SPEAKERS

Christian Klepp, Chris Mercer

Christian Klepp  00:03

Welcome to B2B Marketers on a Mission, a podcast for changemakers, where we question the conventional, debunk marketing myths, provide actionable tips, think differently, disrupt the industries, and take your marketing to a new level, from improving your campaigns to making you a better marketer. These are the inspirational stories that will help us change the way we think and approach B2B marketing, one conversation at a time. This podcast is brought to you by EINBLICK Consulting, helping you to stand out in the market and drive revenue to your B2B business. And now your host, Christian Klepp.

All right, welcome, everyone, to this episode of B2B Marketers on a Mission. This is the show where we help you to question the conventional, think differently, disrupt your industry and take your marketing to new heights. This is your host, Christian Klepp. And today I am joined by someone on a mission to… hold on folks, track behaviors, measure progress of the customer journey, and make the right user see the right message at the right time. So coming to us from Austin, Texas, USA. Chris Mercer, welcome to the show.

Chris Mercer  01:13

Thank you, Christian. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Christian Klepp  01:16

Absolute pleasure to have you on, and Mercer is I believe how you’d like to be addressed. Correct?

Chris Mercer  01:21

Ever, there’s always another Chris in the room, it helps keep us all straight. Exactly. Right.

Christian Klepp  01:25

Fair enough.

Chris Mercer  01:26

In this case, there’s a Christian. So it’s close enough, right?

Christian Klepp  01:28

Yes. Otherwise, I’d be like, Hey, Chris, and we both be looking at….

Chris Mercer  01:33

Exactly, Chris. Yes. (laugh)

Christian Klepp  01:37

Really looking forward to this conversation, Mercer, because man, not only is this pertinent, but it’s extremely important in B2B marketing. So let’s just dive in. Alright. So you’ve been on a professional mission, see what I did there. You’ve been on a professional mission to help marketers, their teams and agencies understand and leverage data. So for this conversation, let’s focus on the following topic, how to create an approach to measure marketing that’s actionable, and generates results. And quite frankly, who doesn’t want that? Something that’s actionable and generates results, right? So I’m going to kick this off with two questions and happy to repeat.  Number one is define measurement marketing. And number two, is why do you believe many B2B marketers fall flat with measurement marketing.

Chris Mercer  02:23

Love that. So this goes back to how you introduce this entire podcast, which is a way to think differently, right? Christian will think differently. Here’s how we think about measurement marketing, I think most organizations have their data people, they are very comfortable with spreadsheets, they know databases, they can get access to any sort of number that anybody in the organization wants. And then they also have the marketing team. And the marketing team is out there trying new offers, new hooks, new angles, new ways to get booked calls, scheduled, or whatever the behavior is that they’re trying to acquire, right, new leads new sales. And however they need to do that. In theory, these two sides of the company are totally working with each other, speak the same language, and are helping each other, make each other better. In reality, I think in most organizations, that is not happening. And that is why measurement marketing exists. So the measurement marketer isn’t necessarily the person who is the data analyst. They are not necessarily the ones who are talking about linear regression to go figure, if we can figure out the mean, or the average or whatever, they don’t care. They’re also not that creative marketer who’s coming up with like, Oh, here’s what the next headline should be. Or here’s how we should pitch our offer. They are the person in the middle, that is listening to the conversation that’s happening between the website and the users, right. And measurement is how we listen to that conversation. They’re the ones who are setting up that measurement, they’re listening to the behaviors that are coming back, they’re seeing all those numbers come through, but they understand what those numbers are telling them. And then once they understand the story that those numbers are telling them, and they’re able then to translate that and say, Hey, marketing, here are the actions you can now take in order to improve these numbers. So just a real quick example might be booked calls, right? We want to make sure that book calls there so we can get qualified prospects on the line. Well, if we’re getting a ton of booked calls, and the measurement team say, Hey, I’m getting absolutely thoughtform, like 80% of the people are filling out that form. But then they find that only 4% of the people are showing up, we clearly have a problem with the quality, we clearly have a problem with what that form is doing. We need to restrict it a little bit, maybe clean it up, change the traffic source. So they would go to Marketing and can say listen, here’s how things are working right now, here’s the result you’re actually getting from all of this. And here are the changes that we recommend in order to improve those results. So that’s the measurement marketer, that person who is in the middle. And I think the biggest mistake that people have around measurement marketing is they just think, well, I have a data side. Well, I have a marketing side. Shouldn’t those two get together and the problem is they don’t understand one another. Data people do not understand creative marketers, creative marketers do not understand data people. And what happens is the marketer will ask for a report, the data person will give them the report exactly what they asked for. It’s just that it’s not at all what they needed. But the marketing person doesn’t understand what to ask for because they don’t know data. And a data person doesn’t know why the marketing person is asking for it. So they’re not actually getting what they want. And there’s that huge disconnect, hence the measurement marketer in between.

Christian Klepp  05:09

Absolutely, absolutely. Would it be fair to say that it’s almost like you’re trying to like, bridge the gap there? Right? Like as a measurement marketer, right?

