now (or in some cases, you will drop entirely). Simplify as much as you can in order to strengthen the foundations that you’re working with and THEN you’re in a position to add on more complex strategies, which will require more improvements, and build out an increasingly elaborate yet effective marketing ecosystem.

But how are you going to make those improvements? How do you identify the gaps?

Let’s look at some of the most common marketing problems small online business owners experience and how you can address these:

“PEOPLE AREN’T SEEING MY OFFERS”

You won’t be able to see the holes in your digital marketing strategy if your offers, your content and your strategies aren’t attracting anyone in the first place. As a starting point, you want to have at least 100 people (although 1000 would be a better goal post) whose behaviors you’ll be able to assess as a whole before you consider any kind of optimization mode.

Why? Because conversion rates – which is what we will use to measure the impact of most marketing campaigns – is calculated based on percentages, and you want to have at least 100 people to generate a useful percentage against which you will measure your success.

If the problem is that you aren’t getting enough eyeballs on your offers and content, this is the first order of business. Remembering our ABCs of digital marketing from episode 55: if you’re spending time, money and/or effort on ATTRACTING new audiences but your traffic isn’t reflecting that… there’s a problem with your MESSAGING.

When I say “messaging”, I’m talking about anything you’re using that speaks to or communicates with people. This can mean your copy, but it can also be the images you’re using, the way you’re expressing the value of your offers, the specific features you’re using on the platforms you’re investing in – your messaging is the whole package that makes up the impression you make with the content you’re using to put yourself out there.

Whether you’re using ads, promoting on social media, or collaborating on joint ventures, your message is meant to ATTRACT people who will gravitate to your content and offers.

You know I love an example so let’s use one: Take a specific strategy you’ve been using, like your Instagram posts, and then audit the content you’ve produced to ask yourself:

• Do these messages connect to and reflect the value of WHAT I’m promoting?
• Do these messages connect with and reflect the values, struggles or desires of the person with WHOM I am trying to connect?
• Are my messages interesting/compelling enough that it would stop my audience in its tracks and make them seek out more of what I’m talking about?
• Am I giving my people a reason to leave what they started doing (i.e. scrolling) to step away and find out more about what I have to say?
• Am I reaching out to the right people? Is this the audience I’m aiming to show up for? Am I reaching out to the right places where my people are actually hanging out?

If the answer is no to any of these, ask yourself what changes you could make that may change these answers to an emphatic “yes”.

Which brings us back to the importance of choosing ONE lane: you can’t possibly examine all of the ads, all of the social media and all of the collaborative efforts you use to promote one of your offers, all at once. And you certainly can’t work on multiple offers or multiple strategies all at once either.

Choose your lane with one offer, one strategy, one traffic source. You’re going to segment, audit and and improve, segment, audit and improve, over and over again.

The process isn’t exactly glamorous but there are some strong “lessons learned” vibes you’ll be able to carry through every time you do this. Once you nail your messaging, you’ll see how much easier it becomes to replicate your results for different offers, with different strategies, on different platforms, using different campaigns.

But you have to start somewhere and if “not enough eyeballs on the page” is your problem right now, you won’t be able to effectively fix anything else until you address this. 

Unfortunately, the online business world is not the Field Of Dreams where “if you build it, they will come”; you’re going to have to build it AND promote it AND adapt AND promote it again until you’ve given people a reason to care about what you’ve built… and only then will you be in a position to build a better version of what you built in the first place.

“PEOPLE AREN’T CLICKING THROUGH ON MY EMAILS”

Once people sign up for your email list, you’re in the BUILDING phase where relationships and rapport are your goal. You often hear “the money is in the list” but if your list isn’t engaging with what you’re offering to them, that currency may be less valuable than you were aiming for.

Before you start changing or even questioning anything about what you’re doing, I would recommend that you run an email deliverability test using a service like GlockApps to 1) test the deliverability of the emails you send from your regular inbox and 2) test the deliverability of the emails you send using your email marketing service.

If you want more information on this, you can check out episode 41 of the podcast.

You want to make sure that your emails are actually seeing the light of day for the inboxes you’re sending them to before you start changing anything about your actual email content. Again, you always want to start by eliminating the possibility that the tech is an issue before you change anything about your approach.

The next thing I would recommend is to look at HOW you are promoting to your email list: 

• Are you sending the same emails to your entire list?
• Would there be a benefit to segmenting your list and changing the messaging within your emails to speak to each segment of your list in a more direct, personalized manner?
• Are your calls-to-action (CTAs) clear and compelling?
• Are your links visible, easy-to-find and frequently displayed?
• Are you giving your people an opportunity to speak out about the campaigns they are NOT interested in hearing about?

