Big Picture Metrics to Track for Funnel Optimization

1 0:00:00 I talk all the time about being a consultant to your clients, not just being a web designer, not just being a marketer, but being a true consultant for your clients.

Somebody that they can turn to who understands what the important goals are and who understands exactly how to achieve those goals. If you right now are just purely a web designer, one thing I want you to understand is that you are often tasked with building and managing one of the most important parts of your client’s online funnel. So the first step you can take to make yourself more valuable to them and to be more of a consultant for them and a trusted advisor is to understand how that piece of the funnel plays into the overall funnel, how the overall funnel works from start to finish, what kind of data needs to be collected across the entire funnel, not just the piece that you happen to manage, and how to analyze that data so that you can step in and advise your client on what needs to happen to optimize that funnel.

This makes you tremendously valuable to your client. So this training is going to be part of a series of trainings on funnels and funnel data. Today what we’re going to focus on is just knowing which data points to collect and to pay attention to.

We’re going to do follow-up videos on how to actually collect that data from a technical standpoint, how to keep that data organized, how to display that data to your client and review that data with your client. And then we’re gonna talk about common funnel problems and how you can use data to identify where the problems are happening, what might be causing them, and then steps that you can take to correct those challenges. The last thing that we’re gonna take a look at in this series is how you can take all of this knowledge and all of this expertise and the experience that you are gonna gain managing funnel after funnel after funnel and use that to generate more revenue from your clients because these are marketable skills that not every web designer has.

And unfortunately, not every marketer has either. And so if you’re able to bring these skills to the table with the projects that you are working on, you deserve to be paid more for that extra value. So this is gonna be a fantastic series for you.

I encourage you to watch every single video in the series. They all build on each other. They all play on each other.

They’re all equally important, but it’s all surrounding data. And you really have to understand how to get the data, what data you want to get and how to analyze the data and use that data to get better results on the backend. But let’s go ahead and dive into today’s training.

Big picture metrics to track for funnel optimization. So the first thing I want to talk about is what is a funnel? A funnel is a planned path that prospects will take on the journey to buy from you in a specific situation.

Now I say planned path, we’re going to talk about in a minute how a funnel is not always a planned path. Sometimes funnels aren’t planned, but the funnel still exists. But in the context of this training, we’re going to assume that you are smart enough to plan a path that the visitors are going to take.

And we’re going to refer to that as a funnel. A funnel is very strategic. It’s the planned path, planned offer, desired action.

You’re funneling people into this path from specific areas like an ad campaign. It’s a closed system that lets you dial in a specific offer, specific copy, specific ads, a nurture sequence, whatever it happens to be, where the visitor isn’t distracted by other offers and services and products, et cetera. Imagine an ad campaign that takes people to a homepage.

That’s a funnel, but it’s not a great funnel. It’s not a great funnel because it’s not really a focused path. They can get to the homepage, click on any service they want, click on any product they want, go anywhere they want, do anything that they want on the website, respond to any offer.

We don’t really know, it’s very hard to really figure out which part captivated them enough to get them to the desired action, right? But if we can get them down a planned path that’s very narrow and focused, we can track their behavior at every step. There aren’t any other steps for them to take or get distracted by and then we can really dial in a winning strategy.

But remember this, even if a company isn’t using a quote unquote funnel, they’re still using a funnel, right? Anything from acquisition to purchase is a funnel whether it was specifically mapped out or not. Just because something is a bad funnel doesn’t mean it’s not a funnel.

Again, anything from acquisition, here they are, we got them, to all right, they either purchased or they left and they didn’t purchase anything, that’s a funnel, right? It could be a bad funnel, but it’s still a funnel. Now, the key to a working funnel, beyond the quality of the offer, I’ve said many, many times before, really the offer is the biggest part of the funnel.

That is the most impactful part of the funnel. But beyond that, the key to a working funnel is data. The only way to make a funnel work is to get accurate data.

And I say the only way to make a funnel work consistently is to get accurate data. You gotta run tests, you gotta make the right changes based on the data. Theory does not equal best results.

So while it is technically possible to create a winning funnel right off the bat, right? You just get lucky, right? You put your theory out there and bam, a gazillion people buy, okay?

