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  • The Biggest Mistakes I’ve Made with MARKETING DATA as a Digital Marketer

    This is a transcript of episode 99 of the Let’s Get Data-Driven podcast.

    I’m Lanie Lamarre and before we hit episode 100, I wanted to share with you some of the biggest mistakes I’ve made with marketing data as a digital marketer. Because I’ve made plenty and you may have made or be making these, too. Because acknowledging our mistakes is growth – or in our case, OMGrowth – let’s get growing together.

    OVER-COMPLICATING MY TRACKING EFFORTS

    In an effort to see where my traffic was coming from, I once created this templated page that I would duplicate with personalized content like a header that said “hey, friend of WHOEVER SENT YOU” because I thought this would make it easy for me to see how and why they reached my page. And it did but it was a nightmare and there are far simpler ways of achieving the same outcome.

    The problem with this strategy is that not only did I have a boatload of unique pages to track but when I wanted to update the content on them, I had to update the content on all of them. For instance, if I retired offer or added a new offer, I would have to go into each individual page to add that thing, or I’d have to create a new templated page and replace all the pages I created.

    What I should have done instead and now do is I have one generic page that all my speaking opportunities gets redirected to using some customized code instead. This way, if I’m on The Jane Doe podcast and I’m asked to share where people can get some of the resources mentioned on the podcast, I would send people to omgrowth.com/janedoe and set it up so that this URL redirects people to that one generic page using UTM codes that will identify where this person came from like omgrowth.com/genericpage?utm_campaign=offer&utm_source=janedoe&utm_medium=podcast. This way, when I look at my analytics and filter for “Medium: Podcast”, I can see all the traffic that came to me from all the different podcasts I spoke on.

    If you want to explore this more in-depth, you’ll find tutorials for how to do this in the Membership To Get Data-Driven, because while I value being able to track the ROI on my speaking events, I would never again create unique landing pages for each presenter I collaborated with, especially when I can use UTMs to generate clean reports on this for me.

    NEGLECTING TO CLEAN AND AUDIT DATA

    I used to sell Dashboards that plugged into your Google Analytics and if you want to hear more about why I no longer support or promote the use of Google Analytics for most small business owners, listen to episode 53 for the background on that. It would happen where people would have issues with how their data populated their dashboards and they would ask my if I could “just connect it for them” and agreeing to do so was always, always, always a mistake.

    The reason that you would encounter issues with how your data is reporting isn’t an issue with the Dashboard but rather, it’s with how your data collection and storage is set-up. This means you need to run a full audit on your analytics account and its settings, or hire someone to do so, and this can be time-intensive and therefore, it is its own expense. Furthermore, it’s a recurring expense because for as often as these platforms and privacy legislations are updated, you will have to have an expert adjust your settings accordingly to ensure you continue collecting clean data.

    Any time I agreeing to helping someone get their dashboards set up, I would almost immediately regret it because the problem was never with the dashboards and reporting and always with the set-up, and I never charged enough to include a full account audit. As such, it always felt a little bit like the relationship between Sharon Stone and Robert DeNiro in Casino where you start off saying, “I mean, why not have a go at this?” only to end up where all parties are inevitably dissatisfied with the arrangement.

    Keep in mind that data analysts don’t spend most of their time analyzing data; they spend most of their time cleaning their data sources. Google Analytics is not out-of-the-box software you can plug-and-play without adjusting the settings and I highly recommend that you hire someone who is knowledgeable about privacy regulation to review and audit how your data collection is set up on an ongoing basis to ensure you’re doing so in a legal way but also in an accurate manner that benefits your reporting goals.

    PRIORITIZING CONVENIENCE OVER CAREFULNESS

    Since these mistakes aren’t mutually exclusive, it’s worth noting that I did use and recommend Google Analytics for a long time. In fact, I still think it’s a great tracking platform for the right person who can either ensure the settings are privacy-compliant or who is willing to hire someone who will set-up and regularly audit and update their use of the platform. But like I said in the last mistake, Google Analytics isn’t an out-of-the-box platform you can just slap onto your site and you’re good to go. I mean, you CAN do that and it’s convenient to do so, but it isn’t responsible to do this before you understand what you’re consenting and agreeing to.