Chris Mercer  05:17

That’s essentially it. It’s the person again, they’re not going too far down the rabbit hole of, of arguing about how what last Wednesday looked like, at a certain point, I think, data people do that too much. We’ll talk about that later, too. But they’re able to say, okay, based on the current trends and patterns, and what’s happening, here’s what’s going to happen next week, if we take these certain actions. So if we spend $1,000 on ads to book calls, here’s how many book calls we should get. Here’s how many of those should be qualified, here’s how many of those should show, here’s how many of those should buy, here’s what the average ticket should be. And here’s how much total revenue, like that’s the power of a measurement marketer, the person in the middle who can really make things happen, and help to unlock the rest of the company, to be honest, like they touch a lot of different departments in that way.

Christian Klepp  05:18

Fantastic. So I’m gonna move us on to the next question. And you’ve kind of alluded to it already. But like, you know… oblige me here for a second. Talk to us about some of the pitfalls that these B2B marketers should avoid with measurement marketing, and what should be done to address them.

Chris Mercer  06:12

I think the the biggest mistake with data right now. And I’m gonna separate out measurement marketing kind of as a thing. Because I think that is a skill that most organizations don’t necessarily have, again, they have data, and the mistakes that they’re making, just to sort of reframe that question. The mistakes they are making with data might be common ones, like, well, let’s just collect it. Like, we got to have it. Well, what are we gonna do with it doesn’t matter, we might want to do something with it later. So let’s just collect it just in case, right things like that. That’s one of the biggest mistakes I see,, collecting data for data’s sake with no real purpose. The problem with that, if you think about it, kind of like Scrabble tiles, you know, the game of Scrabble, we have all these different tiles, you spell a different words. Well, it’s like collecting a bunch of Scrabble tiles, because eventually, you might want to spell a word or two out of it. But if all you’re collecting is a bunch of Z’s letter Z, right, Zed for those of you International, so when you’re just collecting these different Z’s and Q’s and U’s, it doesn’t matter how much of that you collect, it’s never going to spell out a word that you can use, it’s never going to be useful information, right? They won’t be useful tiles, just like a lot of the data that you’re currently collecting isn’t ever going to be useful data. And the reason that is, is because it’s not collected with a purpose. And that’s one of the primary tenants of measurement marketing is when we think about the steps to measurement marketing, you first plan out your measurement, what is the information that we’re trying to collect? Why are we trying to collect it? What actions are we going to take when we get it collected? Right? What are we going to do with it and all of that being thought out ahead of time? Most organizations don’t do that. They skip it, because it’s so easy to just collect it. But that’s a huge mistake, because you’re not thinking about it, you didn’t collect it with a purpose. And when you go back into that database years from now, to think that magically it’s going to have all these answers, it won’t, because it’s never been organized to do anything. It’s never been organized for a purpose. So it ends up just being a bunch of ripped up pieces of data, much a Scrabble tiles and a bag, that might just be a bunch of Z’s and U’s and Q’s that you never really took a look at until it was too late.

Christian Klepp  06:38

Yeah, that’s absolutely right. It’s it’s having that intention, right. Like it’s being intentional. Having that purpose. I use this analogy with a client the other day, and she kind of like just hopped on the bandwagon and added her like two cents on. It’s almost like building a house. And then you don’t have the architects blueprint. Yeah. Even jumping. Jumping ahead of that, or taking another step back route rather, is even before the blueprint. What’s the vision? Right? Yeah. Where do you want to go with all of this? Right? Yeah.

Chris Mercer  08:49

It’s fun to use that example. Because that’s, that’s how we talked. A lot of lots of companies want to pick out the furniture of this new house before they’ve even laid the foundation. And it’s like, now’s not the time, furniture will be a conversation you can have later, it’s just not now, right now you need like you said you need what is the vision? What do you want the view to be? What direction is the window gonna be pointing, and that kitchen that you’re about to build? You know, all of these are important things. And that foundation. And if you think about it, going back to your house example, is the thing that takes the longest. And it’s the worst to look at. Imagined set… You know, you set these video cameras that watch houses get built. The foundation is like the first three months and hardly anything happens. It’s just a bunch of scraping off the land, digging out the land, letting cement dry. But why is it so ugly? It’s because there’s so much thought that goes into that. And you can’t see all that thought all you see is the result of all that thought that the certain pipes are in the certain places in the certain way, because they know that eventually this one little hole that’s in the ground, it’s going to be a kitchen sink, right and they’re planning out for that and data is very much the same way when it’s not collected with a purpose, when it’s not collected with that vision to kind of use that word… When it just shows up, people go and this is a symptom of most reporting. This is how you can tell if you have this in your in your organization. People are getting reports and they go, Okay, I have no idea what to do with this. I got the numbers, I have no idea what to do. I don’t know what they’re telling me. So then they just throw them out. And they do what they were going to do anyway, they are going to do what they’ve already decided they’re going to do anyway. Because the numbers that like, well, maybe this tell me some, but I can’t read it. So then it goes away. Well, how come that number was even there? If they didn’t ask for it? How come that report even showed up if nobody planned for it? But this happens all the time. So much. So I’d say it’s the status quo. Most organizations are doing this. And it ends up being social proof. And in reverse, everybody has this problem, but because everybody’s doing the same thing. They all go, yeah. Do you also have that problem where people are getting reports, and they’re not using them? And they’re too complicated, and they don’t have to take action off of them and ever goes, Yeah, us too. And everyone goes, Okay, well, I guess we’ll just do the same thing again tomorrow. When in reality, it should be like, well, maybe there’s a different way we can do this. So we can get rid of the symptom. But I think a lot of times, everyone goes well, as long as everybody else also has this problem. I’m not that bad. So it’s okay, because everybody else has a problem, too. But that’s a silly reason to keep a problem. Just because everybody else has the issue does not mean you need to keep the issue.