That is possible, but it’s not probable. Most funnels start off as a theory and then it’s the data analysis and it’s the changes to the funnel that turn those funnels into a real winner. Now it helps to break the funnel into parts.

You can track metrics for specific parts of the funnel then we bring these metrics together to help get a more complete picture. I was thinking about doing this training and it was actually very difficult because there’s so many different types of funnels, so many different parts of funnels, and then we can refer to things that happen within those funnels or people within those funnels in various ways, and I didn’t want things to feel very all over the place, and I didn’t want things to feel very confusing. It is a very confusing topic in general, and what I wanted to try and do was to simplify this as much as possible so that you understand the core of what we are trying to collect and what we are trying to do with that data and why are we asking for the data that we are asking for?

And it doesn’t really matter what all the specific terms are. If you know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish with the data, that’s gonna inform you which data you need to have, by the way. That’s really it, that’s really it.

You can put your own terms on things and I’ve changed the terms. The terms that I’m gonna use here are not industry terms. Okay, you’re not gonna hear these widely used.

And I did that on purpose because it helps map data to ideas. When you can map data to ideas, then it’s just a matter of, I mean, if you figure out how other people wanna refer to things, you can just connect with the idea and then use whatever terms they want to use or prefer to use. And like I said, depending on the type of funnel you’re running, the terms may change a little bit, depending on the type of business that you’re working with, the terms may change.

But if you understand the underlying principles and the underlying conversation points, then you’ll be able to work everything out. You’ll be able to understand exactly what needs to happen. Okay, so we’re going to break this down into three parts.

I call these the three S’s. The three S’s. So compartmentalize the data now.

There’s S number one, S number two, S number three. We’re going to collect specific types of data within each of these compartments. Compartment number one is the source.

The source is the channel. It is where or how a person enters the funnel. So think about an ad campaign, a Google search, a social media campaign.

These metrics that we’re gonna talk about measure the acquisition process because you can’t have a funnel if nobody is in the funnel, right? And you gotta go get those people from somewhere. That is the source.

So and there’s going to be data points related to the specific sources. Number two is steps. This is the second compartment.

You have source, now you have steps. Some funnels have one step. Many funnels, most funnels have multiple steps.

It could be a website, it could be a landing page, a phone call, an email series, a webinar, or a combination of things, right? You can put all those things in a row and want them to do all of those things. We need to track metrics related to each step.

And this is why I say I’m not using specific terms, I’m kind of using my own terms for the data, because as you’re gonna see, data terms within a webinar environment can be very different from an email series, which are gonna be very different from a landing page. So we have to understand the types of data and not really worry too much about the names of the data. The third compartment, the third S, is sales.

This is the money part and there are multiple ways to track and analyze how the money is flowing. So again this training is going to focus on the specific metrics to track. I’m going to do a follow-up training that goes into detail on how to use these metrics to adjust different parts of your funnel and to overcome common funnel problems.

We’re also going to do future trainings on how to track specific metrics from a technical standpoint like installing tracking codes, deploying UTMs, using dashboards for your client and so on. And of course, we can do a future training that details how to use this knowledge as a marketable and saleable skill to get more clients and increase revenue. But if you don’t know what to track and you don’t know why you’re supposed to track it, none of that matters.

Ok, so let’s get to exactly what you should be tracking. This is the first compartment, the first S. We’re going to talk about source.

So how are people entering the funnel? Like I said a minute ago, you can’t have a funnel with no insurance. So to start marketing, you need a plan for how to get your offer in front of people and get them to bite.

And not just any people, you’ve got to get your offer in front of the right people and not just the right people. You’ve got to get your offer in front of the right people at the right time. This can be done with ad campaigns, social media, SEO, event-based marketing, and on and on and on and on.

Now while certain metrics that we’re going to talk about may change depending on the acquisition strategy, we’re going to focus on the most important metrics that you need to track within the source category at all times. What I’m basically saying here is these are not the only metrics you may want to track. You may come to find that there are other metrics that are important to you, or important to a specific client, or what have you.

But this is a starting point of key metrics that are involved in the source category. The first one is total spend. You’ve got to keep track of your total spend across all channels.