    We all do this – and I’m as guilty as anyone – where you sign up for a platform without fully reading the Terms of what you’re agreeing to. Episode 69 was a bit of a case study of how I joined TikTok, THEN looked into what I had agreed to (which I don’t have to tell you is the wrong order in which to do things), and how and why I made the decision to leave the platform once I knew and understood what the implications would be. It was more convenient for me to start swiping videos than it was to carefully read what I had agreed to, and as a result, I’m a lot more vigilant about looking into what I’m signing up to now.

    This doesn’t just apply to the tools you use and social media you sign up for, either. I encourage you to take the extra moment to manage your tracking preferences when you’re on specific sites and inform yourself as to what you’re agreeing to. You’re not a “hit” or a “user” – you’re a human being – and although you deserve to be treated as such, you also have to pay your due diligence and communicate how you’ll accept you and your audience’s personal information to be treated.

    FOCUSING ON “USERS” INSTEAD OF PEOPLE

    If you’ve listened to me for any period of time, you know that I prefer the term “visitors” to “users” because yes, I get we’re speaking in the context of the people who use our things, but drug dealers refer to their client base as users and there’s a bit of a con-artist connotation that I can’t shake. Is this a personal issue? Maybe, probably, but it doesn’t hurt to think about it. In fact, it doesn’t hurt to think of those people as human beings. It’s a whole lot easier to think of them as people with experiences and needs and desires that you can help them with, rather than users whose pain points you want to exploit and maximize profit from.

    When you’re dealing with data and analytics, it can be especially easily to lose sight of what we’re talking about because it’s just numbers in columns; but those numbers represent people and there’s a ton of value – for both you as a digital seller and the person on the other side of the screen – when you remember that fact with how you show up online.

    Instead of hits and views, you can take a human-centered approach of “would I click on that? why would I click on that?” Instead of worrying about learning conversion copywriting, maybe you can look at your captions, your sales pages, your emails and just be honest about how helpful and how engaged you would find yourself being with that same content if the script were flipped.

    OVER-AUTOMATING PROCESSES AND IGNORING QUALITATIVE DATA

    In a similar vein is the over-automation of processes. For instance, if most of your engagement is automated, you may be engaging “wrong”, amirite?

    Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of automations in place to help with my engagement. Social media posts are scheduled, for instance. I get alerts telling me to record a personal welcome video when someone joins the Membership To Get Data-Driven. I get similar alerts telling me to send a handwritten cards when someone buys a course. But all of these engagement-based automations exist as a way for me to welcome and open the door for conversation or engagement or just plain old making people feel seen. I’m re-thinking concepts such as the “welcome or nurture funnel” where you send a set of automated emails designed to introduce yourself and your offers because I’m thinking – and I haven’t figure this out yet – but I’m thinking I’m not the one who should be doing all the talking and I’m not sure how to do that. Should I test video welcome messages to new subscribers the way I do for new members? Is that even realistic? Maybe. Maybe not.

    I don’t have all the answers but I’m definitely questioning a lot of things – especially the things we put on auto-pilot – because as much as I advocate for not manually doing work you don’t have to, I’m equally passionate about acting like a human being online and maybe we don’t have to automate quite as many things as we do and have.

    Likewise, looking at numbers on a screen will never tell you as much as your actual followers and buyers can tell you, from their mouths, the burning questions you have about things like “your client journey” and “what made them buy”. Make your market research easy on yourself and just ask!

    FOCUSING ON THE WRONG THINGS

    Looking at #allthedata is overwhelming and it’s why I say over and over and over again that #allthedata doesn’t matter #allthetime.

    Having said that, it’s easy and a lot of times, we’re encouraged to focus on the wrong things. Social media may be the pillar example of this but what metrics do you have front-and-center? Your followers, your views and your likes, right? For a long time, I equated “likes” with what is doing well for me and I was looking at the wrong dang thing. I care so much more about what people are sharing and saving as examples of what is really resonating with my audience – and if you want help finding those types of insights, there’s a training in the Membership To Get Data-Driven on how to find all of this juicy information and you’ll find the link to join link in the shownotes – but I can do a lot more and take better data-driven decision by looking at what people are saving and sharing than what they’re liking.

