Chris “Mercer” Mercer – MeasurementMarketing.io
Chris “Mercer” Mercer is considered an authority in helping marketers know their numbers in an easy-to-understand manner….
Apart from training people how to measure and improve their sales funnels, he is a top contributor and speaker at multiple analytics and optimizations conferences and blogs like ConversionXL, Content Jam, DigitalMarketer, Traffic & Conversion Summit, Social Media Examiner and more.
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3 WICKED TIPS:
1) Everybody starts in the dark cave
2) Figure out the process of going from point A to point B
3) We’re going to be humans, engaging with humans
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Today’s Audio MASTERCLASS:
The 5 Pillars in Measurement Marketing.
- Planning – (What numbers you should track)
- Building – (How can you track those numbers)
- Reporting– (How your business is currently doing – based on those numbers)
- Forecasting – (What is your benchmark numbers)
- Optimizing – (How can you grow those numbers)
00:02:55 – I’m a big fan
I’m a big fan and like, we can get down and dirty with some really technical things. But before we get into that, how did you get into doing all of this?
00:03:28 – Mercer, bitten by a radioactive spider
I was bitten by a radioactive spider, right? Yeah. So So our origin story, we were kind of doing six different corporate jobs. And in New York, my wife and I, and we had come down to Austin, Texas, of all places, see, friend of ours, get married, just fell in love with the place period. Just It was an amazing area to be so we’re like, wow, what does come down here? And it’s kind of it felt entrepreneurial. Like we didn’t really know that many people down here. But we were like, okay, we’ll come down here. It’s a cool place to live. We’ll just create this online business thing we’ve heard about down in Austin. So we basically saved up six months worth of money and There’s no fashioned way like that’s how businesses used to start. So we did that came down and we started an online business. And initially it was a WordPress site that train people how to do WordPress sites. So we started out as a membership site. And, and that worked out well. And then it grew into customers coming
to us saying, Hey, this is all great. This is a lot of work, how much for you to do this. And so we actually my first WordPress site was a complete membership site, you’ll love this complete membership site, everything 500 bucks took me two and a half hours. And I was like, Man, that’s awesome. I’m making this much money that I realized like a year later, how much really should be charging. But it led into outsourcing. Right. And so now I’ve got this team of WordPress developers that are creating WordPress sites. And I want from a marketing perspective, I wanted us to differentiate. So I said, Okay, we’re going to be doing WordPress sites, then we’ll optimize because at that point, conversion optimization very few people actually heard about it was just starting to come onto the scene. So we’re like, Okay, well optimize. Well, in order to optimize you’ve got to measure right, you have to know where you are in order to know where you want to get to. So we started setting up Google Analytics and pretty quickly we went down the route Whole actually realizing it’s a whole lot more than just pop and code on pages you need to actually set it up and teach it and it’s a partner with you. It’s not something just does work. You have to communicate with it and adjust it. So we started doing that thinking, This is what everybody did like, Okay, well, no one’s really talked about this because everyone’s doing it obviously. So we’ll just figure it out. And we did. We started showing our clients at the time, hey, here’s how to, here’s where your lead form is being tracked and how many goals and here’s ties into the different traffic sources. And they were kind of like Okay, forget about the WordPress site, like go back to that show me that and then they started sending us referrals and people weren’t coming. I was talking about WordPress development, they were coming to us to figure out their analytics and their numbers and just about right almost immediately took like two or three of those calls. And I was like, okay, we’re done WordPress stuff like that’s out there. Everyone’s going to do this. No one is doing measurement. So we started as a done for you sort of a boutique agency to do setups then moved into done with the training and then finally expanded out with the Do It Yourself offers that we have now.
00:13:09 – The the five pillars
the the five pillars are really our way of helping a company figure out what they need to do in measurement marketing, like figure out the actual process of going from like, what is it from point A to point B, so to speak, right to move through that system, and to help them integrate the measurement, the concept of measurement marketing.