Because when we get to the end, and we’re trying to figure out the ROI of a campaign and we look back and somebody asked The question well, how much did we spend? It’s like well, we know how much we spent on Google ads, but it’s like, okay But this involves, you know SEO to oh, we didn’t really calculate all those costs. Well, there’s a problem Isn’t there we have to be adamant about tracking the total spend that has been put into this funnel?

What is the total investment to get this funnel built and launched and managed etc etc etc? So total spend across all sources right? Then what we want is we want total spend by source.

So by a specific channel. How much are we spending per channel? We need to know is the average cost per entrance.

And here’s where you see, right off the bat, me swapping out the terminology. You’re gonna hear things like cost per click, cost per landing page view, cost per webinar visit, cost per this, cost per views on videos. All these different terms are dependent on the channel.

Don’t get distracted by all of that. We’re talking about funnels. You need to know what is the average cost per entrance to the funnel.

So one unique person making one unique entrance into the funnel. I don’t care what people wanna call that. If it’s a click, if it’s a view, if it’s a watch, if it’s a this, if it’s a that, what did it cost to get somebody to enter the funnel?

That’s what we need to know. We need to know the average cost per entrance. This is very easy to calculate with ad spend, right?

It can be more difficult with organic sources. For things like SEO, social media, you’re going to have to add up all relevant expenses required to execute the campaign. And that’s going to be unique per campaign, okay?

So it’s up to you to just know, hey, there are costs associated with this acquisition that we’re doing. It might not be direct showing up in a Google Ads dashboard, but it’s certainly there, and somebody needs to be tracking it, and somebody needs to be paying attention to it, and somebody needs to do the extra step of mapping it to each specific source so that we know which channel is costing us what, and we have an accurate picture of the cost by channel. Alright now what about the cost per entrance by source?

Again I just alluded to that. How much does it cost to get an entrance from each active source? We need to know how expensive one source is related to another.

So it’s cost per source and then we have an average cost per entrance over the entire funnel, right? How much does it cost on average to get somebody from wherever they happen to be into the funnel? And then what about by source?

How much does it cost per source? Because this lets us know, hey, this source over here, much more expensive than this source over here, at least for getting people into the funnel. Now, that’s not the extent of what we need to know by source, but it is very important to break that down.

Alright we also need to know the insurance rate by asset. So let’s say with Google Ads it’s obvious you’re going to have multiple different ads in multiple different ad sets. Well what we need to know which ads are performing the best.

Facebook campaign, multiple ads, which ads are performing the best, right? What is the entrance rate per asset? And I say entrance rate because something like Facebook can get very, very confusing.

I see a big mistake with Facebook ad campaigns, for example, where they look at the cost per click. Well, guess what? The cost per click on Facebook, the way Facebook measures clicks, does not always mean the person entered the funnel.

It doesn’t mean you got a landing page view. It doesn’t mean that you got the specific kind of click that you wanted because Facebook measures clicks very broadly. So all I’m concerned about is, remember them entering the funnel.

So we take an asset, any individualized asset, what is the entrance rate from that particular asset? Because I want a list from top to bottom, show me my most engaging assets the ones that get people in the highest degree Down to my lowest performing assets. I need to know where my asset is performing Okay, so let’s do a little bit of overview.

That’s the end of the source and this is the smallest compartment This is the smallest it’s gonna get it’s gonna get bigger from here The smallest compartment is the source it is five things total spend total spend by source, average cost per entrance, the cost per entrance by source, and the entrance rate by asset. Okay, next compartment that we’re gonna be looking at is steps, and basically we can look at this as, all right, they’re here, they’re in the funnel, now what? Right, we’ve acquired visitors, but what are they doing once they enter the funnel?

Is anybody tracking this? Is anybody paying attention to this? I’m often asking myself that, right?

It’s, you’ll get clients where you’ll come in and they’ll be like, well, our landing page isn’t working. It’s like, okay, great, let me dive in. Let me take a look at everything.

And then I’m like, all right, show me the metrics that you guys have. They’re kind of like, oh, what metrics? It’s like, you guys don’t know what’s happening once they’re into the funnel?