    Furthermore, all data – regardless of the source – is never perfect and will be increasingly imperfect as privacy laws expand. That’s why instead of focusing on exact numbers, it is far more valuable for you to focus on identifying trends and patterns. If you need an example of what this looks like in action, I’ll link to a couple of examples that will show you how to do that from my Instagram:

    https://www.instagram.com/p/Co7XUe8La9q/
    https://www.instagram.com/p/CoHWnFHrlUX/

    Understanding your numbers to make data-driven decisions isn’t like accounting where the numbers have to be exact; the goal is to take the areas you’re investing in and set yourself up to easily identify what the returns are for those efforts and where the gaps, inefficiencies and low-lying fruit are for you to capitalize on next.

    So there you have it – some of the biggest mistakes I’ve made with marketing data as a digital marketer and I’d love to hear yours as well, so if you’re feeling like sharing some mistakes you’ve made, reach out to me @omgrowth on Instagram. In the meantime, next episode is my one-hundredth and I look forward to sharing that one with you next week so we will talk soon – baiiieee!!

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  • How UTM PARAMETERS are the Future of Analytics in a Cookieless World

    This is a transcript of episode 98 of the Let’s Get Data-Driven podcast.

    I’m Lanie Lamarre and in this era of the cookie-pocalypse where your ability to use third-party cookies to track your visitors’ activities is about to go obsolete, I get a lot of questions about how tracking will work moving forward. For instance, people are rightfully concerned about how affiliate links will work or how they can see which campaigns brought the most traffic. That’s why in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how the extinction of third-party cookies will impact your marketing and the best way for you to continue tracking the ROI on your efforts.

    WHAT IS THE COOKIE-POCALYPSE?

    Several years ago, we started seeing changes to the way online behaviors were being tracked, and these changes have been gaining all kinds of momentum.

    In 2017, Apple introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) in its Safari browser, which limited the ability of third-party cookies to track people across different websites. In 2019, Mozilla announced that it would block third-party cookies by default in its Firefox browser, while Google announced plans to phase out support for third-party cookies in its Chrome browser by 2022.

    In early 2021, Google announced that it would delay its plans to phase out third-party cookies until 2023, in order to give businesses more time to adapt to the changes. At the same time, Google has been testing its new Privacy Sandbox technology, which is designed to provide advertisers with alternative ways to target people without relying on third-party cookies.

    This time period in internet history is often referred to as the “cookie-pocalypse” and we are moving towards an online world without third-party cookies as web browsers and advertising platforms adapt to new privacy regulations and to people’s expectations around data privacy.

    So what makes cookies so problematic?

    Let’s start at the beginning, when Lou Montulli, a Netscape Communications employee, is said to have coined the term with his favorite childhood snack in mind. Legend has it that he was inspired by the practice of dipping cookies in milk, which he felt was a metaphor for the way that cookies allow websites to “dip into” a user’s data and remember their preferences and activity.

    Which is a fun way of visualizing what cookies actually do: cookies are small data files that are stored on a visitor’s computer by websites to track their online activity. While these have been in use since the 90s, only now are they being increasingly scrutinized for the concerns around data privacy, tracking and consent.

    Hence, the “cookie-pocalypse” and the privacy issues present with the use of third-party cookies, which are cookies that are set by domains other than the one that the person is visiting. These cookies are often used by advertisers to track people across multiple websites and build detailed profiles of their behavior and interests, which can be used to deliver targeted advertising.

    As such, major web browsers like Chrome, Safari and Mozilla have implemented significant changes to the way they handle cookies, and this is having an impact on the way you can and do track your website visitors and advertising campaigns.

    But cookies aren’t the only method you can use to track your marketing; you also have the option to use UTM parameters.

    WHAT ARE UTM PARAMETERS?

    UTM parameters are these little tags you can add to the end of the links you’re sharing to promote your offers. In turn, these allow you to track the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns and they help you better understand the ROI of your online advertising efforts. You can look at your analytics and see the traffic you attracted for which offers, from which mediums, via which traffic sources, even through which specific pieces of content to better assess and understand how your promotions are performing and make more data-driven decisions.

    If you’re interested in better understanding how UTMs work, I encourage you to use the link in the shownotes to sign up for some free trainings I have to offer on using UTM parameters and if you want to cheat off my test paper with copy and paste formulas, I encourage you to join the Membership To Get Data-Driven where I have these all mapped out – literally, with workflows and everything! – for you to swipe.