So it wasn’t one person who was doing the measurement, it was the company was a measurement culture now, because that’s important. You need to have everybody on the same page, if somebody’s not tagging in an email with UTM tracking properly, that it’s messing up the report that somebody else is looking at trying to figure out what traffic sources do what you know, so you need everybody kind of on board. So our concept with the five pillars was to go through and break these down into it into a series of stages that you could move through, regardless if you’re if you’re doing our stuff or anything else. But if you still go through these stages, and this
is important because if you’re not buying our programs, these stages still apply.
00:21:40 – Everybody starts in the dark cave
I’ll recap the five pillars, then we’ll talk quickly about the measurement journey too, because it ties into that. So five pillars planning, building reporting forecasting, which is when you get your reports and say, Okay, here’s what it should happen next week, and then optimizing right which is where you’ll see hey, if especially if you’re tracking a funnel or something, you’ll see where the where you’re at. The market where you’re not, and then you can adjust. Right? So that’s kind of the five pillars, but to what you just mentioned about. So the way we talk about this is the measurement journey. Everybody starts in the dark cave, everybody. Lot of people aren’t even aware they’re in a cave, right? They’re stumbling around in the dark. And they’re just like a fish in water. They have no idea they’re in water. Same sort of concept with most marketers have no idea that they have no idea what’s working, and how it’s working. until they start doing paid traffic.
00:25:20 – Don’t go too deep into the UTM
So here’s, here’s the UTM. And I’ll give you there’s a traffic tracking tool kit. So remind me at the end, because I’ll give you a link to that. But you can get the there’s a tool kit has a spreadsheet tool that you can use to help structure so that the structure is the important part. And I’ll talk about that in just a moment. It’s got a whole 30 page book on there to really go through the ins and outs of how to do it all and there’s also a training video. So it’ll go into a lot more detail what I’m about to do here, but if the topic interest you if you need it, that’s the toolkit will be a perfect place to get all that but the way so UTM for those that are not familiar tag in your traffic sources that tell it’s a way of you telling Google Analytics, here’s where this person came from. And there’s five of them that you can do. So you’ve got the source, which is the brand of the traffic, it’s the brand name of the traffic. So if they came from YouTube, it’s YouTube, if it came from Facebook, it’s Facebook, we use Infusionsoft as our email automation. So the source of traffic from an email is Infusionsoft because that’s the brand of that traffic source. So that’s the source. And this and this is all important because the more that you structure these UTM, the more nicely they play together at the end when they all sort of arrive in Google Analytics. So you start with the branded source of traffic, then there’s something called the medium, and then you’ll and you’ll see these little parameters and say like UTM, underscore medium, and that’s the type of traffic that’s coming through. So paid traffic we call CPC, so it’ll be CPC is how we’ll call it or what we’ll put in their share. If it’s something that we’re posting on Facebook, we’re not boosting at all, we’ll just say it’s share, and that tells us it’s on them or something where it’s putting out there but not necessarily boosting and then we’ve got email would be an obvious one coming
from if she was off with email. We also have partner traffic that comes from our future. Gonna be Infusionsoft to track our affiliate stuff. So partner traffic comes through his partner, right from the Infusionsoft platform. Speaking if I’m alive on stage, I have speaking podcast. So traffic that comes from this podcast will be tagged in our system as automation. Rehab is the source, and it will show podcast as the type of traffic. Now, why is this important? Because I can go and I can say, Show me just how my podcast traffic is doing when I’m a guest on podcasts, and I’ll see all the different podcasts I’ve been on and the results that they’re achieving for me. And I compare that to live on stage speaking. And I can see that some talk I did back in March, and maybe Social Media Marketing World is still bringing in traffic today. Like that’s useful for me to be able to measure that sort of stuff. And that’s just the source of the medium. Then there’s the campaign it’s a third thing you can tag in you should take in the campaign is the point of the traffic. So what what is this traffic trying to generate? So for us, we’ve got all these little individual courses, we call them wind courses, they sent like what I need to know right? So what I need now, and they’re very focused to get you don’t need to learn everything about analytics need to learn this stuff to get you moving. And then you get get out, right? That’s kind of these courses are. So we have something called all these wind courses we call that campaign win. So if the traffic source is designed if the traffic coming in is designed to eventually purchase that program, if that’s the point of it, then they go to the campaign of win. So I might have Facebook CPC that’s an ad that’s there for when that’s what it’s gonna say Facebook CPC the campaign I’ll be when then maybe I have an email that they’re in our email system and I’m giving them a you know, a reminder that the wind courses available, it’ll be Infusionsoft email. And the campaign I’ll be when, let’s say you send us traffic as an affiliate you would be your traffic will come through as Infusionsoft partner campaign would be when so they all have the same campaign. This is the first thing that people do wrong, is they split up their campaign names. Every traffic source has a totally different campaign than the others. They’re not coordinated. So you need to have them coordinated, because in the back of Google Analytics, I can say How was my wind traffic doing? And I can click on that it shows a whole report that will show me here’s all the different brands that are sending traffic. Here’s the different types that are sending Traffic, and then here all the results you’re getting from that traffic. So it makes it easy for me to make a decision.
