Quantity vs. Quality in Marketing
Most often, when it comes to marketing, we're talking about QUANTITY.
How many Views/Impressions
How many Likes/Comments
How many Blog Posts written
How many PR Articles distributed
How many people attended our booth at the Trade Show
How many people watched our LinkedIn Live live
Here's the thing...
Quantity is the easiest thing to measure. But it isn't always the most MEANINGFUL thing.
The QUALITY of the conversation is the thing that leads to SALES.
And that's what marketing is here for at the end of the day, right? We make sure people know what we do so they can BUY it?
But somewhere along the line, we FORGOT about quality in the search for more quantity. And we've created a monster. A 2018 article in Forbes stated that,
There are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day at our current pace, but that pace is only accelerating with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT). Over the last two years alone 90 percent of the data in the world was generated.
So, quantity MUST be the answer right?
Let's be honest with ourselves. Every bit of content we put out there can do one of two things:
Add to the noise
Help people rise ABOVE the noise
And of course, we all would say we would choose 2. But that doesn't happen if we're only focusing on the QUANTITY.
So today, we're going to look at some of the metrics that add to the QUALITY of our activities. They might look like quantity metrics, but they are measuring the RESULT of quality interactions 💡
Ready? Let's Go!
Number of Active Conversations
Quite some time ago (I'm not sure when but before I started in the Marketing industry, so at least 20 years ago), people stopped using marketing to initiate conversations, and started to use it to push a message out to a lot of people. We left the conversations for sales.
But marketing CAN be used to start a conversation. And, although I really don't like "shoulds"...it really SHOULD be used to start a conversation.
Your online brochure does NOT start a conversation.
Your industry stats, by default, do NOT start a conversation.
Your discount definitely does NOT start a conversation. That just makes you more transactional (which I NEVER recommend for anyone let alone business based on a specific expertise).
So, how DO you start a conversation?
You be a human. You ask people questions. You talk to people with the intent of them talking BACK. And you CONTINUE the conversation when they do talk back.
Not overly complicated. It just takes intention 😉
Number of Repeat Participants
Two things that people miss often in marketing is giving people:
A single place to go to learn more about who you are and what you do, and
Recognition when they come back multiple times.
Again, by nature, neither of these are complicated. They just often get over-taken by the number of people doing the thing.
Let's look at this through an example.
Imagine your ONE PLACE for people to go is a LinkedIn Live series. Your company focuses on providing customer experience software, so your series is all about bringing the humanity out in the software implementation. Once a week you host a show.
Number 1 check ✅
And every week the SAME 6 people show up in the conversation. You track that, so after each session, you send them a quick message to ask their biggest takeaway from the conversation today.
Number 2 check ✅
Again, simple. With the relevant INTENTION. If our intention is to get repeat participants (which teaches us WHO actually wants to be in OUR conversation), and we track that, then we empower ourselves to celebrate that.
Because, let's be honest. If 100 people come to watch your show and then never come back, is that really success?
Number of Employees Active on Social Media
This might be contested, but let me share something important. Digital influence, an online brand, a digital experience...none of these things are built by ONE person. They are built by THE COMPANY.
Often we leave all of our social activities to marketing (to lock it down under our "brand guidelines") or to sales (for lead generation). But online lead generation doesn't work if you don't have somewhere for people to go. And overly branded brochure-ware (as already mentioned) doesn't start a conversation.
People start a conversation.
So, the more people you have on social media starting conversations - conversations that are RELEVANT to the central conversation of the company mentioned above - the more conversations you can get into. And if they are built on the personal brands of the individuals at your company, then CONNECTION is actually possible.
And don't we all want more people to feel connected to our business?
Length of the Sales Cycle
Do you know the number one thing that makes a sales cycle shorter?
More people at a target account who KNOW people at your company.
And what opens the door for people to get to know your people?
Marketing.
An invitation.
The more people you INVITE into a conversation, the more people who can ACCEPT your invite. And when people accept your invite, they get to try on whether or not they want to be in your conversation.
Because not everyone WANTS to be.
But when you get the RIGHT people, at the RIGHT companies in the conversation, the sales cycle just speeds along. So, if you sales cycle feels too long right now, maybe you actually need to look at your marketing contributions 💡
Number of Testimonials that speak to who we ARE as a company
This is one of my favorites. Why? Because it speaks to who we are as PEOPLE.
And people want to do business with people.
People they know. People they like. People they trust.
One of my favorite things people say to me is, "that's so refreshing. I've never heard that perspective and it makes so much sense!"
I WANT to be refreshing. I don't want to be spewing the exact same information as everyone else in my industry. I want to stand out. I want to rise ABOVE the noise.
You don't do that by being, what my sister so loving calls, "lettuce".
Kind of watery. Kind of floppy.
I prefer the COLOR and the SNAP of a carrot 🥕
But enough about vegetables. The fact of the matter is there are things you want your customers, your employees, your partners to know about what it's like to do business with you. They're probably related to your values. But people don't FEEL that by you putting your values on the top of every contract. They feel it because of how they are treated by the people. And people want to do business with people who make them feel good.
So if you're getting a lot of testimonials that speak to THESE things, then you're winning. Especially if the client writes it unprompted 😉 That means the STORY of who we are as a company is coming through, and that story starts with marketing.
And this is just the start...
There are many MORE metrics that can come into play to measure the quality of your marketing interactions...and the point is to find AT LEAST ONE that aligns with your brand and how you show up.
Just like with quantitative metrics, there's not one magic number that tells all companies how they are doing. You have to find the ones that work for YOU.
That's why it makes sense to talk to an expert in the field.
And if your Marketing Quantity metrics aren't creating the type of funnel you want to see, then it's time to look at something different. And if the something different you're exploring is QUALITY metrics, then we should chat.