    TRACKING WITH UTM vs COOKIES

    Unlike cookies, tracking with UTM parameters doesn’t happen automatically; you have to be intentional about adding these bits of codes to the links you’re sharing in order to benefit from their tracking abilities whereas cookies are just pervasively embedded into browsers.

    Whereas UTM parameters are transparent to visitors because they’re seen as part of the URL your visitors click on, cookies are more invasive in the sense that you don’t know what’s being collected. Part of the problem with cookies is they often collect Personally Identifiable Information – or what the cool kids call PII – because they’re designed to remember things like preferences and login information and ad targeting as they track and collect information about behaviors across multiple sites.

    Meanwhile, UTM parameters don’t collect any PII; they’re designed to provide you with insight as to what campaign, for what offer, through what channel someone clicked on to end up on your site, visiting whichever page. UTMs simply track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and visitors can choose whether or not to click on a UTM-tagged URL. In contrast, third-party cookies can be used to track user behavior across multiple websites and collect sensitive data without the person’s knowledge or consent, and that’s where the problem lies and why they’re going the way of the dodo bird.

    UTMs IN THE COOKIE-POCALYPSE

    This means that if you’re going to track your marketing campaigns, you’re going to have to be intentional about doing so by using UTM parameters. Since these will continue to work as cookies become obsolete, this would be a good time for you to follow up on HOW the tracking takes places for the campaigns that automatically track for you and you may have taken for granted.

    For instance, the affiliate links you use to promote other people’s products for which you receive a commission probably use a combination of UTM parameters AND cookies. Paste your link into the address bar and look for a question mark symbol in your link. You may have to hit ENTER as some of these function with redirects that populate the UTM afterwards, but what you see after that question mark will identify you as an affiliate and anyone using that link to purchase the product will credit you for the purchase.

    However, the days of getting credit for that link for days or weeks on end afterwards are gone. It used to be – and in some cases, it still is but it won’t be for long – you could share a link and if someone went back to that person’s sales page without using your link a few weeks later to make the purchase, you would still get credit and commission for that person’s purchase. This is because cookies made it such that the web browser remembered that you sent that person there in the first place, but once they’re disabled, you’ll want to ensure people are using the link you shared with them in order to get credit for that purchase.

    Any instance where you’re using tracking that happens automatically – meaning, you haven’t put in place any intentional tracking but you’re getting insights and analytics reports for – will be an area you want to better understand HOW that tracking is taking place, and what you can do to continue receiving that type of information as automated tracking comes to an end.

    Whining about the changes and how hard everything is getting in online marketing isn’t going to improve anything; being intentional with how you approach your marketing efforts will. If you’re looking for resources to help you with any of this, I have those linked in the shownotes.

    As online marketers, I believe we’ve become desensitized to how creepy and pervasive a lot of our practices are. Some of the tracking we’ve become not only accustomed to but feel entitled to are things so creepy that we would never, ever dream of doing this in the real world. At the same time, it’s like we all agree that best sales referrals always seem to come from humans and relationships and collaborations. If we take a step back and see the big picture of how valuable connection and engagement is in the context of online marketing, maybe we don’t have to act so bruised about the fact that people have to consent to sharing their personal information with us; maybe we can take this opportunity to get intentional by getting back to prioritizing the relationship that goes along with collecting that type of information.

    Talk soon, baiiieee!!!

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  • Maximizing Results with the Pareto Principle: An 80/20 Guide of Efficient Resource Use

    This is a transcript of episode 95 of the Let’s Get Data-Driven podcast.

    My favorite thing about the 80/20 Rule is how it can lessen your workload… so I put the 80/20 Rule in action by repurposing a portion of this month’s featured workshop in the Membership to Get Data Driven into this podcast episode.. So, boss, this is, like THE MOST meta.

    Let’s talk about the 80 20 Rule and find some ways you can put your work to work for you, too.

    This month’s workshop for the Membership to Get Data Driven, we’re talking about the 80/20 Rule, also called the Pareto Principle. It’s a method you can apply to get more out of the work you’re already doing. What’s not to love about that? Essentially what I’m telling you, boss, is you do a lot. And let’s look at ways that you can get your work to work as hard for you as you do for it. Okay, so what is the Pareto Principle?