You wouldn’t be, well maybe you would be surprised, I don’t know. Yeah, maybe you wouldn’t be surprised, I don’t know how that saying goes, but lots and lots and lots of clients, lots and lots of marketers, I don’t get it, lots and lots of marketers are not tracking the right data and when they are tracking the right data, there’s also a problem of accuracy as well. But like I said, you’re acquiring visitors, we need to know what’s happening once they enter the funnel.

Now, a little alert here, okay? If there’s one step of the funnel, then just track the metrics for that one step. However, if there are multiple steps, you’re going to need to track either some or all of the important metrics per step in the funnel.

This is another mistake that I see so often. Everybody tracks the entrances into the funnel and they track the initial step, which is like get the e-book or do the webinar or whatever. And they’re really hyper-focused on that first step.

And then everything just is just, I don’t know. It’s not monitored, it’s not tracked, it’s not analyzed beyond that point. And that is a huge, huge, huge mistake.

If there’s multiple steps in that funnel, you have to be adamant about tracking these metrics at every single step. So for example, if step number one is a landing page and step number two is a webinar, then I need to track a metric like total visitors per step because total visitors to the landing page is very different from total visitors to the actual webinar, okay? Now, understanding and diagnosing fall off per step of the funnel is key to making a funnel successful.

I often say, fix the fall off, fix the fall off. We’ve got to fix the fall off. Well, you have to know where the fall off is happening, first of all.

But that is really your goal when you’re optimizing a funnel it is to fix the fall off. Where is the fall off happening? Theorize, why is the fall off happening?

Put steps into place to try to fix the falloff and then measure again. This is the life of somebody optimizing a funnel. And like I said in the very beginning, everything is a funnel.

So it doesn’t matter if you have a specific funnel or you don’t have a specific funnel, you’re always measuring, tracking data, trying to fix falloff. Okay. for the steps compartment.

Total entrances. You need to keep track of how many visitors entered the funnel, and then each step of the funnel thereafter. Remember, it’s obvious that you’re tracking total entrances to the first step.

But remember, this is steps, plural. So you need to know total entrance to step one, total entrance to step two, total entrance to step three, and on and on and on for however many steps there happen to be. You also need to know total entrances by source for each step of the funnel.

That’s why I call it steps to remind you that there’s multiple and that you can’t just track, right? People will do this to the first step. They don’t do the due diligence of the extra work of doing it step by step by step by step.

The next thing is your total step conversions because each step has a desired action, right? So the landing page, the action is get them to sign up for the webinar. I’m just making stuff up.

When they get to the webinar, the desired action is get them to use the coupon code and make a purchase, okay? Those are two very different desired actions. So we need to know what is the conversion to get them onto the webinar, what’s the conversion rate to get them from the webinar to actually using the coupon code.

And actually there may be an intermediate step in there, right? How many people even entered the checkout from the webinar, much less use the coupon code. So there’s entrances to the webinar, there’s an entrance then from the webinar to the checkout, there’s an entrance from the checkout to a sale via the coupon code right so you see how there’s each step we need to know the total conversions at each step and then we need the total step conversions by source so it’s like all right here’s how many came from Facebook that did each of these things here’s how many came from Google that did each of these things because what we eventually have to know is what is the fall off from a, is the fall off happening from a particular source?

Because sometimes that can happen. Where the Facebook leads are crushing the entire way through the funnel, the Google ads is great at first, but then way more fall off from people that come from Google. Why might that be?

Well, you can’t even ask the question why that might be if you don’t even know that’s happening. You have to know it’s happening by tracking total step conversions by source. Then you also have your step conversion rate.

So what percent of visitors at each step took the desired action? The raw numbers aren’t always relevant but the rate is very very important. Why aren’t the raw numbers relevant?

Well this goes back to tracking budget by source. If you give Google Ads all the money, then Google Ads is gonna have all the raw numbers, but it could have the worst conversion rate. Facebook, getting less money, was gonna have less raw numbers, but it could have a gangbusters conversion rate.

And what does this tell you? Hey, it would be great if we shifted some of that budget from the inefficient Google Ads campaign over here over to the very efficient Facebook ads campaign that we’re running. See how these metrics up and down the chain allow you to assess different things and make the right decisions on what to do with money, what to do with various changes to aspects of the funnel and so on.

You also need to track your step conversion rate by source. So which sources tend to convert the most amount amount of visitors. That’s good information to have.