Christian Klepp  11:11

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, like, you know, how often have you been in a, in a meeting room where you’re showing data, you’re showing graphs and charts and somebody in the room says, okay, Mercer, What am I looking at here? Right?

Chris Mercer  11:25

Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah. Right. It’s exact when you think you’re describing a pure story, and they go like, okay, and so what do we do with that? Yeah. What’s the action step? Yeah. how is it not trivia? That’s exactly right. And that’s because there wasn’t, if that’s happening, it’s because there was not a proper plan for it. They didn’t plan for it, the team didn’t help them plan for it. Nobody knew what to do with it. And that’s, that’s kind of the exact opposite of the measurement marketing model, that framework that we have is to is to really focus on that plan first, because once you plan, what you’re going to do with the number when that number shows up, right, when the number shows up in your report, you already know what to do. So it eliminates the question. You will never have that I’m not sure what to do with this, because you’ve already planned what to do with it. That’s the whole point. And if there was no plan of action for that information for that piece of data, the data is not collected, or at least it’s not reported. Because it’s not useful. Right. It’s not answering questions. It doesn’t lead to natural action. So why gum it up in a report? You don’t need to do that.

Christian Klepp  12:19

Yeah, that’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely right. Speaking of having the right plan, that’s such a great segue into the next question, which is the role of strategy. Why do you not just charge into a battle? All right, yeah.

Chris Mercer  12:33

Yeah, really, really good. Really good question. Because I think that’s, again, it’s a challenge with a lot of organizations have this issue where the tools are so freakin easy to get. Think about even a tool like Google Analytics 4, it’s free. You put the code on the page, and Google Analytics 4 starts collecting data. So it looks like it’s working, right? Microsoft Clarity, same way throw Microsoft Clarity, bam, starts working, it’s collecting data. And then everybody goes, Okay, well, the tool obviously is working. So now I’m going to go into the data. And I’m going to go hack through the mythical data jungle, and I’m going to find the magic thing, magic insight, that’s going to turn me into a super marketer, right, which is a huge myth. But everybody expects that’s what they’re supposed to do. You have to go learn how to analyze data, which I don’t think you should, I think if you have to analyze data, your reporting is too complicated. And that’s a problem. So instead, the reason that we talk about strategy first is strategy should dictate the tools. Google Analytics 4 as a tool has a sort of pre-purpose strategy that Google thought about when they built this tool. Microsoft Clarity has one too, so is tag managers. So is Looker Studios. So is Adobe. So is Hyros, Wicked Reports, or Pipeline, all these other tools that are out there that measure stuff, they all have these different strategies they were pre-installed with. So imagine, if you’re using four of them, you have four unique, distinctly different strategies that are going to collide with one another, because the tools are starting to dictate your strategy.

Chris Mercer  13:18

So instead, when we talk about measurement marketing, and specifically the measurement marketing framework, which is the strategy that we recommend, is that you have a strategy in place of how you’re going to use measurement, right and total Guiding Light strategy that dictates everything. That strategy then tells the team, tells the company how and which tools to use and how to use them. So maybe certain things you’re going to collect with GA 4 but certain other things you’re going to use another tool for because it’s easier, right to get the answers from or it’s a better option to get the answers from, you’re not just saying well we use GA 4, I guess GA 4 got it. I gotta get everything from GA 4. This is not at all the case, your strategy should dictate your tools and not the other way around.

Christian Klepp  14:33

I totally agree with you. But I’m gonna play the devil’s advocate now cuz, man, you’ve probably dealt with this more times than you care to count. But how do you deal with pushback in terms of clients telling you well, Mercer, we get all that but like, you know, we’re, we’re about in the clock here and you know, time is of the essence. So we don’t have time for all that strategy stuff. Right? Okay. Can we can we just jump in and collect the data and just do the work and analyze it because we really need to get going with this. How do you push back on that? And tell clients, it’s in their interest to start with the strategy first?

Chris Mercer  15:10

It’s surprisingly simple. In that example, I’d be like, Well, isn’t that what you’ve been doing?

Christian Klepp  15:15

Right.

