Tech With Heart: How To Maximize Marketing ROI with Amanda Sherry

Jerry Bowden:

You're listening to Tech with Heart, empowering business success in a digital era. Sponsored by Revealio, innovative software solutions that makes your business come alive. Here is your host, international bestselling author, speaker, female tech founder, and innovative experts, Michelle Calloway.

Michelle Calloway:

Hello and welcome to the Tech With Heart show. My name is Michelle Calloway. I am your host and Tech With Heart is all about enlightening and empowering small business owners to embrace technologies and systems and strategies that'll help them stay competitive and relevant in a rapidly changing digital business landscape. And today's topic is about maximizing your return on investment. And so especially in regards to marketing, there's a lot of things, a lot of moving pieces in the realm of marketing. So we want to empower our small business owners to know what kind of things, to be paying attention to identify is it working and is it worth putting more effort into it?

So what I did is I went out and found an amazing thought leader on this topic. Her name is Amanda Sherry and she's the director of marketing for Western Computer and she's got 15 years of marketing experience and has a master's in public communications. So she's known for her passion for data analytics and I applaud her because not everybody has that passion. So that's great that she's going to be our expert today. And she has a track record of turning raw data into actionable marketing strategies. So help me welcome to the Tech with Heart Stage, Amanda.

Amanda Sherry:

Thank you so much, Michelle. I'm really happy to be here and talk all about marketing analytics.

Michelle Calloway:

Yay. We're happy to have you. This is not my funnest area, just getting into the data and I call it getting into the weeds, but it's such an important factor for small businesses to know what they should be doing. So let's dive right in. I'm sure you're going to give us tons of knowledge bombs here and we really appreciate you being on the show. So the first question I have for you is, okay, so a small business has a marketing campaign. They've deployed said marketing campaign. What should they be tracking?

Amanda Sherry:

Yeah, so overall, what you should be tracking is anything that you can directly tie back to your marketing budget and your marketing spend. Stakeholders, leaders, companies, CEO's, they to know what the ROI is of marketing overall and if you can tie it back specifically to a campaign, that's going to be extremely beneficial. Most of our campaigns are driving traffic back to our websites. So understanding and determining the success of your website, which is your only 24 7 salesperson is really beneficial. So you need to be able to determine the success of marketing and a specific campaign, set meaningful goals and KPI's, and then optimize the spend and focus on what is working.

Michelle Calloway:

Okay. So you dropped some great acronyms there. Can we just dive into that a little bit more? I know some people don't even know what a KPI is and maybe even mention something about conversions and what types of conversions that you should be tracking. Could you please?

Amanda Sherry:

Yeah, sure. So KPI is the key performance indicator. It's what you're going to benchmark yourself or your department or marketing overall against. So a benchmark would be you're coming in and you're receiving X amount of users on your website and then the conversion rate, which is the percentage of people that are doing your preferred action on your website are taking. So understanding that as you're coming into an organization is really helpful from a benchmarking perspective. And then you can use your data to drive additional attention and optimizations to it to increase it, which would be a key performance indicator of your overall campaign and marketing.

Michelle Calloway:

Well thank you for that explanation. I think that that is helpful. I know you've been in the marketing space for a very long time. I know that there's a lot of small business owners that are just wearing many, many hats and they're trying to get some marketing going. Initially, maybe they don't have a full on team yet, so it is good to know what to be paying attention to and that's a lot. But we're going to move now into what are some technology tools or techniques to go ahead and start capturing that data because if they don't have those in place, then they're not going to be able to go and dig into those analytics because they're not capturing anything.

Amanda Sherry:

Yeah, exactly. Google Analytics is a free tool that can be added to your site via a snippet, a code. Extremely powerful. In Google Analytics, you can get a lot of very useful information that helps you tailor your strategy and your website to perform better for you. You can look at website visits, you can look at your bounce rate, which is how quickly someone comes to your site and then immediately leaves. That may be showing that your website is not highlighting exactly what you do or they're not finding the information they need very quickly. You can look at the conversion rate, as I mentioned, so your users divided by how many people are actually doing your preferred method. So for my company, we are a SaaS. We don't sell off of our website. So for us, I'm really looking at form conversion. So form fill, our website chat feature, and if you have a phone call tracking number in place, you can track phone numbers as well.

