Why Your Business Needs Key Performance Indicators

Josh Smith (00:03):

Welcome everybody to these sharpest tool. This is your host, Josh. And this is the place where we take the sting out of marketing and gate given me where it looks right now, because I have Kate Wertzberger in the booth with us today. She is a senior internet marketing manager over at scorpion. So Kate welcome. It's awesome to have you here.

Kate Fitzgerald (00:25):

It's great to be here too. I

Josh Smith (00:27):

Can tell this is kind of be a lot of fun. So Kate, why don't you give our listeners the lowdown and the rundown on what you do day in and day out for scorpion for your clients? What was that look like?

Kate Fitzgerald (00:37):

So as a senior marketing manager, I've been here almost four years now and I've been working primarily with home services. And essentially what I do is I just make sure that the campaigns run as successfully as possible. So I'm the one that coordinates between all the other team members. So, you know, like we have all of our clients, they run their search engine optimization. We make sure that their online presence is consistent, paid advertising. And then honestly, even everything outside of the box too, it's not limited to those things. Really what we do is we find out what our client's business goals are and then whatever we can do to achieve those goals, that's essentially what we work on. And I stay in contact with the client and all the team members on the scorpion side to achieve those.

Josh Smith (01:24):

I love marketing. I think it's really interesting to see what our guests like most about it when they're dealing with it day in and day out. What would you say is the thing that you just get you going about marketing every single day when you talk to your clients?

Kate Fitzgerald (01:36):

Well, for me, it's a little bit different because obviously I want, I mean, I know for them it's to have a successful business and I of course want to deliver that to them because I want my clients to be happy and everything like that. But for me, honestly, what it is, it's the relationship standpoint. So I'm really big on that. I don't just want to be a vendor to my clients. I do sincerely care about them as people too, whether their business is going through a successful time or a rough time.

Josh Smith (02:04):

That's awesome. So we're talking about something really interesting today, especially with digital marketing and how it has kind of evolved a bit, you know, I mean, back in the day, traditional marketing channels was a bit difficult to always identify what your return on your investment was. And we're talking a bit about attribution today and how we can actually attribute specific ROI to specific channels and things of that nature. So why don't you give our listeners a bit of a broad overview in terms of what you talk with your clients about when it comes to attribution? What is it and what are KPIs what's that stand for?

Kate Fitzgerald (02:36):

So for attribution, essentially the really broad definition of it is when something happens that's caused by something else, what we would be attributing it to. Sure. In terms of marketing and business, it actually is really broad. It could be, you know, attribution to what drove in a phone call, what drove in a paid. And we'll dive a little bit more into that later, but that's just kind of the broad kind of look at it as far as KPI's go, those are going to be your key performance indicators. Okay. And essentially what that is, what that means for a business owner is they would set up an objective that they wanted to hit for the entire company and also for individuals. And then they would plan out what exactly that looked like, like what numbers do I need to hit? Or what kind of goal do I need to hit in order to get to my overall goal?

Josh Smith (03:27):

Yeah. Why are those so important? I know that a lot of marketing companies talk about those, why they're important to a business, why is it important to have those specifically identified to these key performance indicators for a business owner and have this identify before you really get into the meat of any kind of marketing campaign,

Kate Fitzgerald (03:44):

If you don't know what you want, there's not going to be any way that we can set up the proper plan in order to achieve the end goal. So if you don't have an end goal in mind, it would be a good idea to think of something and you want it to be measurable so that, you know, if you're able to hit it and when you hit it and then you also need to put in all the stepping stones in place to get there. Yeah. So marketing aside, you know, it depends on what that goal is as to whether or not you should run a certain type of marketing campaign, multiple marketing campaigns, everything can be tailored towards whatever the specific goal in mind is

Josh Smith (04:24):

An example of what a KPI might be for a specific channel of marketing. Yeah.

Kate Fitzgerald (04:30):

If we wanted to look at I'm gonna get more business related because a lot of business owners will put up KPI boards in like their own offices and things like that. So you might know that for the week, you need to get X amount of HVAC calls, X amount of plumbing calls booked. And then from that you need X amount of sales and then X amount of service agreements. And then they would track it by each team member that is in charge of that area, say for like booking calls, we'd be looking at our CSRs and they'd have a measurable goal. So we'd say, okay, like we want them to close. Whether it's a percentage or a specific number of calls and then just keep track of that. And then that would equal up to then an end goal. So then next we'd be looking at booked calls. And then from those booked calls of the sales technicians that went out once again, looking at them on an individual basis, seeing which ones turned into book sales, and then kind of at the end of that, seeing of the book sales, you know, what the average ticket value was and what the ROI return on investment has been. And then we can kind of break it down further from there. I know that's not probably as broad as you want or detail.