It is again mapped per step of the campaign, not just the initial step. We need the cost per step conversion. So now it’s not how much did it cost to get an entrance, it’s how much did it cost us to get a conversion.

And not just that first conversion, but every conversion in the funnel. And then we need a cost per step conversion broken down by source. So that same little set of data that we just talked about, we need it broken down by source because every source is going to come out.

You’re going to see different numbers per source, and that’s going to give you more information as to which source is more valuable than another source or where changes need to be made. Perhaps the next thing that you need to track is time on step. See in web design land this is called time on page.

In webinar land this is called time on webinar. In video land this is called the average view length or whatever they call it in YouTube. So again the terms don’t matter what you need to know is we have a funnel, we have entrances, we have steps.

I need to track the time at each step. How much time is somebody spending at each step of the funnel? Time on step, by the way, can be irrelevant or it can be extremely important.

So this is where you come in as a marketer with a working, functional human brain that understands these concepts and understands what the goals are, right? You have to know what’s important, you have to know what’s not important, and you have to decide what needs to be tracked. So I’m gonna give you an example.

Time on landing page may not matter in some situations, but time on a webinar matters tremendously. Let’s dig into this just a little bit. Time on landing page may not matter at all in some situations.

If I have a very short landing page, like it’s a squeeze page type thing. There’s not a lot of copy. There’s not a video for people to watch.

Maybe the only thing I’m trying to get people to do is download a little freebie, okay? So there’s a headline, there’s a little blurb, there’s like two, three selling points, there’s an opt-in. They land on the page.

Do you think time on page matters right now? How could it matter? Nobody’s gonna sit there and just sit there and just sit there and just sit there.

It’s not showing any sort of engagement or anything like that because they can decipher what’s happening and make a decision very, very, very fast. So time on landing page in that context doesn’t really matter all that much. But what we do know is when you join a webinar, right, and you only watch 18 seconds of it, you’re very unlikely to buy at the end because you didn’t make it to the end.

You didn’t make it to the offer, you didn’t make it to anything relevant, right? So the longer that somebody spends on a webinar, the likelihood that they’re going to take the desired action at the end of the webinar, dramatically increases. So time on that step is very important, where time on the previous step, maybe wasn’t so important.

So again, this is where you have to come in with the working functional human brain and say, well, we need to track time on step for the webinar. We don’t really need to track that for the landing page. Now, let’s just switch it up.

If you have a long form landing page and it’s got a video on it and it’s got a bunch of stuff that people got to think about and decipher before they take action. Now, suddenly, time on page can be very, very relevant because you’re seeing who’s taking the time to really engage with the content and who’s not, right? Who’s bouncing almost right away.

Okay, tracking these metrics will help you understand the core of the funnel. This is everything that happens between the entrance and the final sale, the metrics that we just talked about. Again, recap, total entrances, total entrances by source, total step conversions, total step conversions by source, the step conversion rate, the step conversion rate by source, cost per step conversion, cost per step conversion by source, and then time on step.

Now, let’s talk about the sales compartment, the third S. They took action, but did they buy? That is the money question.

Did they buy? I tell my clients this all the time. You can’t pay your mortgage with leads and opt-ins.

Now they know that, they know that, but I want them to know that I know that. Because too many marketers, too many consultants, too many everybody’s, okay, employees even, too many people only care about their part of the funnel, right? So if I put the landing page together, I can go to my client all day long and say, hey, the landing page has got a 72% conversion rate.

We’re just absolutely crushing it. And my client’s going to be like, but we’re not getting any sales. And you can be like, well, hey, I mean, I’m doing my job, right?

You know, they took my action. It always boils down to did they buy? That is all that matters because every lead that a company gets, not a single one of them can be paid with it.

You can’t write a check and say, okay, mortgage company, 788 leads last month. Here you go. 2

0:29:00 It doesn’t matter. 1

0:29:00 That does not translate into money. And that’s all businesses care about is did it translate into money?

So we are only going to care about that. Yes, we care about each step, but ultimately we only care about making money, right? The sale at the end of the day.

Marketers who only care about initial conversions are lazy. The only thing that matters is sales. If you’re getting leads and no sales, you’re losing.