Going back to Google Analytics, you can also look at time on page, how much time are people investing with your content? You can look into the scrolls, so how far down on your page people are getting. That's extremely important because people sometimes think of the journey as I want to provide them all this information, and at the end of that, then I'll ask for a form fill. However, if people aren't scrolling to the bottom of the page, they'll never see that. So understanding where people leave is super important. And Google Analytics allows you to track your metrics by source, which is extremely helpful in determining in terms of conversions, what is working, what's not working, if LinkedIn is really powerful for you, it's powerful for us for B2B, I can see within Google Analytics that LinkedIn is driving more traffic, more time on page and more conversions than other social media outlets such as Facebook for us.

Michelle Calloway:

And the kind of content that you're putting on said LinkedIn. Let's just focus on LinkedIn for a second because it's a very business centric platform and we always recommend all small businesses have a presence on LinkedIn. It is like the global business social media platform. You should be using it. So the kind of content go and you talk a little bit about the type of content that you can put onset like LinkedIn that could potentially drive traffic, and how would you drive that traffic to your website? From the content on the LinkedIn platform?

Amanda Sherry:

I would one recommend that your content in general should be very thought leadership. You want to build your brand and people aren't always in the market to buy at that very moment. So if you build your thought leadership content and really create a brand for yourself and people can turn to you for answers when they need them, you're going to stay top of mind and relevant when they are ready to make a purchasing decision. So in general, highlighting your expertise, your thought leadership is super beneficial even from an SEO, non-LinkedIn standpoint. But I think especially on LinkedIn where people are in the B2B mindset. I also think you can post on your company page. I agree, every small business should have a LinkedIn company page.

You can link back to your website and drive that traffic. That's been very beneficial. But I also encourage small businesses to get the stakeholders, the leadership team to socialize the content as well beyond just having it at the company page. There's one billion people on LinkedIn. It is a networking platform and you can use your stakeholders and your leadership teams connections to drive attention outside of those that are just following your page or following someone that likes some of your content from your page. So really creating brand ambassadors is a very beneficial, easy and effective strategy for small businesses.

Michelle Calloway:

And on your LinkedIn to your profile profile, personal and then your company page, both of those pages or profiles should have a direct link back to your website. So that is the driving tracking link that Google Analytics will pick up. Plus of course if you put in a post or anything like that and you happen to put in a link, then it'll also drive. But I know that there's issues with putting links in posts, et cetera. That's a whole social media strategy. But thank you so much for explaining to us how Google Analytics does provide such incredible insights for small business owners and it's a free tool pretty much most traffics... Google, it's a huge search engine, huge search engine. So you want to definitely be on Google.

And one of the things Tech with Heart also loves to just share with small business owners is that Google provides you your own business profile there. So you should definitely take time to create a Google business profile and that will also help. She mentioned earlier about tracking calls. You can actually track calls coming in from your Google business profile. It's a great way to show up in the top three in your local area for your area of expertise if you use the proper keywords and stuff like that. So there's so many different techniques and tools. We're focusing really today on the tracking and the metrics of any kind of campaign. The question next is, okay, so how often should we be checking these metrics to identify what the key performance indicators are or how do we navigate this data?

Amanda Sherry:

Yeah, I would suggest at least once a month, you really want to understand the trends that you're seeing within the data and if there's any seasonality that you can anticipate or expect for where you can back off some budget in one place and use it towards another initiative. When you're setting up Google Analytics, I really recommend getting your reports to be actionable for you so that you're not going into... You can get as granular as you possibly want, but is providing 500 different types of reports digestible for your team on a monthly basis? If it's not, set up Google Analytics to work for you for what you can view track on a monthly basis and how you can alter that data and spot those trends and really optimize campaigns. If you don't look at it on a monthly basis, you could be putting money into something that is not working or not driving quality for you, which eats up a lot of budgets for small businesses when they're already limited with so much that they can do and the different outlets that they have available to them.