This last one is important and in my opinion, it is an overlooked tactic of email marketing. When you give people an opportunity to opt-out of receiving specific messages they aren’t interested in hearing about at this time, you’re also lessening the chances of having your emails sit in their inboxes, being ignored.

You have these, right? When you receive an email promoting something you’re not interested in and you want to stay on that person’s email list, but you start ignoring their next few emails because you know it’s probably about that one offer you’re not into.

This is a problem because by not giving your subscribers the option to opt-out of a specific promotion, you’re training people to start ignoring your emails. The unfortunate part is that this habit of ignoring your emails has a high chance of lasting longer than your promotion will.

Don’t train your email subscribers to ignore you. Instead, be the kind of marketer who gives your email subscribers some agency about what they choose to receive from you and in turn, you’re more likely to be the kind of marketer whose campaigns always feel relevant and whose emails get opened more frequently.

Which brings us to the subject of OPEN RATES.

Yes, your email marketing service will comment on open rates and yes, you want people to open your emails… but I wouldn’t rely on this metric as a benchmark and I definitely would not use it as a measure of your success.

With all the changes being made to data privacy, the disabling of cookie-tracking in many browsers and the increased presence of ad-blockers limiting the collection of personal information, your ability to track which emails have been opened is not as reliable as it once was and you cannot treat this data set as an accurate reflection of your performance.

Having said that, you do want people to open your emails, even if it isn’t a priority metric for you to track.

Examine your subject lines and pay attention to that first line of text that shows up in the inbox, and then ask yourself, “Would I click on that? Am I offering a compelling reason to open this email? Am I connecting with my audience in this subject line?”

But what if they ARE opening and clicking on your emails but they still aren’t picking up what you’re throwing down?

“PEOPLE AREN’T BUYING/OPTING INTO MY OFFER”

OK, so you have eyeballs on your offers – very nice!

You know this because you can see that they’re clicking-through and you have visits to your sales page… but hold the bottle popping because you’re not making sales. You struggle with CONVERTING your audience to sign-up.

This usually means that somewhere along the line, they have an expectation or need that they thought you could help them with… but when they looked at what you were offering, they weren’t convinced you could help them after all. Womp! Womp!

There are a number of reasons why this may be the case.

Again, as with anything, I always recommend that before you start changing anything, you start by confirming that the tech is actually working the way you need it to. Go into “incognito mode” in your browser and test your sales page’s “BUY NOW” buttons and your opt-in forms to make sure they work. Go through the whole sales process to make sure your checkout works the way you intend it to and there isn’t something weird happening with your cart processing that may be impeding people from giving you their money.

When you’ve done that, send someone else through your sales process, too, why-doncha? Sometimes when we’re logged into certain accounts, we won’t see what a client sees and it’s never a bad idea to get a fresh set of eyes on your tech.

You’ll also want to wash-rinse-repeat this process on a desktop, on a tablet and on mobile to ensure there isn’t a device-specific issue with how your checkout process is working (or worse, not working at all!).

Another possibility is you may be rolling out with yet another messaging problem, only this time will be different from the last one. After all, they DID click-through to your site but the problem is that whatever resonated with them when they first clicked to your page didn’t resonate enough when they got there that they were willing to click on the checkout. In this case, you’ll want to ask yourself:

• Is the messaging in my offer and the messaging in my promotions compatible? Am I saying the same thing and addressing the same issues?
• Are my calls-to-action (CTAs) all-kinds-of visible, are they crystal-clear and do they repeat frequently through the scroll?
• Am I targeting the right people with the language on this sales page and can someone who would benefit from my offer clearly see themselves and their needs being represented on this sales page?
• Am I targeting people who would be or could be prepared to make an actual investment in what I’m offering?
• Is my price-point clearly visible and is the value I say I’m offering on the sales page reflected in the price at which I’m selling it?

Just as it helps to bring a fresh set of eyes in with your tech, you may want to do something similar with your sales page or your opt-in forms by hiring an expert to audit yours. This is likely to be one of your best optimization options because you’ll have a specialized person looking at your specific offers, your specific sales pages, your specific audience, and then make customized recommendations for improvements.

We’ll talk more about this next week when we go through a case study that will help you more easily identify the opportunities for optimization but if these are topics you want to better apply in your own business, click the link in the shownotes to access Results On Repeat, which is my book on publishing, tracking and improving your digital campaigns and it is officially my lowest-priced offer ever and who DOESN’T want to tap into Results On Repeat, amirite?