00:33:17 – Juice and squeeze
That’s what we really like because Google Analytics is I think it can definitely have reports back there but they can be a little dense sometimes and how they’re built and you have to be probably more of the data and to really enjoy that experience. But if you’re not it’s okay because use Data Studio and that’s what we did for for digital marketer and built their Ambassador dashboard was working with them to say okay, what questions you’re trying to answer how would you feel use this and that’s what we made it like interactive, we can click on different things then see what this one affiliate is promoting and you know, all the different results that are coming through. We designed it with that in mind went through that exact planning process with them, right planet, build out everything and then did the report for the dashboard. But it’s focused, right? You’re not looking at like bounce rate and other stuff that has no nothing to do at all with the questions you’re trying to answer. It’s very Focus dashboard, focus to give you the answers you want at that time, so you can take the actions that you need to do in your case as an affiliate as an ambassador for them. So the exact exact same concept that you can build for yourself as your own company. And again, Data Studio is free, right? tag managers free analytics free Data Studio free. The worst thing about them is it’s just sometimes hard to use them because they’re the manual, it’s not as easy to learn how to use them. That’s kind of what we exist for. But to your point, you know, we’ve got a ton of resources that if you’ve got some gumption to want to tackle it on your own, that’s great. use our resources to do that because especially the traffic tracking tool kit, because it’ll save you a ton of time and and also help you get a little more squeeze out of that Juice there.
00:46:00 – Bots are always going to be second player citizens
I mean, the the manual to the automated, are you going to have a certain like name. So to be honest, we’re not going to test it. So I’m not because I don’t think we don’t send enough traffic from either one of those to say, I’m gonna have enough traffic coming in and know if it came from buffer app or something else, they do UTM their stuff. So you would see it coming from a buffer, and this is something else or whatever, you can change UTM accordingly, we’re just making the switch. We just kind of we’re kind of on that on that line of like, you know, the the ad platforms or that not the ad platforms, the social media platforms, what humans engaging with humans, bots are always going to be second player citizens in that world, right? There always will. So we’re going to take the human versus human thing, and we’re going to be humans now engaging with humans and just assembling stuff. But how do we make it easier because that doesn’t happen. I mean, we we made that decision, like,
hey, let’s go and do that. And everyone went, Okay, fine. And then nobody ever did anything. Because no system, right? There’s no structure. And so we have to think about what am I going to write? What’s the headline supposed to be what’s a lot of work? Let me just get this thing done real quick. And I’ll come back To that tomorrow, fast forward eight weeks, right? It’s not getting done. So we’re like, okay, we’re going to do the system, we’re going to plan our system. And we’re going to make sure that the structure is there. So all these questions that need to be answered like what the headline has to be, or what the contents going to be with the call to action, what are the UTM? What’s the short link, all that stuff has been done already. So the buy time I’m, if it’s me, I’m going into LinkedIn, I am literally just assembling or you know, having somebody assemble the stuff. It’s not, I don’t have to think about it, I should just be copying and pasting it. So it’s just brain dead simple, which makes it more likely to actually happen.