Chris Mercer  15:17

Isn’t that what you’ve been doing? But you are here. So you already know what that is. Yeah. I’m just suggesting a different way. You can absolutely do what you’re doing. If it’s working for you, if it’s giving you something useful, I would never ask you to change it. But my guess is what you just said, Hey, we can’t do it like, this is exactly what you’re doing. How do I know that? Because I can look at the symptoms. And I can see, oh, you’re using this type of recipe. So this is why your cake has grit in it. Why does it have grit in it, because I can tell you’re putting sand to the recipe. That’s why yours has grit. And that’s why mine doesn’t because I use sugar. You think sugar looks like sand right now. And you’re like, ah, but I don’t wanna have to go to sugar. I want to be able to use sand. So how do I use sand but not have grit? You can’t. One is the other. So that’s how I answer that. If you’re happy with your results, you don’t have to listen to the rest of this podcast. But my guess is anyone listening to this podcast is going Yeah, totally. That’s exactly what happens. I can predict what a lot of numbers look like. And I can predict the misuse of numbers, I can predict how much energy is being spun in an organization based on the system that they’re using, or in particular, the lack of system, because what they’re doing is just chaos. It’s just urgency is just memory. It’s whatever most recently was important to me, or the highest paid person’s opinion, that actually gets the attention. And that’s just that’s a ridiculous way to run measurement. That said, it’s how most organizations run measurement, because people do not take the time to figure this stuff out. And instead, they’ll take 10 years to realize they have a problem, then they want it fixed in 30 seconds. But they don’t want to have to change anything they’ve ever done. It’s just not going to happen. And honestly, if a client really insisted be like, Yeah, that’s exactly right. We want to do everything the same, but have magical different results. I would be like, listen, go for it. Go try it. And in six months, come back to us. If you still haven’t solved the issue. Maybe you can, but I would bet money against it. They’re just gonna waste their time. And they know, everybody knows.

Christian Klepp  17:12

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. But that’s kind of like the definition of insanity. Isn’t it… like expects… Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

Chris Mercer  17:23

Yep, that’s exactly what, but that’s what happens. And again, I don’t think it’s their fault, because I don’t think they see it like that. They’re going to everybody else. They say, Well, how do you do it? They jump on LinkedIn, how are you doing it, and everyone’s doing it like that, they go, Well, that’s how it’s done. That’s not true. That is a way to do it, it is the way that most people are doing it. But does just because most people are doing something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do, there could be this new way of doing things a slightly different way, going back to the beginning of this conversation, a different way of thinking about something that can produce wildly improved results. And if you’re the type of company that isn’t willing to look at that, that’s totally cool. I think after a certain period of time, those companies get smaller and smaller with time because the market is not going to respond to that. But other companies will. You’re gonna see competitors start adjusting and figuring stuff out and moving around you. How are they doing it? Because they have a better understanding of how their machinery works, and how their marketing engines work. Right. And when they know that because they know measurement, they understand how everything works in the organization, that customer journeys and how everything is supposed to flow and how the dots are supposed to connect, which domino hits which domino hits which domino. When they know that stuff. And they can forecast that stuff. It’s a completely different world, they’ll never go back ever go back to the old way. But they also don’t go out there on LinkedIn and start talking about either. They’re too busy, you know, improving results.

Christian Klepp  18:41

Yes, yes, there are some clues.

Chris Mercer  18:45

Exactly right.

Christian Klepp  18:46

You’ve brought some of these up already in this conversation. But let’s try to unpack that and walk us through the process of developing that right measurement marketing approach. What are the key components? What do you need to put in there?

Chris Mercer  19:00

Yeah, good question. So this is the framework. And this is the part where I would say, you know, write this stuff down how to think about it, there really are three steps to this. But there are specific keys to each step. And we can go through all of those. So the three steps, so you plan out your measurement, then you build out your measurement, and then you’re going to launch the measurement. In other words, we’re going to use it. I’m gonna talk about the specific ways you do this, because it’s not just planning, it’s planning properly. So here’s how we plan properly. We call this QIA stands for three keys here.

Chris Mercer  19:28

The first is questions. So we list out the questions that we’re trying to answer. And just to talk briefly about that. There are a lot of the students that will come to us, they’ll say things like, I’m just not sure which questions I should be asking right, things like that. So what do they do? They go to Google, and they say, what are the you know, B2B marketer, what are the questions that every B2B marketers should be asking? And they get a million blog posts that all start with like seven questions or 11 questions or 35 questions or if you really want to be contrarian, the five questions never to ask and they get millions but now they’re just overly confused, right? And that is completely the wrong approach, I will give you the answer to figuring out if you’re asking the right questions. And there’s really only two types of questions ever, ever that you can ask. One is a results question. So what I mean by that is what is the result of this user journey? Right? So what are average? How many sales do we get? How much revenue did we get? What our average cart value is? Those are all end of journey. How many leads do we get? booked calls? Maybe. Those are end of user journey, types of questions. What was the result of the journey, of the behaviors being completed that we want to complete? The most important question, I think a lot of people ask results questions by default, the most important question that’s being missed are the how questions. And so if you want to just make it easy for like a sale, right? How many sales did we make? That’s an important results question, how did we make those sales? How many people showed up want to the book a call? How many of those booked? How many of those actually showed up? How many those shows were qualified, actually could buy if they wanted to? And how many of those did we close within the seven days for the average amount that we wanted to do? So we made that revenue? When you understand the how you got your results, you literally know the recipe. So now you can say, Okay, well, here’s how things work. Now that we know how the marketing works, we can then start to use it for predictions, right, which we’ll talk about later. So that’s results in how questions and the answer to like, I’m not sure if I’m asking the right results, or the right questions, I would just say, are you asking results in our questions? Yes, then you’re good. Just keep doing that you will naturally get better at asking results and how questions as long as you keep asking results and how questions, it is natural, you don’t have to think about it, you don’t have to try, it’ll just naturally start to happen. So results and how questions.