    THE PARETO PRINCIPLE

    It’s a concept that suggests that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. It was named after a 19th century Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto, which is a name I feel like I can say all day long. Income distribution: he noticed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population – kind of the equivalent of today’s 1%, where most of everything is owned by the 1%.

    As he continued his research, he found that the principle applied to many other areas of life, such as wealth distribution, population distribution, business productivity. Others have since built on this concept, specifically as it relates to quality management, process improvement, as well as in fields like marketing, finance, and personal productivity.

    So why the hey should you care? As digital marketers, I can see two really good reasons why the 80/20 Rule applies to your business.

    1. First, it helps you see more clearly what is happening with your traffic, with your leads, with your sales, with your content. All the things you’re investing, your time, your money, your energy, those valuable resources, what you’re investing those into, how you can get more out of those investments. And by applying the Pareto Principle to the content you’re generating, you can more easily create better content that will yield better results. Because you see and you understand the distribution of your results, especially when you see how we do it in the second part of this workshop where we put it on a graph. Yeah, you’re going to literally see the 80 20 rule in action on the dashboard that I will share with you in the second half of this workshop… but I’m getting ahead of myself already.
    2. The second area where the 80/20 rule best serves digital marketers is that it really makes it a lot easier for you to see the gaps and the inefficiencies in how you’re doing things with how you’re operating. This is actually where I want to start. Let’s talk use cases. You know, I love an example.

    So we’re just going to walk through all the different ways that the 80/20 rule applies to digital marketers with these little use cases The 80/20 rule can have a direct impact on how you choose to use resources. A big one is time, boss – your time is #1

    TIME INVESTMENTS

    Let’s get more out of your time, right? There’s never enough time in the day. Or maybe there is if you redistribute it.

    So the go to thing to say here is 20% of your time spent can represent 80% of your results. That’s sort of like the big one that people throw around. And it’s true that there’s a small set of activities that you’re doing that is generating 80% or a large portion of your outcomes, but let’s use it a little bit more, or rather, let’s look at it in a little bit more actionable way. Let’s think of the activities that yield no results. If I asked you to comment on what activities you’re spending time on that yield no results for you, what would you say?

    I’m sure there are some things that immediately come front of mind when I say this. And by the way, if you want to pause this and jot your thoughts and feelings down on a piece of paper or on a digital notepad as we go, I encourage that wholeheartedly. And if you’re feeling like you don’t have really a lot of clarity around how exactly you’re spending your time, consider using a time tracking app or a tool like Harvest or Airtable Extension or something that will clock in. Your work hours and how you’re actually spending them. Like, what are you actually doing and how long it takes you to do those things.

    So we can review exactly how and where you’re spending your time and to do it in an honest way. Because sometimes we’re spending some time and we’re not really attributing the right amount of time, either we’re underselling ourselves or overselling ourselves. You can typically also see that 20% of your time spent represents 80% of the tasks you could be delegating. This can help you see the stuff that you don’t have to continue doing. Chances are you’re spending a significant amount of time doing work that may not be the best use of your time.

    And we’re going to see that in the dashboard in the database. When you see that distribution of your time spent, you can easily be like, oh yeah, I see that here. I don’t have to be spending so much time on this anymore. Like I said, we’ll see that in the second part of the workshop. But for now, just think of accounting for your time investment so we can later apply the 80 20 rule to how you’re spending yours.

    REVENUE

    Now, we’ve talked a bit about time. The next topic, it’s got to be money, right? Use case number two money. 80% of your revenue typically comes from 20% of your well, that’s going to depend largely on how your business model is structured, how that distribution is. For instance, if you sell services, the majority of your revenue will typically come from a specific segment of customers, which make up 20% of your overall customer list.

    When you sell digital products, you’ll often have 80% of that revenue coming from 20% of your sales. So maybe you have a low priced offer that generates some income. It makes probably more sales than your other offers, but it brings in the least amount of revenue. It’s the high ticket programs you sell on the back end that generate the most revenue for you. Perhaps you have an ecommerce business where you sell hundreds of products, but even then you’ll typically find that 80% of your revenue is coming from 20% of the products you sell.

    And the clincher with this business model is it usually isn’t the same 20%. It’s going to depend on what you’re promoting. Sometimes it’ll be seasonally based, sometimes it’ll be more categorical. And you may have hybrid models of this as well where you sell maybe you sell services and digital products and your services bring in the bulk of the money, and your digital products bring in a small amount of money, but it’s a good lead generator. All this to say how that shows up is really going to depend on your business model.