I’d also love if you tapped into the awesome sauce I’m dropping over on social media – you can find me on Instagram @omgrowth and on TikTok @omgrowthpod, which are also both linked in the shownotes – and let me SHOW you what these types of talks look like in action.

And I’m glad you’re here and I love that you’re doing the dang thing – it isn’t easy, no matter what someone’s sales page promises you – and you’re STILL here and STILL doing the dang thing and you rock socks.

Talk soon – baiieeee!

CONTINUE READING

This is a transcript from episode 56 of the OMGrowth podcast

I’m Lanie Lamarre and I love ice. I have many different ice trays in my freezer, it makes me feel very rich to have a selection of ice – especially the big ice cubes because for some reason, big ice cubes are definitely rich people stuff for me – and if you have a degree in psychology that can edu-care me as to why this is, I’d welcome your insight.

But the riches we’re talking about today have to do with all the elements that contribute TO your riches and results for your online business so without further ado…

When you aren’t seeing the results you’re looking for… well, have you considered looking somewhere else?

It sounds like I’m kidding but I’m really not because a lot goes into getting you the results you’re looking for. If you’re only looking at the results, you’re actually missing the big picture of what’s going on.

It’s like the iceberg analogue where what you see at the top – in this case, the top are your results – and that leaves out everything that sits below the surface on which those results are built on.

But the thing is that you CAN see what is below the surface when you’re collecting data as to how your people are behaving and how your website is performing. The more intentional you are about HOW you’re collecting this data, the deeper you can go with what your results are built on.

So if you aren’t seeing the results you’re looking for, I want you to think about the traffic sources you’re targeting with whatever campaign or strategy you’re running. Then, I want you to hone in on how THAT area is performing and what results you ARE getting from where you’re investing your time, energy and/or money.

Let’s talk about what those areas are, how your different traffic sources work and what questions you can start asking yourself about how you’re performing in those areas:

ORGANIC SEARCH

Your content has many jobs, one of which is to help you get found by the people who are searching for exactly what you have to offer and speak about.

You get found through ORGANIC SEARCH by people who know what they want; they clicked on your content because what you were offering spoke to their needs.

Bringing free traffic to your content and offers is totally possible, and investing your efforts into Search Engine Optimization – or what the cool kids like us call SEO – is how you improve your chances of being found by search engines like Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo, to name just a few.

WHAT DATA TO LOOK AT

If you’re using privacy-compliant analytics like Fathom or Plausible, which we discussed in episode 54, you will segment under “Source” for the different search engines you’re seeing in your analytics (to see traffic coming through on Google searches, you’d filter “Source: Google”) or if you’re using Google Analytics, you can take a wide view by segmenting “Medium: Organic”.

Some questions you can ask yourself to better understand how your search traffic is performing include:

• Landing Page/Content/Top Pages: What are people searching for when they find me? What was it that made them choose to check out what I had to offer?
• Bounce Rate/Engagement Rate: How engaged are they when they find what they’re looking for? Are they picking up what I’m throwing down?
• Goals/Events:  Is this segment of visitors doing the activities I’m most interested in seeing them engage with?  Is there something I can do that would improve how they’re engaging with my goals/events?

REFERRAL TRAFFIC

There’s an old expression about “word of mouth” being the best advertising but even if word about you is spread on a screen, the saying holds true. You’ll typically find that your referral traffic is some of your best performing traffic in terms of conversions: these are people who came from somewhere else – usually another website where your content was referenced or shared – and these visitors are therefore quicker at building relationships with you because someone else has vouched for you.

A little #protip about being the kind of person other people want to refer: when you see who has been sending you traffic, thank them! Slip into their DMs, make them a video, send an email – whatever works for you and your brand – but do SOMETHING to show that you see them and you appreciate their vote of confidence in you and the voodoo that you do (shoop!).

WHAT TO LOOK AT

As you look through your “Source” traffic, you can segment specific sites that are sending traffic to you or if you’re using Google Analytics, you can take a wide view by segmenting “Medium: Referral”.

Some questions you can ask yourself to better understand how referrals are working for you include:

• Landing Page/Content/Top Pages: What are people being sent to look at? Which content or offers are people recommending from me?
• Bounce Rate/Engagement Rate: How engaged are they when they find me? Did this referral meet their expectations?
• Goals/Events:  Is these referrals doing the activities I’m most interested in seeing them engage with? Is there something I can do that would improve the chances of them engaging with my goals/events?

DIRECT TRAFFIC

When you’re seeing direct traffic, it means someone typed your URL into the web browser and therefore, they already knew about you from somewhere or something else, or they were told to check you out.

Either way, it’s hard to hone in on and improve this type of traffic because you don’t know much about how they got there and there isn’t much you can do to change that.

