I’m sure it is abundantly clear that I place a high value on being able to measure marketing results. I mean, I went so far as to create software from scratch so that I would have the *right* measurement and analysis tool for my business — that software is now available to you.
But people who know me commonly assume that the reason I am so focused on measurement and analysis is because I’m a ‘numbers guy.’ And that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The reason I am so focused on marketing metrics for Infopreneurs is because I know three things: 1) nothing is more important to an Infopreneur’s business than the effectiveness of their selling system, 2) if Infopreneurs don’t make good decisions about the most profitable places to spend their time and resources they won’t survive and 3) with with a little bit of focused attention, taking small steps to optimize a sales system over time can transform a mediocre business into a profit-pulling powerhouse .
When you *know* these three things, there is only one conclusion you can draw — it is vitally important to be able to measure and analyze the performance of every component of your selling system so you will know where to focus your optimization efforts in the future. It’s not a choice of if you are going to work to improve your marketing results next month, it’s a matter of what you are going to choose to focus on.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spacepleb/ / CC BY 2.0
It’s all about focus — the decisions we make about where to place it.
What really determines your focus are the strategies you choose. Metrics only tell you what happened in the past and where you might focus your optimization efforts. Strategies, guide your activities and great strategies give you the biggest return for the time and resources invested.
Since choosing strategies wisely is such a critical skill, I thought I would invite my readers to work out their strategic thinking muscles with a little optimization strategy challenge.
I’ll present a case study, and, in comments, you tell me which strategy you would choose and why.
Here’s the case…
You are a full-time infopreneur with exactly one product in your product line. That product is in a very well defined niche and your product is the clear market leader. The product is an eBook that sells for $47.99 and you get virtually 100% of your traffic from Google AdWords. In fact, you *chose* your niche based on careful research you did to find an opportunity to exploit in AdWords.
You’ve gotten pretty good at optimizing your AdWords campaign and have made a lot of profitable improvements. Now, you still optimize, but you are now getting improvements that are measured in the fractions of percents and you are focused down to the level of individual keywords. There may be keywords out there that you have yet to exploit, but it’s highly unlikely that you will uncover any new, significant keywords. You are finding it harder to grow your business, but are happy that you have a nice steady income from your eBook.
Your primary focus now is to find a way to grow your business beyond the minor improvements you get from fine tuning your AdWords campaign.
What’s your next step?
Keep in mind, there are always multiple right answers because there is always more opportunity than time if you are in a profitable niche.
What strategy would you choose to help focus your limited resources on the most profitable activities? Make your opinion known by submitting a comment below.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Doug,
While #4 has the strongest appeal for me personally, I’d go for #1.
You already have a list of customers and therefore creating an upsell and adding it to your funnel will generate an increase in the profit per customer without the need to buy more traffic.
John
Brilliant John, Brilliant.
(Sorry for letting your comment languish in the spam folder.)
Doug,
The age old question of market expansion versus extension, which could lead to extensive and expansive discussions
I find this discussion interesting since many demand generation techniques, particularly Google adwords, often overlook the fundamental elements of marketing research; substituting immediate performance. And while immediate performance is critical, and rewarding, it provides limited visibility into broader issues, which are necessary to understand when the “what now” question arises.
In example, we don’t know, from the information you provided, if the broader market is mature or emerging. Did the product build both primary demand and brand preference, or simply brand preference in an established market? And, is the broader market segmented enough to allow market extension through a revised offering or continually modified positioning?
I don’t have time to write a treatise on these issues, but if you flesh out the broader issues, I am happy to wade back in and offer an additional two-cents.
John
Hi John,
Thanks for your comments. I’ll try to answer your questions, but first I have to say that I don’t consider Google AdWords to be ‘Demand Generation’ — on the contrary, AdWords is about tapping into existing demand, not generating demand.
Is the broader market is mature or emerging?
>>> Consider the market mature.
Did the product build both primary demand and brand preference, or simply brand preference in an established market?
>>> Hmmm. Given my view on ‘demand generation,’ and given only these two choices, I’d say brand preference. But really what happened here is the product built a list of satisfied customers.
Is the broader market segmented enough to allow market extension through a revised offering or continually modified positioning?
>>> Yes.