    Chances are, though, that you can look at your revenue and see a big chunk of it coming from a very specific area. So specific customers, specific products, specific sales, specific campaigns. We’ll look at this more in depth in the second part and see the distribution of that on a graph.

    LEAD-GENERATION

    But our next and third use case relates to lead generation or how you’re getting people on your email list. 80% of your leads usually show up as 20% of your we have marketing channels, opt ins revenue.

    So most of your leads will come in from one or two marketing channels. You’ll typically have a handful of opt ins or free offers that produce exceptionally well for you compared to how your other optins, your other free offers perform. And you’ll usually have a handful of your subscribers, your leads that are actually buyers of your products. Now let’s just back it up a moment and talk about your marketing channels. Let’s say your social media isn’t where most of your leads are coming from.

    Does this mean you should spend less time on those channels? Not necessarily. Social media isn’t typically going to be your most statistically significant lead generator. Keep in mind what social media is for. It’s a billboard.

    It’s not a cart processor. It’s not a lead generator. Nobody’s opening their social media apps with the primary intent to be sold to, right? If we go back to the ABCs of digital marketing that I speak to in the Roadmap to Optimization, you have a for attracting new audiences, b for building relationships, and C for converting to sales. Social media is where you do most of the attracting and some of the building.

    Social media serves a different primary purpose from lead generation. It’s your billboard and it’s to your benefit to approach it with that viewpoint. Just because a marketing channel isn’t showing up for you as a top lead generator, it doesn’t mean you should stop or you should pull back on the time you’re spending on it. It’s just about getting clear about your intent for the use of that marketing channel. Because if you are spending time on a specific marketing channel that you expect to be a lead generator, let’s say you’re running an ad campaign to grow your email list and then you see that something else is outperforming that investment.

    When it comes to your email list growth, you can probably save yourself some coins by doubling down on the channel that is delivering, right?

    WEBSITE PERFORMANCE

    Same sort of deal When it comes to your website performance, use case number 4: 80 percent of your website traffic represents 20% of your traffic sources your pages, your posts. So look at your website traffic and you’ll see that a huge majority of your traffic is coming from one to three sources. Look at what pages your top performing pages are, because usually most of your traffic is going to just a handful of pages that you have.

    So look at them and look at maybe your top five most visited pages that will likely make up 80% of your traffic. And when you’re looking at those pages, ask yourself, are there ways of improving the visitor experience for those pages? Are there ways of making your offers, your value, your message even more evident or accessible on those pages? What about your posts? What are what are people interested in hearing and reading and absorbing from what you have to offer?

    Again, are there ways of improving those specific posts that are getting the most traffic? And can we keep in mind throughout this workshop, we are not creating a to do list for you here today. Okay? Today is about creating awareness around what results and what returns you’re seeing for the efforts you’re putting forth. It’s about better understanding the cause and the effect of your work.

    It’s neither good, it’s neither bad. All of this just is. But when you host your quarterly CEO day when you have a content strategy session. Take this information as a sort of backbone while you flesh out your ideas, your planning, your optimization. That’s what this is about, looking at your results in a way that will help you generate better results the next time around.

    EMAIL MARKETING

    Use case number five email marketing. 80% of your subscribers, 80% of your content represents 20% of your most engaged with emails, subject lines, buyers. Because if we see you’re most engaged with emails, you can expect the majority of those engagements will come from a specific segment of your email subscribers and they’re going to represent a specific type of email that you’re sending out. Same deal with your subject line, same deal with the sales you make from your emails. You’ll see the same subscribers, the same type of content resonating more often than others.

    So what can you do with this information? Well, you can use this information to create better segmentation within your email list. For instance, if you have a segment of people who are engaging the most with your emails and you see that there’s a thread, a commonality, a trend with those types of subscribers, that they have a specific opt in. That they’re all into. You can see that those subscribers that had that one specific opt in are more likely to be engaged throughout the client journey.

    Maybe you can find ways to expose your less engaged subscribers by putting that offer in front of them, by putting that high value content on their radar and maybe turning them into more engaged users. You can use this information to inform the types of subject lines you’re going to use during a launch because you can see that sort of 20% of subject lines representing 80% of what is getting you results. Well, you can sort of repurpose that formula of how you wrote those subject lines in your next launch because you know they perform well for you.