That’s A-OK, though, because what this traffic source DOES help you figure out is what are people are thinking about when they tell themselves, “I know where to go for that!”

WHAT TO LOOK AT

When segmenting for traffic Source/Medium as “Direct/None”, some questions you can ask yourself to better understand what your direct traffic is saying about how people think about you:

• Landing Page/Content/Top Pages: What were they looking for? Which content or offers are people thinking about when they think of me? What am I known for or recognized as being an expert in? What subject am I “top of mind” for with others?

EMAIL TRAFFIC

You’ve likely heard “the money is in the list” and it should come as no surprise that your email list subscribers are some of the most motivated segment of people you’re engaging with in your marketing efforts. When you see people coming from email, it means they clicked-through on a link in an email you sent in order to see more or access what you were talking about.

Your email subscribers will likely be your most engaged traffic source and that makes it extra-valuable for you to track and identify what your people want more of and what they respond best to.

WHAT TO LOOK AT

If you’re not yet tracking your own email traffic, your email marketing service probably has some type of tracking in place and you’ll want to figure out how that’s being identified in your reports.

Once you know and can segment for your email traffic, some questions you can ask yourself to better understand how your subscriber traffic is performing include:

• Landing Page/Content/Top Pages:  Where did I send people? Which content or offers are my subscribers most interested on clicking-through to?
• Bounce Rate/Engagement Rate: How engaged are they when they reach my site? Did this referral meet their expectations?
• Goals/Events:  Is this segment of visitors doing the activities I’m most interested in having them engage with? Is there something I can do that would improve how they’re engaging with my goals/events?

You’ll also want to look at how many people you actually sent the email to versus how many of those people clicked-through on your email. This is what is called your click-through rate and it is useful to compare which of your emails have the highest click-through rates as it helps you better understand what content your subscribers respond best to.

SOCIAL MEDIA TRAFFIC

The captions, images and videos you hit PUBLISH on for your various social media accounts are all content as well, even if it doesn’t live on your website.

If you’re rocking socks at your social media strategy, each post you publish serves to either reinforce your message, other pieces of content or your offers.

When people click through from the things you publish on social media, it’s because what you shared was interesting enough for them to slow their scroll, stop what they were doing and pick up what you were throwing down on your website.

I believe social media to be one of the hardest traffic sources to acquire because you’re asking people to leave the place they logged onto in the first place. If they do that, it means that whatever you’re offering on the other side is more attractive than what everyone else is publishing on that platform – and holy heck, is that impressive!

WHAT TO LOOK AT

As you look through your “Source” traffic, you can segment social media platforms that are sending traffic to you or if you’re using Google Analytics, you can take a wide view by segmenting “Medium: Social”.

Some questions you can ask yourself to better understand how social media traffic is working for you include:

• Landing Page/Content/Top Pages: What is my social media traffic looking for? What was enticing enough for them to leave the platform and click-through to my site? 
• Bounce Rate/Engagement Rate: How engaged are they when they find what they’re looking for? Are they picking up what I’m throwing down?
• Goals/Events: Is my social media traffic doing the activities I’m most interested in seeing them engaging with? Is there something I can do that would improve the chances of them engaging with my goals/events?

This is where I need to insert a record scratch because understanding your social media performance isn’t as easy as seeing what they’re doing on your website when they get there.

When it comes to measuring your social media engagement and performance, it’s just like Vegas: what happens on your social media platform stays on your social media platform.

The story you see playing out on your website analytics will comment on what people are doing once they enter your universe. However, there’s a totally different story to account for that is taking place in your likes, your comments and your DMs. Your website analytics can’t report on or capture these interactions because they aren’t taking place on your website, which is what YOU are tracking; meanwhile, your social media platforms are each collecting and tracking their own data – their own ways – and you get no control or say over what they’re collecting or how they’re tracking.

What you DO get, though, is access to the insights that each platform shares and I encourage you to ask yourself a similar vein of questions as to what your social media followers are picking up from what you’re throwing down, and to try, test and track things over there in the same way as you would on your website.

PAID TRAFFIC

While paid traffic is obviously people coming to your site because you spent money to have your brand, your content or your offer in front of these people, what is less obvious is how these show up in your analytics.

For instance, you may be seeing “cpc” (meaning cost per click) or “cpm” (meaning cost per mille, or per thousand impressions), and all of this will depend on how you’re using ads and what platform you’re using to advertise.

Once you figure out what that looks like in your reports, the questions you’ll ask yourself about your paid campaigns will depend on HOW you’re using paid advertising in the first place.