Jerry Bowden:

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Michelle Calloway:

Do you think that Amanda, you could give us a for instance of what works for you or maybe something that you've done for a small business to help them be able to get the type of report that's really going to probably I guess, provide them with the best insights for maybe a smaller marketing campaign, something a small business would use?

Amanda Sherry:

Yeah, sure. So I love the UTMs. UTM stands for urchin tracking module. I set up my UTMs to directly tie to my marketing budget. So UTMs can track five different parameters. They can track source, which is what I tie back to my budget. It can track campaign, it can track content, medium and term. So if Google or Google Ads for example, you can get as granular to understand what keyword they're actually searching for. So I use these and within the source, I tie it back to if I have a subscription for a group blogging site, which I do, I always use the source within the UTM to tie back to that group blogging site. I'll tie the source back to Google Ads, which is a line item in my budget. I'll tie it back to email campaigns, again, line items in my budget with also content in there as well.

So that allows me to easily see what my cost per lead by source is within my budget. And then I have my overall marketing cost per lead, and then I have it granular to be by the marketing source and how they first found Western Computer, which as an example, using the UTMs a cautionary tale, if you don't track it on a monthly basis, that Google Ads campaign, we were using the UTMs and we found that within a certain campaign in Google Ads was not bringing us quality leads because once the lead is in our marketing automation system, our marketing automation system tracks and captures that UTM. And then once it's tied to our CRM system, I can see the lead quality and get feedback from my sales team. I can see whether a lead was disqualified or not disqualified, how quickly it was disqualified and why it was disqualified.

So using that with my campaign, I determined that we were spending money on Google Ads for a campaign that was immediately bringing in disqualified leads. As soon as they were brought to the system and as soon as sales contacted them, they're disqualified. I was able to capture that, track it and then go back and say, "This campaign has not brought us any ROI, so we need to cancel that campaign or stop that campaign and put the dollars towards this campaign, which is bringing us those quality leads that we want." That's just a high level picture of how it can all tie together between Google Analytics, your marketing automation system and your CRM system.

Michelle Calloway:

Wow, that was incredibly insightful because it is one thing to drive traffic. It is a whole nother thing to make sure that the traffic that you're driving are qualified good potential customers because you don't want junk, you don't want to be spending money to attract junk. It is so important for us to make sure that we're being the wisest that we possibly can with the dollars that we're spending. And that's why we always recommend, if you're ready to take your marketing for serious, you don't want to just do organic anymore, but you can learn a lot through doing organic, meaning you're not paying for placements of your content, you're just trying to see what feedback or input or engagement you're getting by just posting on social platforms and letting that algorithm ride the wave. And you can learn different ways to encourage the algorithm to push your content out better.

And there's different strategies. Marketing, when I first came into the business, I didn't come in as a marketing business. I started out doing some really cool technology mixed with some marketing tactics and I was just like, "Whoa. Marketing itself is like a whole business." And so for small business owners, please hear me and Amanda, when we say, "You really should have an expert at least advising you, if not perhaps leading the setting up of marketing campaigns Because if you're not getting the metrics right, then it still feels like you're throwing spaghetti up against the wall to see what sticks." Amanda, what are your thoughts on what do you see small business owners struggling a lot with regarding the knowledge base that they bring to the table and how those campaigns end up playing out?

Amanda Sherry:

Yeah, I think a common misconception that I see is thinking that marketing is a very short-term play. That if they put the dollars in today that the return's going to be immediate and really marketing is a long-term play and it's investing in your brand, in your content and your website and making sure that when someone is in that purchasing buyer behavior that you are top of mind and you're accessible right then and there. There's been arguments that I've been involved in on whether someone picking up the phone and calling into a business, if that lead can be attributed back to marketing.