00:50:18 – The Roland Frazier picture you painted in my head
I’ll give you a quick story on that because this is this is something that you know we’re starting to put it more and more into practice obviously just more company to like how do we do this more. Roland Frazier had posted on Facebook making some credible post of like how to build a business he was talking to. to Justin that runs add skills. Sorry, Justin. Rondo. No, it wasn’t just a Rondo just that runs ads. God was Justin’s gonna kill me I missing his last name at the moment. But I just remember his j Bizzle all the time. So because he’s in that on that slack. But Justin runs ad skills, which is a huge like Google Ads training platform awesome, right at that stuff. So just going to run and enrolling, we’re talking about building business and structure and kind of, you know, build build a big, big business and don’t you know, here’s how the differences on you got to think differently and enrolling, sort of condensing this really long post massive post. And he tagged a bunch of people and I was tagged in there as like the analytics guy, I’m a data guy, if you want to learn numbers, you gotta learn from Chris Mercer and which was awesome. And everybody’s commenting he tagged like James and everybody else so everyone’s sort of saying thanks a lot, it’s an honor to be there. And it man I wanted to, to do that. And, and part of it just because I don’t use social media like a like a normal animal, I think. So at first I was like, Yeah, I was gonna be like, yeah, so honored to be a part just kind of repeatedly else’s. And I resisted the urge to do that, which is probably bad To be honest, because I probably should do that. Because then everybody in there gets an alert that says, Chris Mercer just did this. Right. So I probably should. But from a personal standpoint, I was like, You know what, I’m just gonna text rolling and be like, Dude saw that. That was awesome. Thank you so much. How can I help you? And that’s it. And it was exactly that what you just said where you’re like, sometimes you know, somebody who can help out you just got to say like, I got, I would get more of that. Got a relationship with Roland doing that, that I would liking his post on Facebook and putting a little comment on Facebook? Yeah, it’s like for the others and I want to be like, let’s just this is an opportunity for me to build a relationship with Roland more than we have already. Right. So. So I think that’s, that’s really good advice. It’s like how can I make this just, it takes 30 seconds, right? And just a little text message still using technology to get the thing done, but gave me a better payoff from a relationship standpoint. Right?
00:52:27 – You can build a very big business talking to a very few amount of people
And you know, liking something on somebody’s Facebook post, but the picture you painted in my head is like, he’s going down in a parade and going, Hey, there’s so and so. And he’s pointing at everybody. And then he points to you and you’re like, you did a little head nod, like what’s up? Then at the end of the parade? You gotta go. Hey, man, that was great, man. Yeah, I really like doing that parade, you know? Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s that one on one interaction that people just got away from. That will probably get your further you can build a very big business talking to a very few amount of people if you want.
00:56:59 – I play an extrovert on TV
The one thing that’s A good question you waited till the end so the I think the one thing that I have done in my business that I’ve not done yet is find that person who is the to adding to our team that or a person or system or whatever, but that that to get out there and network and be that person I am I am naturally introverted I play an extrovert on TV right and occasionally at the at the Internet Marketing party some is going on here in Austin and I like hanging out with people but it but it discharges my energy right I expend energy to do that. I’m not I like being introverted. I like sitting at home and you know, if I’m if I’m going to be at a beach party, a bunch of people I like being off on the side where there’s nobody around because it’s, it’s renewing me right? But that is not conducive to making sales because you got to be out in front of people, right? So to find somebody who because right now we don’t have that person on our team to find somebody who is that person where
the like, I get fueled by being in front of people and telling the story over and over again, and creating that sales team. I think that’s that’s what we need is business to take us to help take us to the next level. Yeah, so what we’re doing now is like putting structure in place so that we can take advantage of those people when they when they arrive.
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