Sometimes the goal for your paid campaign was to ATTRACT new audience, maybe it was to BUILD relationships, you may have been advertising to CONVERT to sales or perhaps it is a combination of the three. The questions you ask yourself will depend on the intent you had for those ads so focus on your goal and start exploring whether that was accomplished, as well as how and why that happened.

And look, if there’s one take-away from all of this is to ISOLATE your results as much as possible. It’s like making a holiday meal – you’re going to whip the potatoes and you’re going to baste the bird, but each will have to be done one-at-a-time… even though we’re enjoying the resulting meal as a whole.

That’s how results work: a lot of individual elements contribute to the outcome you get and it’s by investing your TLC into each of these elements individually that the whole of your results will improve.

If this is speaking to you and you want it to speak a little more loudly to you, there’s a link in the shownotes for you get more with my new book called Results On Repeat. We get in-depth with how you’re publishing, tracking and improving on all those individual elements that contribute to your overall marketing picture and I couldn’t be prouder, and I’d love for you to be proud too so check that out in the shownotes and make sure you’re subscribed so we can check each other out next week.

Talk soon – baiiiiieee!

CONTINUE READING

This is a transcript from episode #55 of the OMGrowth podcast

I’m Lanie Lamarre and I’ve had a lot of semi-controversial to say in these last few episodes and why stop now? So today, I’m coming for sales funnels because… well, they’re wrong. They’re WRONG! Let’s talk about it.

The term “sales funnel” is used to describe the experience and journey you’re delivering to your clients. It is supposed to invoke the imagery that the sales process happens in – you guessed it – the shape of a “funnel”.

With the sales funnel metaphor, your people start at the top where they’re getting to know you. Then, those people will be pushed down towards being able to trust and engage with you and your content, until they’re finally squeezed into being ready to invest in you and therefore reaching the bottom of your funnel where we can presume the journey ends.

The idea is that by segmenting the part of your audience who is engaging with you in a specific way, you’re then able to lead or guide them towards giving you money; they’ve been “funneled” to the point where you’ve made the sale.

WHY THE SALES FUNNEL IS WRONG

I categorize this concept alongside Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy; they’re all cute concepts we have all agreed to buy into, but none of it works the way the way it’s packaged, amirite?

We may have been taught to see and visualize the phases of the client journey to look like a funnel, but the reality is that your sales process looks more like a bubble, where there’s a lot of oscillating and flow with how you’re interacting with people.

INSERT IMAGE

Your client journey is nowhere near as smooth and linear as the sales funnel fallacy would have you believe. Think about it: if you’ve ever happily bought something from someone, did you immediately start unsubscribing from their emails and their podcasts and unfollow their social media because you bought from them and now that relationship is over? Probably not. There is no clear-cut “end” to the relationships you’re building with your audience.

There are also the people that follow you with fierce loyalty and never actually buy anything from you. Does this mean they aren’t part of your sales cycle? I don’t believe so. I know I’ve recommended people and offers who I’ve followed forever but haven’t necessarily bought from. Sometimes there are products that I know aren’t a good fit for me but could work for someone else, and I know I’ve made many recommendations that have resulted in sales for others. I’m definitely a part of those sales cycles, even though the traditional sales funnel concept would suggest there’s no place for me or at best, that I’m somewhere in the middle, clogging things up.

The biggest problem I have with the sales funnel metaphor. though, is the belief that there’s somehow a “beginning” and “end” to the engagement and connection that you’re building with your audience; the reality is that your sales process and your client journey is a more circular experience than it is triangular.

As such, I reject the funnel and instead, I embrace what I call the ABCs of digital marketing.

The ABCs of Digital Marketing

The ABCs of digital marketing uphold the concept that there are 3 potential focal points from which you are marketing your online business. 

A is for ATTRACTING and AWARENESS

These are the marketing strategies you’re using to get visible, gain exposure and build your brand’s reach. You’re not necessarily getting engagement in this area, but you are making new people aware of who you are, what you do and what you have to offer.

When it comes to attracting new audiences and increasing awareness of your brand, the goal is to support your pillar content and get it in front of new people who would benefit from and/or be open to what you have to say.

B is for BUILDING

In this space, you may be building relationships, building rapport or better yet, building your email list. This is where you will typically have the most impact – it’s where “your people” are picking up what you’re throwing down – and hopefully, they’re also sharing what they’re enjoying about you with others.

When it comes to building relationships and rapport, the goal is to continue giving people a reason to stay interested, engaged and in touch with you. Whether that’s getting them to sign up to your email list or to subscribe to your podcast or to love on you so hard that they share your awesome sauce content with their own friends and fans on your behalf, you are beyond the “introduction” of this relationship and you’re now BUILDING.