Josh Smith (05:42):

No, that's all good. And in terms of the KPIs, those it'd be like the number of book calls you need. That's like an indicator of whether or not something's having our number of leads that you need in order to hit that goal and that objective for a specific marketing channel, right?

Kate Fitzgerald (05:56):

It's going to be a measurable goal that you can attribute to something. So for example, we could look at the percentage of booked calls. That's going to be attributed to your CSRs. We can look at the number of jobs that turned into sales, and that's going to be attributed to your technicians when it comes

Josh Smith (06:12):

To, if you want to make it about marketing, we could break it down by the number of calls driven in. And then also from those calls or percentage of those were real leads. And by rallies, I mean, people in the service area, looking for a service that they provide when it comes to marketing is the number of calls, always the KPI for every marketing channel that you do, or is it change? And what are some other KPIs that you might look at?

Kate Fitzgerald (06:39):

No, absolutely not. You can have multiple goals in mind. It doesn't just have to be about return on investment, but what's pretty cool is honestly all the goals kind of work together. So if your big goal was to build your brand, then we're going to be measuring that more on reach and frequency and traffic. Another goal could be improving online presence. That's going to be more about SEO, which is your search engine optimization. But honestly, anytime where you're building your brand or you're improving your organic presence. Sure. You will see that positively reflect in the number of calls. And in turn, if you're getting good closing rates and booking rates and all those things, you should see that also correlate with an increase in revenue, but you can have the KPI be focused on something else too. Yeah.

Josh Smith (07:29):

So, so talk about attribution of it is all attribution equal.

Kate Fitzgerald (07:33):

Yes and no. To kind of break it down, let's say that there just some aspects of attribution that are more powerful, such as from marketing findability, if somebody can't find you, they can never call you. So your CSRs never get that opportunity or technicians never get that opportunity. So being found in a sense is going to be way more important. So, but at the same time, even if you are able to be found, so now your CSRs have to close it and your technicians have to book it. There's still opportunities that they could either fall through or succeed. So yes, there are attribution's that are more powerful, but you can't have one without the other.

Josh Smith (08:14):

Sure. And it Google's been big. It seems on just when they identify the consumer journey and the consumer funnel and how behavior has been changing and the interaction that businesses can have at different stages with the consumer. It seems to me that they're focusing a lot on that. Um, so how important is, I guess multichannel attribution is a lead solely attributed to one aspect for a business or are there several touch points that potentially gain attribution?

Kate Fitzgerald (08:43):

Oh, absolutely not. It's going to be across a lot of different attributions, the likelihood that you're going to get a lead that has never been exposed to you before, and it's just going to easily close and you know, like they found you from this one thing will say, I've attributed it to paid advertising. They saw you, they clicked it. They called you. And that's it. That is the only thing you can be attributed to. I don't see that being as successful. So whereas if you have other kinds of things running alongside, so whether you have billboards, radio, direct mailers, display advertising, you know, all of these different ways that you can expose people to your brand because honestly, one of the other marketing managers uses this great quote and I absolutely love it. And it's that you don't want to be discovered when people are searching for what they need when it's time for that point of conversion. But you do want to be found by the time they're looking for the service that they need. They should already have been exposed to you in some way, shape or form, because that's going to build a lot of credibility and value. So it's important to have a mix. You can't just be there right when they need you, which is great. You do want to be there for that, but you're going to see so much more success if they already have some familiarity and value and credibility built with your name, which is brand awareness.

Josh Smith (10:06):

And, you know, I know there's different attribution models, right? You have the last click model, which is the last point of interaction. You have the first click model, which might be the first point of interaction. Is there a benefit to looking at attribution in either end of the spectrum? Are there like pros and cons to that? Yeah.

Kate Fitzgerald (10:23):

I mean, honestly I see the most success when people do kind of look at it as the bigger picture. They're not trying to attribute it just to the first click or to the last click. I know that a lot of campaigns, they do go by last click because it's going to be the one that's the easiest to track because it's ultimately what led to the phone call. Sure. But with social media advertising, let's say you're on Facebook, you're exposed to a brand. So they've been exposed to you. Maybe they click on the ad, you know, whatever it is, you can call that like a first click. Yeah. Our first exposure. And then a few weeks later they actually need a service and they type for the general service cause chances are, they don't actually remember the name and then they see the ad or the organic listing and then they click and then they convert at that point in time.

Kate Fitzgerald (11:11):

But they clicked at that point in time because there was familiarity with the name, you know, they were exposed to other businesses as well when they made that search. And when choosing, you're going to choose the one that you feel kind of the safest or the most credible with. And so yes, the first click was very important because it built that value. The last click was also very important because if you weren't there, then they couldn't have converted either. So it's hard to save. One's more powerful than the other because they assist each other. Yeah.