Chris Mercer  21:36

Second thing in the plan, you list out your questions. The second thing is the information. What information do we have to gather in order to get answers to those questions? So let’s think it’s something like a book a call link, right? Like some sort of, some other opt in right, get our white paper or whatever you’re doing to get a lead. So then we’ve got Okay, I need to know how many people are opting in. So I might know, I might have to measure the number of thank you pages that we have after the people that are successfully opt in. And I want to measure the number of people who could have opted it, who saw that page who could have opted it, that’s going to tell me that conversion rate very simple way, very simple way to explain information. And that’s where measurement skills do come in. Because you’re starting understand what behaviors are that you want to try to measure on the site.

Chris Mercer  22:12

Now, the third thing is we have a questions, we’ve got the information, the third step of a plan and it cannot be a plan unless you do the step. And this is the secret sauce to this step of the planning step. Actions. Talked about it before, you have to think to yourself and I would do it in this specific way. What am I going to do when this answer comes in within range? What am I going to do if this answer comes in lower than what I expect it to? What am I going to do if the answer comes in higher than what I expect it to? And you do all three directions. So what am I going to do if the answer is just right kind of in the range that I expect it to be? What actions am I going to take if it’s lower? What actions am I going to take if it’s higher? And you do that in the planning process before you open a spreadsheet. Before you look at Google Analytics before you go to Facebook Ads Manager wherever the numbers are, before you think about any of that you’re doing this at the planning stage, when you do it at the planning stage, it eliminates the possibility that anyone’s going to get a report that they don’t know what to do with because they’ve literally already planned what to do with the report before they even asked for it to be built. That’s the whole point. So questions, information, actions, that’s the secret to that planning stage. Once you’ve got the planning stage, at that point, then you move into the build. And this is where you’re going to use tools, whatever is not a perfect one. They’re all great. And they’re all bad, right? This is they’re all pros and cons. But let’s say Google Analytics 4 because that’s one that most people have access to, it’s the easiest one. So I would say the first thing to do with a platform like Google Analytics 4 is you have to make sure that it understands what results you were trying to get. And you’re going to see a pattern here what I’m about to do in this strategy, the results we measure not just the end result of the user journey. We’re not just measuring leads and sales, right leads and purchases, we don’t just care about those, those are important. But that’s not the only conversion we really care about. That’s not the only result from our marketing. What our marketing is really doing is it’s also telling us how many people are asked to join the journey in the first place. So we know the number of people that we asked to even start that journey. And it also can tell us how many people actually continued. In other words, how many people showed a behavior that was where they’re going, You know what I’m considering finishing this journey? Right? So we call it this act model where you measure how many people you asked to join the journey, how many of those are continuing the journey, and what percentage of those are actually going to end up transacting. ACT. So when you’re setting up your results in Google… let’s say a platform like Google AdWords for you might set up a bunch of conversion events are key events, as they now call them. But when you set those up, you’ve got well I can tie traffic sources now to which ones are really good at asking people and making people aware of things. Which ones are better at transactions and closing the deal, which ones are better engagement along the way. And you can start to measure that because you’re measuring act right again, Ask, Consider and Transact. And if you think about it, you’re gonna see this pattern because in questions, what are we talking about results and how, right, that’s the end result plus how do we get the result. What are we measuring for when we use our platforms and set up and properly set up our platforms, not just put the code on the page actually set up the platform, well, then we’ve got Act, which is another way of results and how. Here’s how many people asked, how many, what percentage consider, what percentage will transact. And then next to that, once you’ve got your result set up, it’s about the traffic, making sure that you tagging your traffic properly. And anybody can do this little thing is called UTM. If you’re not familiar, you can Google the letters UTM. And there’ll be a million things that will show you how to use those. But a parameter that identifies who is sending us traffic, what type of traffic is it sending and why. And the why is the piece that people miss. So a way to explain this might be let’s say, I’m in my Google Analytics 4, I should be able to go into it and say, oh, and it’s and I’m going to tell this in a story, right? Just so just to kind of help you visualize it, it might be like, Hey, listen, I’m a Facebook ad. I am the Facebook ad with a picture of a horse with a wide open territory. I am bringing this audience of people who like your free Facebook group, and we’re trying to get them to become a lead, please let me know how I did compared to the rest of the Facebook ads that are trying to do the same thing. Then the next traffic source might be like, listen, hey, I’m an email. I’m email number three of the 12 part autoresponder series, I am taking somebody who’s already been what we what we are currently calling a hot lead. And they should be booking a call right now based on this email that I’m sending, please let me know how I did compared to all the other emails that are trying to do that. When you set that up, you start to see a natural story. And that’s the third step of the build stage, we have our results, we make sure our traffic is tagged properly with the who, what and why. So that we can start to see a natural story between which traffic sources are causing which of those results. At that point, you now have eliminated the whole multi touch attribution issue that people will have problems with. Because you can see, you can predict, you can forecast which traffic sources are really good at awareness, which ones are good at where that consideration phase engagement stuff, and which are really good at completing the user journeys. So you’ll see that. So we’ve got our plan, Question, Information, Actions (QIA). When your measurement plan is done, you move to your build, we have the results defined, we got our traffic tagged, we have a natural story starting to appear. At this point, we move to that third phase, which is the launch phase that is actually using measurement. And here’s where again, companies I think get kind of a little… they just get used to doing what they did yesterday. And that’s honestly because they learned it from somebody else who did it yesterday from somebody else who did it 10 years ago that way from somebody else who did it 50 years ago that way. So I would be able to hesitate on some of that. But that’s why a lot of the old thinking is out there. So when you launch something, the first thing you do is you listen, and we use that word listen on purpose, because what we’re listening for are the trends and patterns that are happening on the site, the trends and patterns of all those different behaviors, how many people should go to an opt in and convert, I would love it to be 100%, it’s not going to be right, it’s not going to be. It’s going to be between probably 25-35% if it’s cold traffic, 35-45% if it’s warmth, 55-65% if it’s super hot. This is just how it’s going to be – trends and patterns, right, we start to listen to the trends and patterns. Now. We’re listening in those trends and patterns. Where those trends and patterns coming from, they’re coming from our users, from all the behaviors that they’re leaving behind on the site, right, all those behaviors that we’re measuring for. So in a very real way, we are listening into their side of the conversation using measurement. That’s how we hear the user side of the conversation, because we can’t obviously be there and stare at them all day long using the site. So we have that first step Listen, second step Forecast. This is the piece that most people don’t do properly, or if at all, with our measurement systems. And you should. It’s a firmly measurement thing, because measurement done well doesn’t just tell you what’s working, and what’s not. It tells you what’s coming next, when it’s done properly. So forecasting, so what you do is you build a forecast, and you say instead of saying things like what happened to the $10,000 we spent last week on Facebook, you start asking questions like because you understand trends and patterns and how your machinery works. Because you’ve done your build, you have a proper measurement plan, you can start asking questions like, well, what’s going to happen to $10,000 we spend next week, what should our CPMs be? What should our cost per click be? What percentage of those should let’s say book a call? What percentage of those should show? How many of those will be qualified? How many of those will say yes to the pitch? And then when are they going to close? And how much money should we get by when?