You will remember that we aren’t embracing the funnel metaphor anymore when it comes to your sales journey; the relationships we’re building are far more circular and fluid than that. This means that there are people who you’ve already converted to a sale – and maybe multiple sales, or we could also be talking about people who are referring sales to you – and it’s important to remember and value that they continue to live in this BUILDING phase after the transaction takes place, too.

You’re never “done” dating your significant other and you’re never “done” brushing your teeth, right?

Likewise, you’re also never “done” nurturing the relationships you’re BUILDING with your fans and followers, either. These circular, continuous, ongoing interactions we’re having is the reason why we can reject the notion of “funneling” people through a sales process. People who buy from you are not suddenly excluded from your client journey but rather, they’re someone with whom you have the opportunity to deepen that relationship with.

C is for CONVERTING

The specific conversion we’re talking about here is converting to sales. This is where people have – or, if you’re running a membership or working on a retainer, they continue to – invest in you and your offers. Again, this phase isn’t the “bottom” or the “end” of your relationship because in our circular sales model, we’re seeing this as an opportunity to continue carrying forward with the connection and trust we’ve been building.

The ABCs of digital marketing are not mutually exclusive. You may find yourself in more than one phase at once. For instance, if you’re running Facebook ads to a webinar you’re hosting, you’re ATTRACTING new audiences to your event while also BUILDING your email list. Meanwhile, you’ll send an invite to this same webinar to your email list as a means of BUILDING your relationship and potentially CONVERTING to sales during the webinar itself.

A sustainable marketing strategy isn’t a one-and-done funnel but rather, it’s a much more fluid, intersecting eco-system that represents an on-going conversation between you and the people you’re showing up to serve.

Every time you promote something – whether that is a free offer or a paid offer – or any time you hit the “publish” button on a post, you’re engaging in that conversation.

And listen, I’ve hit publish on something special that I’m hoping you’ll engage with: it’s a book called Results On Repeat and if you’re picking up what I’m throwing down here, you want to click the link in the shownotes and fire up your Kindle because it’s fresh for you to download.

Did I mention the title? It’s called RESULTS ON REPEAT FOR ONLINE BUSINESS OWNERS: PUBLISH, TRACK AND IMPROVE YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS.

If you don’t have a Kindle to read it on, you can download the app on your phone or tablet for free – but it’s a total steal because we talk about publishing your content and offers, tracking them like they owe you money (because you know they do!), we look at the anatomy of your marketing campaigns with workflows and process maps because you know your girl over here LOVES a good workflow and process map, and we talk about what on earth are you supposed to do when your marketing isn’t working – how do you figure out what’s broken and how do you fix it – and that’s all in Results On Repeat. Did you catch that?

I’m hoping to be an Amazon best-seller with this so I want to make sure you caught that title – Results On Repeat – tell your mother, tell your gardener, gift it to your biz bestie – who doesn’t want the gift of Results On Repeat! – and I would be ALL the appreciation to you.

I’m so proud of this and hey! in case you haven’t heard it lately, I’m proud of you, too, because we’re all fed all these goofy concepts like “sales funnels” to buy into and if you’re still listening, it’s because something resonated with you about having ongoing relationships with your clients and being invested in that flow and engagement and interaction, and I love seeing more of that so, yeah, I’m proud of you and we’ll talk soon! baiiieeeee

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This is a transcript from episode 54 of the OMGrowth podcast

NOTE: I am not a privacy lawyer and if you need legal advice about the data you collect, you want to hire a legal expert to provide advice to your specific circumstances.

I’m Lanie Lamarre and last week, we talked about why I uninstalled Google Analytics from my website but this week, I’m going to talk about what I’m using to track my campaigns instead. Can I get an airhorn up in here? (I love that sound so much!)

I believe in being data-driven with your online business decisions. I believe in dashboards, I believe in knowing your numbers, I believe in getting a return-on-investment for your marketing efforts and being able to understand how those efforts and returns influence each other so you can improve your efforts and increase your results.

I do not believe you need Google Analytics to do any of this and I have a couple of solid recommendations to back that up.

Now, before I uninstalled Google Analytics – and if you want the reasons behind why I did this, check out episode 53 of the podcast – but I actually tried out a few different privacy-compliant analytics platforms to see how they worked, and I’ll be honest, it was a bit of a shock to see my new dashboards at first.

They were simple to understand. Like, very simple!

Keep in mind, I was first certified in Google Analytics some time back around 2012 so we’re talking about a decade of accounting for A LOT of information. In fact, Google Analytics collects more than 500 data points on each visitor that comes to your website, and that’s before your page even loads. I can’t name 500 different data points, much less use them all so when I saw how simple, relevant and effective it could be to hone in on just a few key data points, it felt a little shocking.