Josh Smith (11:41):

Ah, they assist each other. I think that's a great way to look at it. And when you're talking with your clients, is there any specific advice that you give in terms of how you should be evaluating marketing campaigns?

Kate Fitzgerald (11:53):

Yes. There is honestly one of the big things that a lot of the clients focus on. And I think it's important to focus on this too, is going to be revenue. Are you making money? And are you making more money based on your investments with that said though, like we just kind of spoke, you can directly attribute it in the sense of, you know, like we have tracking numbers, we can track traffic, all of those things. And so we can attribute it back to a campaign, but you are going to have types of campaigns that are more focused on like brand awareness and first clicks and exposures. And they're really not going to get the credit that they deserve either. When I see people that run these campaigns that are more for exposure alongside the search advertising, which they run Dino essentially be found, I see much better stats, you know, better conversions, better things driven.

Kate Fitzgerald (12:44):

So I like to focus on revenue because it's what matters. But when we focus on revenue, we do need to look at the full picture. Because once again, there's so many things that play into whether or not you're going to get a paid job from it. Because even if you have the brand exposure and then they find you and click on you, well, now we need to get the call booked and then we need the call to actually sell. So there's a lot of different things that, so that's one of the things that I want people to focus on is revenue. But let's say that the revenue's not there, but we're seeing good call volume and things like that. Well, what's nice is we can go back through the campaign together and find out what exactly the issue is. You know, like I'm not just here to be like, oh Nope, it's your fault. I have nothing to do with that. You know? So cause we can pretty easily identify, you know, if we have call recording and everything on, if there is a call booking issue. And then from there, it's easy to determine whether or not, especially if they're using something else to track it like a CRM type tool, which is going to be your management tool. Sure.

Josh Smith (13:45):

What tools would you say businesses can use to identify success in the marketing, as you mentioned that CSR like a management tool, are there any other tools that you see your clients using on a consistent basis that you provide them access to or anything like that to really evaluate success when it comes to mark?

Kate Fitzgerald (14:00):

Yeah. There's tons of different things. Again, it's based on whatever your goals are looking specifically at exposure or wanting people to know who you are. We can track through Google analytics. Okay. So one things that we can look at is going to be traffic to the website and where exactly that traffic came from. So that's one thing that we can measure and give some level of attribution to. The other thing that we can do is we can set up call tracking numbers. And also when you run like campaigns online, yeah. It can track when it goes to the website. So contact forms and chats that are filled out as well. We'll get attributed to the associated campaign as well. So we can track where the traffic is coming from to track the leads and all of this is going to be in the scorpion dashboard. So this

Josh Smith (14:45):

Is what you do at scorpion in particular,

Kate Fitzgerald (14:47):

This is scorpion in particular.

Josh Smith (14:49):

What would you say in closing here? What's the one piece of advice that you would give a company who's having a really difficult time attributing where their calls are coming from and attributing where their revenue is coming from. What would you say is kind of the one piece of advice that you would give a business in that position?

Kate Fitzgerald (15:05):

If you're really wanting to know where your revenue is coming from in terms of calls and stuff like that, it is so important to have call tracking numbers. Because once again, I understand kind of the attraction to having like a vanity number. Oh yeah, yeah. They're great for branding, but in terms of tracking, they're awful, you know, so it's cool to have, if you want to have this offline branding number, but as far as knowing how all your campaigns and things are doing, honestly, people aren't saving that number in their phone or anything like that. You have to use call tracking numbers. You have to know where exactly the calls are coming from, because there's no way to tell how anything is performing without that. If I have them turn off all their call tracking numbers, I can't see if the calls are coming. Maybe they're coming organically because they're doing something offline.

Kate Fitzgerald (15:56):

Maybe they had an improvement in organic presence. Maybe it's seasonality. Maybe it's their paid advertising campaigns or maybe their beat advertising campaigns. Aren't doing so well at all. But I can't see that. And I'd say that that's true really for any marketing efforts online or offline. So you have to have some kind of dashboard where you can track it and then use those call tracking numbers to see what exactly is coming in or not coming in. Then I'd be really diligent about making sure that those are categorized correctly and that you're attributing revenue to them. Like I said, it's not as black and white, you know, for example, if you're on social media, you're not going to see as much attribution directly to that. And that's just because social media is very much so a branding effort. Sure.

Josh Smith (16:40):

Absolutely. Well, this has been awesome, Kate. I really appreciate you taking the time to come down and join us in the booth where we take the sting out of marketing

Kate Fitzgerald (16:48):

That

Josh Smith (16:48):

Every time trying to, I think it's, I think it's fun. So

Kate Fitzgerald (16:52):

I just can't look

Josh Smith (16:53):

At you. You heard it here, guys. It is cute. So thank you so much for taking your time out of your day. It's been awesome. Thanks, Kay. Uh, from all of us here, I'm Josh. We'll catch you next time. Thanks.