So here are the key metrics related to sales that we need to be tracking because these metrics are going to give you insights on if you’re getting leads and you’re getting action and you’re getting engagement, you’re getting everything else, but you’re not getting sales, this can help point to why. First thing, qualified lead rate. Of all the leads you got, what percent were actually qualified?

You remember what I said in the beginning. It’s not just getting people into the funnel, it’s getting the right people into the funnel and the right people at the right time. Somebody can be the right person, but it can be the wrong time.

That’s not a qualified lead. We need the right person at the right time. That is a qualified lead.

And here’s why qualifying leads matters tremendously. You’re analyzing how well a funnel is working. Guys, this can be a gangbusters funnel for qualified leads.

But if you’re dumping, if 90% of the leads coming in are unqualified, it makes it seem like the funnel is a disaster. That everything is wrong with the funnel. Every step is failing.

And it’s like, no, they’re just not qualified leads. So they’re completely the wrong person. Or they can be semi-qualified leads.

They’re the right people, but we’re acquiring them somehow, or for some reason, at the wrong time. And so you’re putting the right people in and then what it looks like is everything is gangbusters until the sales. Every part of that funnel is gangbusters until you get to the money.

And then the fall off, remember what I said, fix the fall off, the fall off is tremendous. Why? Why was it great at every step?

Because you’re getting the right people in. Why aren’t they buying? Because it’s the wrong time.

Or it’s the wrong offer. Or it’s that there’s a lot of ors. OK, it could be a number of things.

You need to know, though, what percentage of these people are actually qualified? Are we putting the right people into this funnel at the right time? So you need a qualified lead rate.

Again, getting a boatload of unqualified leads doesn’t do anyone any good. The next thing is, how many people made a purchase in this funnel? Like stop telling me about leads, stop telling me about sources, stop telling me about yada yada yada.

How many people made a purchase? So we put a thousand people into this funnel. How many bought something?

Okay we also need to know by source how many people bought something. Okay so if I can say take a look at Google, Facebook, TikTok. Put a thousand people in.

Well, the people that came from Google, we got 30 sales out of a thousand. People that came from Facebook, we got a hundred sales. From TikTok, we got 300 sales.

What is that starting to tell you, especially if all those budgets are equal? What is it starting to tell you? Man, TikTok is absolutely crushing it for purchases, So some of the other metrics may matter, may not matter.

What really matters is the money. TikTok, 300 purchases, that’s great, out of that thousand people. And then the others, there was fall off.

So total purchases by source. What about the purchase conversion rate? So out of all the people who entered the funnel, what percent of them paid money?

Because again, the raw numbers don’t tell the entire story. If we funneled all of our money to TikTok, then obviously TikTok is, well, should be, creating the most raw amount of purchases. But when we take a look at the actual rate, that’s where it uncovers the effectiveness of a specific source, or the effectiveness of a specific channel.

Okay, we also need the purchase conversion rate by source. I just combined those two a little bit. So what percent paid money and then the rate by source as well.

Then we need the total revenue. Okay, what was the total amount of revenue collected from this funnel in a given period? And we can directly compare this to the campaign cost over that same period.

Remember, that was one of the metrics that I told you to track in the very, very beginning. How much did we spend all together on this entire funnel? And then how much money did we make all together on this entire funnel?

You can see how those two metrics work hand in hand to show you profitability of the funnel. Okay, average purchase amount. So out of all the people who paid money, what was the average amount they paid?

Now, this is not always going to be a relevant metric. If you’re selling one product at one price then I mean it’s always going to be the same right? They’re always going to buy the same thing at the same price.

But if you have multiple different offers or multiple price points of an offer or something like that then you need to know what the average purchase amount was and you need to know what the average purchase amount by source is. So again, let’s say we’re comparing Facebook and Google ads as sources. I keep coming back to these just to keep all the examples the same, but that could be it could be literally anything.

So the average purchase amount by source. People coming from Google ads on average buy something from us for $79. But people coming from Facebook, that the other one I said?

When they buy, the average purchase from them is $150. So there’s a big difference between the average purchase price from Google to Facebook. So when you’re average, or when you’re looking at the other metrics, like, well, what was the conversion rate to a sale from Google Ads versus Facebook?