I even went through a little emotional, “ummm… where’s the rest of it?” But when you use privacy-compliant analytics software, it’s a lot like when you go to a fancy 12-course meal with all of these tiny little plates and you’re thinking you’re going to need to stop at a drive-thru after this because there’s no way you’ll fill up on these small servings.

But like the 12-course meal, you realize that by the time you slowly digest all of these little plates, you’re actually satisfied and you got everything you need.

What’s more is that you don’t need a special training to understand what you’re looking at, there’s no learning curve or complex definitions, you don’t have to learn how to code just to set some flipping goals, and you’ll never once wonder “am I doing this right?” with my 2 privacy-compliant analytics software of choice: FATHOM ANALYTICS and PLAUSIBLE ANALYTICS.

Before I get into why you would choose one over the other, let’s look at shiny features they both have to offer and what makes them so much better than Google Analytics:

• Both meet or exceed the requirements made by privacy laws like GDPR, CCPA and PEDR, and both ensure that you are compliant with how you are accessing and storing information, regardless of where you are located, where your visitors are logging in from or what your personal expertise or understanding is about what your privacy obligations are;
• They do not use cookies to track your visitors, which means that as more browsers limit the use of tracking cookies and as privacy legislation increases and becomes more enforceable with how pixels and cookies may be used, you have one less thing to worry about adapting to when you are using analytics software you’re confident will not be impacted by these changes;
• Fathom and Plausible are both independently-owned and have no shareholders or investors to answer to at the time of publication. These are software companies that are funded by your subscription dollars and YOU therefore own the data you collect, as opposed to using a “free” platform where your payment is to solicit the data of your audience in exchange for the corporation offering you the service;
• Both platforms aggregate your data collection, which means that all the individual identifiers have been remixed as such that you don’t have to worry about breaking the law by inadvertently collecting Personally Identifiable Information… because these platforms prioritize YOU, their client, in the way they collect data rather than putting their own corporate needs first and then burying your obligations to them in the Terms And Conditions of Use for you to figure out;
• They also don’t collect a lot of the types of information that “clutter” your reports. Instead, they make it simple for you to be intentional about your marketing efforts by recording your use of UTM parameters – I’ve talked a lot about those and oh yeah, those continue to be tracked and now that we’re getting intentional about tracking, they matter more than ever – and you don’t get the type of information overload that comes with collecting and reporting on #allthethings. Instead, you’re zoning in on the results you’re seeing from your efforts, and isn’t clearly seeing YOUR results the whole point of tracking your dang efforts in the first place?;
• Fathom and Plausible both use dashboards that are SIMPLE and your data is straight-forward to filter, so instead of getting lost in all the things you could learn about and understand, you can instead take intentional action with information you easily can and do understand right off the bat;
• They both make it easy for you to include a link to a shared dashboard in your Privacy Policy, which is the ultimate in transparency as it allows you to provide your audience with insight as to what information you are collecting about them; and finally,
• I know this is personal gripe and if you’ve followed me for any period of time, you’ve heard me bemoan this before but I disdain the term “users” to describe the people you’re meant to serve. I’m tickled pink to report that neither Fathom nor Plausible use that type of language in their reports but instead, they respectfully refer to your people as “visitors” and I love this.

So how do you decide between FATHOM and PLAUSIBLE?

They both have a trial period and I encourage you to test run both, or you can watch me walk you through my thoughts on each of them on Instagram or TikTok to see each of them in action.

However, here are some key differences that may simplify your decision-making:

FATHOM ANALYTICS*

Run by Canadian Paul Jarvis (author of Company Of One), Fathom Analytics is the privacy-compliant analytics software of choice for those who have a little tech know-how and for whom it is important to see dollar figures attributed to their goals.

While your Goals/Events are a touch more technical to create with Fathom than they are with Plausible, they also provide a bit more opportunity for customization.

PLAUSIBLE ANALYTICS

The Europe-based duo of Uku Taht and Marko Saric who make Plausible possible bring a few more key data sets to dig through than Fathom does (like Exit Pages and more in-depth visitor location options), and Plausible makes it beginner-level easy to create your own Goals/Events using simply the URL slug of the page you want to prioritize tracking.

Now I know what question comes next: “well, Lanie, which one are YOU using?”

At the time of publishing, I’m in a polyamorous relationship with my privacy-compliant analytics software so I actually have both of them installed on my assets (and even with the scripts of both platforms on my website and its assets, it’s still light years faster to load my pages now than it was when I had all the heavy Google Analytics code on there – bananas, right?)