    AFFILIATE MARKETING

    Same deal with your affiliate marketing. Use case number 620 percent of your affiliates represents 80% of your sales, but also 80% of your commissions come from 20% of your relationships.

    This kind of goes both ways. You have people who promote and sell your offers and you’ll typically have a handful of collaborators who bring in the biggest number of your sales. Likewise, when you’re promoting and selling other people’s offers, you’ll find that 80% of the commission payments that are made to you will come from 20% of the products you actually promote.

    SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT

    Use case number seven social media engagement. The social media engagement is a little trickier only because there’s just so many other factors to consider.

    But you’ll have a small amount of the content you put out and topics that you cover that will generate the biggest part of your engagement. Same thing with your followers. You’ll see the same people liking commenting slipping into your DMs. It’s a good idea to notice the people noticing you, right? Especially when they’re such a small segment of your overall followers. Hashtags you can expect the same handful of them to be your biggest producers as well.

    ORGANIC TRAFFIC

    You’ll see similar things happening with your organic traffic. Use case number eight, where the same few keywords will bring you the most search results. It’ll yield the most traffic. Hone in on those and how you can maybe better use them with your future content creation strategies.

    Look at the pages, the posts. Again, you don’t have to look at the whole enchilada when it’s a handful of top performers that’ll tell you the story of where you can niche down on or what you can improve. And what’s more is you can look at those specific pages, those specific posts, and make sure that they’re set up for your audience to do the next thing that you want them to do. For instance, let’s say you have one specific page that performs really well for you and you don’t have an opt in on that page to learn more. This could be an opportunity for that top performing page to perform in more ways than one for you.

    It can be a little more intentionally designed to follow the client journey that you have in mind for your audience.

    AD CAMPAIGNS

    Finally, we have ad campaigns. Use case number nine if you’re running ads you’re all too familiar with, the 80 20 Rule impacting your campaign performance, right? You’ll have specific ad sets, specific copy, specific creative audiences, even specific platforms that perform well for your lead generation and your sales made. And just to keep things interesting, these seem to be ever changing.

    So what worked six months ago or even six weeks ago may no longer perform well for you. When people talk about how you have to be ready to test your ad campaigns, this is it. You need to throw a little spaghetti at the wall to figure out what is the right combination of stickiness for who you’re trying to reach and with which offers and when you’re doing that.

    FEEDBACK

    As a little bonus, let’s talk about how the 80 20 Rule impacts the feedback you’re receiving. You’re going to get all kinds of feedback.

    Remember, a small segment of this will be complaints and they’ll typically mostly be the same complaint. This is valuable for you to take action on improving the customer experience. If you have just a few complaints come up over and over again, it’s a good idea to do something about it, right? But let’s also keep in mind that this applies to the trolls. You’ll get mostly love from your comments and your DMs, but you’ll occasionally get the trolls.

    And even though they represent a small segment of what people are saying, the icky words, I don’t know what it is, but they have a way of just staying with you harder and longer, right? So this is your permission slip to let the 80 20 rule deal with this because the trolls don’t make up the big picture of who you are or the work you do. Trolls and negative comments. They can and they do exist, but they are not where your impact is made. Okay, say it with me.

    They are not where your impact is made. Now, I’ve repeatedly said the 80 20 rule. The 80 20 rule. Listen, what we’re really talking about here is taking a limited view, limited scope on top, performing results, and approaching that as low hanging fruit to get even better results next time without having to put a bunch of extra work into it. So is the split always going to be 80% 20%?

    Absolutely not. But what we’re looking at is how can we get the biggest chunk of our effects to generate better results for us, desired results for us, by just impacting a small segment of the causes. And nothing makes it easier to see this than seeing it on a dang graph, right? So we’re going to punch in the numbers in this easy peasy database that I have for you. We’re going to work through two examples.

    The first case study is we’re going to look at the impact of the 80/20 rule on your time. And then the second example will be applying to a marketing campaign, which is going to generate a fancy pants dashboard like this one. If you want to access this dashboard, you can join the Membership to Get Data Driven for just $19, and you’ll have access to that dashboard. Talk soon, baiiie!!

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