Chris Mercer  29:02

And then you measure against all of that. And that’s what leads you to that final step of a measurement when you’re using your measurement system. And that is the Optimize step. And that’s where you’re actually taking action to improve the numbers right to improve  thing. So if you get it back, and you’re like, hey, actually our CPMs we thought we’d be $10. It turned out there were 50 bucks. Okay, that’s where it is. But did the opt in rate show up? did the call showed? Everything else work? Yah, everything else worked fine, but the CPMs are heavy. Okay, so do we change the salesperson script on the call? No, because that’s not where the break is. The break is on the Facebook side or the traffic side. CPMs a little high, maybe we can do some targeting. So clearly, because we measured and we’re comparing against our forecast, the measurements sort of dumping us out and saying, Hey, marketing, if you focus your resources somewhere in this area, you’re more than likely going to move the needle now. But if again, if let’s say CPMs were fine, cost per click was great. The opt in rate was fine, but the show rate was bad. Then we might be like, Okay, what’s the problem here? Is… maybe there’s no emails that are following up? Trying to get them show… we will  do some of that, let’s pretend all of that’s in place. You’re like, this used to work, how come it’s not working, I still say it’s traffic, because you’re getting people to show up, but they’re just not, or they’re getting to fill out the forms. But that’s ultimately not what we want. We want them to buy something. So maybe they’re just not qualified, it’s the wrong target, you would know that, right? If everything is coming in there on the call, they’re qualified, but they’re just not closing. Well, maybe there’s a salesperson script there, whoever, whoever that person is, it’s actually trying to close the deal and get, well maybe the follow up system isn’t in place properly to get them across the finish line, maybe the objection script has to be handled a little bit differently. But now the marketing team knows, okay, we’re not going to focus on traffic. Traffic is not the problem. It’s converting that traffic. And we’re going to help the sales teams with that if that happens to be what your particular model is. So that’s the kind of the overall framework we plan things out by asking the results in our questions. We gather the information of the behaviors that are needed to answer those questions. And we already know the actions we’re going to take if the answers are just right, if they’re a little higher, if they’re a little lower, and we go into our build, we make sure that our build is set up with the results using act right, how many are we asking to join the journey? How many consider? How many transacted again? We make sure our traffic is tagged. So it identifies who it is, what type of traffic it’s sending, and why and what’s the purpose of that traffic is. And then we have it stitched together in a natural way that tells a story, which is understanding why we are so important, we have to learn how to use these tools, then we use the system itself when we launch our measurement system. At that point, we’re listening to the trends and patterns, we have a forecast for how those trends and patterns should be working. And it’s what the conversation should be. And then we’re measuring against that. That’s what will tell us what to optimize. And if you think about all the optimization steps we’ve already planned for in the action step. So we already know what to do. So all of a sudden measurement just leads to effortless action, and things improve a whole lot faster. So that’s the whole measurement marketing plan, build, launch framework in a nutshell.