Both services are relatively inexpensive and this makes it a “no-brainer” for data-loving, privacy-focused person such as myself to want to keep them both.

However, depending on how much traffic you get to your website, you’ll be paying somewhere around $15-20/month for 100,000 visitors and sites getting less than 10,000 can expect to pay less than $10/month.

Google Analytics may not cost you money to use, but I prefer to spend the price of a nice cocktail every month to be able to toast to the fact that I’m protecting my visitors from being unnecessarily exploited by the Data Gods. I own the information I’m collecting, I feel confident that I’m not breaking any privacy laws and I have what I need to continue making data-driven decisions.

It is worth noting, though, that while your website analytics may be your “main” source of information as this comments on how people are behaving on your website, this probably isn’t your only source of information.

For instance, your sales pages, your course platform, your email marketing service and/or your payment processors are probably collecting information that is of interest to you. Likewise, each of your social media platforms will have their own data sets that comment on how your people are engaging with you on those platforms, whether or not they click-through to your website.

You may also be using a Facebook pixel to track and collect data, and there are strategic ways you could be using that to market a little more ethically, too, which we’ll talk about on a future episode.

But I want you to really stop and think – don’t just stare at a screen with donut-glazed eyes taking in more information than you know what to do with – but go analog for a second and think, “what am I trying to improve and what information do I need to know to make that happen?”

Let’s say you just launched and you’re doing your due diligence and following up on your results for the launch. Do we care about how our blog posts performed? Maybe later we will be but right now we’re looking at the results from our launch, which means we want to know:

• how did people find my sales page;
• how many people visit my sales page;
• how many people visit my check out;
• how many people bought my offer?

Depending on how you business model is set up, you’ll do better by looking at what your sales page software or your cart/payment processor is telling you about your performance rather than your website as a whole.

This is the ultimate exercise of honing in on what matters for the results you’re looking for.

I personally feel like this is a sigh of relief – you don’t HAVE to know and look at #allthethings all the time – you can just focus on what you’re working on NOW.

If you’ve grown used to Google Analytics, Fathom and Plausible may seem restrictive at first but as a reformed cheerleader for the platform, I can vouch for how liberating it is to simplify all of this.

You still have to be intentional about tracking your efforts – in fact, it’s more important than ever to do so – but I’m here for intentional, and I’m here for simple, and I’m here for ethical.

And I’m here for YOU so come visit me on social media – you’ll find me on Instagram @omgrowth or TikTok @omgrowthpod – and I’m showing you what intentional and simple and ethical can look like for you over there. I’m also dropping something big news early next week that I cannot wait to share with you but my excitement and I digress….

Look, there comes a point where it’s like “you have enough and you know enough”. You don’t actually NEED that much information when it comes to getting data-driven about improving a launch or optimizing a funnel or figuring out which eyeballs will be the easiest to multiply. But you do have to be intentional and I encourage YOU to consider how YOU can be more intentional with your digital marketing.

There will be more intentional talks next week because I’ve got you – I’ve always got you – and you’re my favorite – baiiiee!

I’m inserting a little P.S. to this episode because after last week’s episode, I received a bunch of great emails and DMs – clearly this topic is touching a nerve – but one of those emails was from Amanda Grossman from Frugal Confessions and she shared an article with me that I felt would be a short-coming not to share with you because it highlights the changes you can make to your Google Analytics settings to make your use of the platform more privacy-compliant.

Is the article perfect? Nope. For instance, it focuses on the Universal Analytics version of Google Analytics instead of the GA4 version which everyone is being forced into migrating to at this point, and GA4 is still ever-changing and evolving – the platform is still not ready for its close-up yet – and neither are its settings. If you stick with Google Analytics, you’ll either have to be comfortable with the fact that there will be on-going maintenance with your use of the platform as data and privacy laws evolve, or you will want to get a Google Analytics specialist who has you on their call sheet that will keep your use of the platform honest, ethical and in-the-know.

And that’s been the point of these last 2 episodes: the goal isn’t to scare you or bully you into changing your platform but rather, it’s to bring awareness and understand about what’s happening in world of digital marketing and what implications it may have and what responsibilities that may have for us.

I say this a lot but you’re the boss, apple sauce, and you get to call the shots. Whatever decision you make, you should feel informed and empowered about making, and while simplifying and minimizing my data collection practices using software that’s privacy-compliant straight out of the box is the right decision for me, I know – I KNOW! – that you’ll be making the right decision for you. So like I said, that article that Amanda shared with me is also linked so you HAVE options and you HAVE agency… and you have me saying okbaieagainforrealthistime. Talk so0on!

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