What’s the most important marketing metric you should be tracking? This is probably a mind-boggling question that has crossed your mind many times while looking at your sales and reviewing your business performance.
The other day as I was walking up to my office, I was thinking that it’s all about metrics. We all hear about these countless metrics that we’re supposed to track, from the amount of time people spend on our sites to bounce rates and conversion rates.
But marketing KPIs get so confusing sometimes. How do you really know if you’re meeting your marketing goals and if your business is actually doing well? I think it’s important to know things like this, right?
So, I started thinking seriously about it. And when you really break it down, most of the metrics they say we need to monitor are actually NOT that important after all. How did people get to my website? How long did they stay? How far did they scroll? Which link did they click on?
Sure, all that information is great to know, and I can geek out on those things with the best of them. But the truth is, after all is said and done, it boils down to ONE metric only. You ready?
The only metric we truly need to know is the number of people who had the opportunity to make a purchase from us. That’s it.
Let me explain this further. Just today, how many people had the chance to buy your product or service? If a person visited your website but didn’t give you their name and email address, well, that doesn’t really count.
If someone looked at your webinar page but didn’t opt in to watch your webinar, well, that doesn’t count either. Technically, yes, they were exposed to your brand, but they didn’t actually have the opportunity to make a purchase. Basically, anyone who visits your website, webinar, or sales page without subscribing or providing their contact details doesn’t count.
What really matters are those people who had the chance to see your sales letter or those who subscribed to your email list. These are the exact people who had the opportunity to buy from you. We should monitor people who not only had the exposure to your brand but also had the actual chance to buy what you’re offering.
Let me share a quick story about this. As you likely already know, I sold vacuum cleaners in my early professional life.
Yes, I was one of those people who went door to door trying to sell people something they probably didn’t like, want, or need. Selling those vacuum cleaners made me realize that I had no chance of making a sale unless I showed an actual vacuum out of the box in front of someone. I had to demonstrate the benefits of using that vacuum to convince someone to buy it.
So, unless I knocked on a door and gave my sales pitch and demo, I knew there was a low probability for people to buy anything from me. Also, I had to give my pitch and demo to at least three people a day on average to get a single sale. That means one sale out of three prospects.
My numbers always worked every single time each month. They were always the same. I knew exactly what to expect when I came knocking on doors, and I knew how many people to target if I wanted to reach my sales goals for the month.
Do you see the key takeaway from my experience? When we’re talking about doing business in general, this is the only basic, most important question you need to ask yourself:
How many people actually had the opportunity to purchase something from me today?
You can say, “I have X number of opt-ins.” Well, that’s great. But those opt-ins don’t mean much if they didn’t have the chance to buy something from you. They’re nothing more than potential income down the road. You need to know how many people actually read your sales letter, saw your offer, and had the opportunity to click that buy button.
Because if people get to read your sales letter or view your sales video and understand your value proposition, that’s when there’s a real chance to make a sale. That’s when your prospects realize the benefits they can get from buying your product or service and then decide if they should make a purchase, just like how I had to give a convincing sales pitch and demo to sell a vacuum cleaner successfully.
It’s the same thing for webinars. If nobody watched your webinar today, then there’s no chance that anybody would purchase your product. But if you had 50, 100, 200, or a thousand people watch your webinar, then your chance of making money just went up dramatically.
Track those numbers. Find out exactly how many people get the opportunity to buy from you. I guarantee that you’ll make more money if you focus on increasing those numbers.
Once you pinpoint the numbers that truly matter, you’ll be able to understand how many people you need to target on average to get the sales you want. Are you getting 10 sales out of every
100 people who had the chance to buy from you? Or maybe more than that?
You see, it’s not that difficult. With all the technical aspects of marketing online, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the metrics you’re supposed to monitor. Should I have this opt- in page or have a funnel? Should I make an upsell? All these things can get quite confusing.
If you ask 10 different marketers a question, they will all give you 10 different answers. But, at the end of the day, all that matters is that you figure out the number of people who were exposed to your business today. Ask yourself: How many people had the chance to purchase something from me today?
If you focus on that one number and forget the rest, you’ll make more money guaranteed—absolutely guaranteed. I can say with no hesitation that you will exponentially raise your revenue if you increase that number and get out in front of more people.