Christian Klepp  31:48

Give me a second here.

Chris Mercer  31:49

Ohh that was a lot. There will not be a quiz afterwards. That’s why these are recorded. This is where people are going back. Wait, let me skip past it.

Christian Klepp  31:56

Let me get the transcript. Yeah, the answers are right there. (laugh) Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. And thank you so much for I guess this must be like 15 years of like, industry experience that you’ve like, kind of compressed into 5 or 10 minutes now.

Chris Mercer  32:17

Yeah, almost in the thinking that, like if you just change these core components, it’s going to give you the most leverage to get the most difference in your world, right, to impact the results that you’re trying to get. If you change that thinking, you almost cannot help but get a better result and profit. No matter what tools you’re currently use.

Christian Klepp  32:35

Yep, yep, that’s right. That’s right. So just quickly recap: Step one was plan. Step two is build. And step three is launch. And for all the other details, you’re just gonna have to listen to the recording, or you can look at the transcript. I’m gonna move us on to the love it or hate it question. And for you, you’re gonna have no problem answering this: metrics. Now, granted, we don’t want to go down this really deep rabbit hole of 100,000 metrics that we need to look up. But what are some of the key metrics when it comes to measurement marketing, that B2B marketers have to be paying attention to?

Chris Mercer  33:10

It’s all going to be journey based metrics. I would point out of that what we talked about with the measurement framework that it will be, you know, in your Build step, when you’re trying to measure results, we talk about ACT, ask, consider, transact. When we’re talking about the questions about results and how… the whole point of that is to get you thinking about the journey. It’s not just the one sale that you’re trying to measure, there’s 400 different sales that are happening. That’s just the last one, one where they give you the credit card is just the final sale. But there are a lot of other sales that had to be made along the way. You know, those of you familiar with we call it micro conversion, same concept. There’s lots of conversions along the way before that final one is there, you need to be aware of those and ask about those. So that would be my absolute best advice on the metrics that people should be loving, but don’t. And it’s just because they haven’t thought about it. Once they do when they see it. They’re like, Oh my God, how do I not think about that ahead of time, but always measure how many people started the journey, then you would measure of course, how many people finish what you probably already are, and then measure those engagement steps along the way. Some journeys might have one little middle stage step, others might have a more complex amount of engagement steps, but when you measure the journey steps, you are seeing the drop off and you will start to see how different traffic sources can influence the journey going through. It becomes so much easier when you do that. So ACT is the the model but Ask, Consider and Transact. Measure for those multiple steps. Absolutely the love metric that I would give.

Christian Klepp  34:32

Fantastic, fantastic. All right, we come to the soapbox question, so please get up on your soapbox, Mercer. A status quo that you passionately disagree with and why.

Chris Mercer  34:46

So many!

Christian Klepp  34:47

Just one.

Chris Mercer  34:49

I know. I know. Okay, I’m gonna pick the one. I’m going to pick the one that I think would be the most useful if people will just stop saying this word. It’s so powerful. We call it the “A” word here. And that is word is when somebody comes to us and they say, Oh, I just need this to be more. I even have a problem saying it. Hang on, I gotta think myself through it. I just need this to be more accurate. Oh, God, that word accuracy. I’m so tired to hear that actually, don’t get me wrong. I understand why people ask it. I did too. When I was starting out, I asked it because why? Everybody else I learned from asked it. But then I started going wait, is there such a thing as accuracy? I started really going to measurement going, there’s not, you’re never going to have accuracy. The only way to have accuracy is to have half the world hired to follow the other half around to report on what they’re doing. And even then you would get their version, not what actually happened, just an interpretation of what happened. There was no such thing as accuracy. Stop thinking about it. Accuracy is not important. Usefulness is, so we call it the useful truth. So here’s an example. If I said to you listen, your Google Analytics 4 says that you made $900,000 this week. But if I go to your cart system, it says you made a million dollars this week. Could it be possible that I figure out setting up a measurement server or doing API calls or whatever else I need to do to make sure that Google Analytics matches dollar for dollar your cart? Sure. totally could. Is it worth those resources? Maybe might be. But let’s continue the journey. Let’s say next week that Google at DGA forest says hey, you sold 1.8 million, almost 2 million. Your cart says yeah, you actually sold 2 million, exactly 2 million. At this point, this is where my trends and patterns kicks in. And I go, Well, wait a second. They’re both saying things doubled. That’s the trend. That’s what they’re saying. They’re not saying you made 800,000, you made them up, they’re saying you doubled your sales. That’s the useful truth: sales doubled. If that was the intention I was supposed to be getting from the marketing. And the results happened like that I would be measuring. And I would know how that happened. I got a useful truth, I can predict. And I was like, Oh, if I want to get sales to double again, I need to maybe take these activities. And I’ll do that the week after next or next month. And we should see them both go up again. It’s not worth my time and getting the team all tied up in circles, to track down pixels to get all the reporting platforms to say the same thing. They never will. They all look at it differently. They all measure differently every day, there’s new tech that makes it harder and harder. Every day more users forgot what an ad blocker is, right. So there’s less likely you’re gonna be measured every day, there’s going to be less data, I think in five years, you’re gonna have about 20% of the data that that’s out there can be measured, the 80% won’t be. It’s just you won’t, you won’t have access to it. So you kind of get really good at getting off this accuracy gravy train, because it is not important. It’s important in a bank account. It’s important for my paycheck, I get that accuracy has its place. When it comes to marketing and measurement. Accuracy is not important. Trends and patterns absolutely are.