And the lines between what is and is not. Marketing have really dissolved and marketing has a touch in everything. If you have another customer refer you, it's because they like your communication, they like your brand, they like your messaging, they like your mission, they like who you are as a company, which marketing should be highlighting. So I would just encourage small business owners to marketing's not as black and white as it used to be. It's not cold calling like used to have there, it is the lines have dissolved and marketing really is a part of everything you do and who you are as a company.

Michelle Calloway:

I've actually had some of my advisors say, you as the owner or you as a board member, if you're on a board or you as an employee of a company, you are marketing all the time, all the time, everything that comes out of your mouth and how you posture yourself. And anytime somebody says, "So what do you do?" And you're at a dinner, social or whatever, you are always marketing. So keep that in mind. Marketing is such a vast world.

And I do highly recommend you get somebody on your advisory board or on your team that has been trained by experts so that it's not just like, "Oh yeah, I do social media." That's great. Okay, well, there's different social media platforms and each one has their own special sauce. And so it's definitely good to have somebody whose maybe even gone to school for it, somebody who's just really been in it while they've seen the trends and they're able to help maneuver things so that you're staying competitive in today's digital business landscape. So Amanda, I'm going to ask you if somebody wanted to reach out to you, are you open to having a consultation with them as a small business owner?

Amanda Sherry:

Sure. I'd love to. Sorry, my AirPod fell out. Absolutely. I have a strong passion for helping others and I really love small businesses. I love building brands. I love coming in and helping to determine what the right direction is, giving some advice there. So I'd be happy to have conversations and you can reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Michelle Calloway:

Can you ahead and share what your LinkedIn and maybe even your website if they're able to visit you online, not just on LinkedIn, but whatever. Just go ahead and say it verbally.

Amanda Sherry:

Yeah, sure. My company's website is westerncomputer.com. Personal. LinkedIn is linkedin.com/in/ Amandamwells, W-E-L-L-S. That is my maiden name. And you'll see that it's Amanda Sherry when you get to the profile.

Michelle Calloway:

Wonderful. Thank you for that. Yeah. So regarding this topic and knowing that we're talking directly to small business owners who are looking for guidance, what are some words of encouragement or just words to remember for anybody that's tuning and listening right now?

Amanda Sherry:

I think it's really that you can harness the power of data to drive your business forward from both a marketing and a sales perspective. I see a lot of emphasis on looking at analytics from a sales side, and I think the marketing analytics are just as powerful.

Michelle Calloway:

Obviously, the marketing leads to sales. You have to be doing the marketing in order for the sales to happen. So they're definitely cousins. I mean, they're almost joined at the hip, conjoined twins. So thank you for that. I want to encourage you, if you're listening right now and you are a small business owner and you struggle a bit with just comprehending some of the strategies that we know that we need to have in place for success in a digital era, or you just aren't comfortable with technology at all and you could just really use somebody just showing you the way or encouraging you, sometimes we just need to be encouraged that, "Hey, you can do this. You really, really can." So we invite you to come check out the techwithheartnetwork.com. We are a online, safe nurturing community of innovative, but yet heart-centered small business owners and expert thought leaders that are here to guide, just simply here to guide.

We are a nonprofit organization wanting to ensure that our small business owners of the world can survive and thrive in a rapidly changing digital era. I mean, it seems like every other day there's something new happening and it's flipping your whole business model on its head. And I know you get exasperated sometimes, but hey, you know what? No, no, no, no, you're not in this alone. And if you're a business owner, you're definitely not meant to do it alone. So come on in. techwithheartnetwork.com. You can join our community for free. We have live events. We hear from expert thought leaders like Amanda, and we also encourage you, if you're a thought leader, want to come in and share your expertise with our small business audience and they can look to you for leadership. Yes, come check us out. We can even interview you on the Tech With Heart show. We'd love to have you, and I want to thank you for tuning in here today, and here is to your success.