Chris Mercer  37:47

Soapbox time.

Christian Klepp  37:48

Yes, Mic drop. No, I mean, you know, that’s a fair point. I mean, I can imagine that there’s a camp out there that might disagree with that point of view. But that’s only because… like, to your point they’re just so obsessed with: it has to be accurate. But a lot of marketing, at least from my experience is an inaccurate science. Because it’s constantly evolving.

Chris Mercer  38:11

It’s exactly right. Yeah. And we really… and the whole point of that is, is if the metric gives you the action that you need to take, right, then I’m already done with that metric, making it more accurate unless it’s changing the action isn’t going to be more useful, right? So they both tell me I sold about a million and my forecast was about a million. I’m done. If one says 900,000, and one says 1.1. It doesn’t matter. They’re both saying about a million, I already had the action in mind for what I was gonna do with a million. It doesn’t matter if I get the other one to say a million, other one is a million. All that work would still get me to the same action. I already know I can take now or so why do the work? Just take the action in improving, get the 2 million or 3 million and 4 million. That’s the idea.

Christian Klepp  38:28

All right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, Bonus Question time. So rumor has it or I should say I have it on good authority that you started your career in radio advertising. Alright. So if…

Chris Mercer  39:11

Someone’s done some research, all right, all right. Here we go.

Christian Klepp  39:15

Other people call it stalking. Alright. (laugh)

Chris Mercer  39:18

I’ll take it. I’ll take it, it’s fine.

Christian Klepp  39:21

If you were given the freedom to choose to read a whole spread ad for any brand in the world. Who would it be for and why?

Chris Mercer  39:30

To read an ad for any brand in the world? Oh, that would be a good one. And I’m not going to just keep it and be like, well, any of the ones that I own already, because I clearly do that. But to be able to represent a brand I think would be… I would want to go outside the industry I think for sure for something like this when as I’m thinking through it. What I would like is to be like in a World… like that guy. Yes. You know where it’s like movie trailers, like “in a world where measurement marketers are…”, you know, or whatever and just have fun with the voice and twist it. Like one of my favorite radio commercials ever was where I made up this old gravity column old text line of comedian stories just like that. It was like, oh, gravity guy was like 85 years old smoking for 20 years talking about beer specials. And I made up that character. And I remember, I remember the customer, the client was like, who’s doing that? I’m like, that’s mine. But it ripped up my voice for three days, but it was a lot of fun. So it’s some sort of character would be where I would definitely play. That would be cool. But I like the announcer concept, because there’s lots of variety. You got a different movie every time you can play with it. You know… Yes. Good.

Christian Klepp  40:41

No, fantastic. I did a little bit of voiceover work back in the day. And one of the characters I played or I was supposed to play was a dying General. Right. So he’s this older guy, and I had (cough) into the mic right, and “you must…”, and I guess I suppose I just say it with a British accent say, “you must carry on without me. The mission is what matters”, you know? (laugh)

Chris Mercer  41:09

Oh, I love that! It brought me to the moment. I’m there with you. Man. “Don’t go don’t go General.”

Christian Klepp  41:15

Yes.

Chris Mercer  41:16

“Well, I’ll never forget.” I love that. That’s cool.

Christian Klepp  41:18

“We can’t go on without you sir.” Mercer, fantastic. I mean, I’d love to continue talking about voiceovers. But in the interest of time, thank you so much for coming on the show. And you know, for unpacking what is, you know, it can be a very highly complex area and thank you for all these actionable tips and hopefully the listeners walk away from this, knowing what not to do and what they really should be thinking about. So please quick introduce yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you.

Chris Mercer  41:52

Absolutely. So my name is Chris Mercer. Everybody calls me Mercer. I am the co-founder of a company called MeasurementMarketing.io. And you can find out more about us including getting a free course to the measurement marketing framework that we train over at measurementmarketing.io/B2Bmarketers.

Christian Klepp  42:10

Fantastic. Fantastic. Once again, Mercer thank you so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon.

Chris Mercer  42:16

Thanks, Christian you as well.