Well, Google Ads is more people from Google Ads buy than from Facebook, but, but, but, the people from Facebook buy more when they buy. So you need this extra data point to really just understand what’s happening better and just make the best decisions possible. And I’m just giving you examples like off the cuff, off the top, right?

There are many, many, many, many different ways to analyze this data. Many ways that this data comes into importance as you’re asking various questions about the funnel that you’re working with and that you’re trying to optimize, these are just the data points you need to have because when you decide you need them and you don’t have them, that’s a big problem, okay? Cost per purchase.

How much does it cost to get someone to buy? We know people track day and night how much it costs to get them into the funnel. But for some reason, when I ask for, well, how much does it cost to get you a buyer?

They’re like, oh man, anybody got an answer to that? Right, this is a very important metric to track. And it really helps us when we’re, when clients asking us all the time, well, that cost per click, is that a good cost per click?

What should my average cost per lead be? What should I be willing to pay for a lead? It’s like, well, how much does it cost you on average to get a purchase?

Like, let’s start there. What is the average purchase amount when people buy from you? Like, they don’t have answers to these questions.

And when you don’t have answers to the questions, you don’t have data to work with. And then you’re just making guesses. And then if nobody ever tracks the data, your marketing campaigns are all based on theory and feels good.

And I don’t know, it seems to be working. Maybe it’s working, maybe it’s not. We don’t really know, right?

You’d never wanna be in that situation. You also need to know the cost per purchase by source. How much does it cost to get a purchase from Facebook?

How much does it cost to get a purchase from TikTok? How much does it cost to get a purchase from SEO? Any channel can be mapped cost per purchase by source.

Return on spend. We spent this amount, we made Y amount. I’ll do a quick P&L on this, okay?

But you need to know what your return on spend is and then what is your return on spend by source. So we spent X amount on channel A, we made Y amount on channel A, now we know what our return from channel A is. And then we do that from channel B and channel C and channel D, and now we have a little P&L on every single channel that we’re using.

Here’s the sales metrics overview. Qualified lead rate, total purchases, total purchases by source, purchase conversion rate, purchase conversion rate by source, total revenue, average purchase amount, average purchase amount by source, cost per purchase, cost per purchase by source, return on spend, return on spend by source. Okay, let’s wrap all of this up.

And this is one of those trainings where you can go back, you can watch it again, you can watch it repeatedly. I’m gonna do my best to put together and this is gonna start to make more sense as we get into other trainings, like how to collect this data, how to analyze this data and solve challenges with the data. But if there comes to be a point where we need a cheat sheet for this stuff, which shows you, all right, here’s the line item, here’s how to calculate the line item, here’s how to track the line item, here’s how to use the line item.

That’s something that we can put together. I’m gonna rely on you. You know, this is coming out of my brain, right?

And so I need to know if it’s getting into your brain properly. Hey, where’s the fall off? Let’s fix the fall off, my friends.

Where’s the fall off in what we’re talking about here? What’s not getting into your brain? What’s not making sense?

Or what do you not know how to track, and this is gonna help inform the future videos in this little series on funnels and data, okay? So, this is all, this is everything right here. I’ll give you this screen, all right, so that it’s very easy for you to just store this somewhere.

And then let’s just answer a couple of questions. Like, one is how specific do we need to be? So, if I have a little tiny funnel with a little tiny budget, do I need to go through all of this?

Okay, well, no, probably not. And if you have a gangbusters funnel, and it’s in a limited niche, and you don’t have a lot of competition, and you’ve got to decide, you’re the marketer, okay, you’re the person managing and consulting on this, you decide what’s important. I’m not saying that you must track every single one of those in every single funnel, no matter what.

You need to know what’s important and you need to know what you need to know at the end of the day and then put the right metrics in place. Make sure you’re collecting them, make sure you’re tracking them and then make sure you’re using the data once it’s getting collected and tracked accurately. Okay?

But that’s up to you. How specific you want to get, totally up to you. But, but, at the end of the day, you don’t want your client going, so tell me about this little part of the funnel, or they have a question related to, well, how’s TikTok doing, you know?

And you’re like, oh, well, we got 700 visits by TikTok, and then your client’s like, but what did they do next? And you’re like, oh, oh, yeah, about that, right? You don’t have that data.

So, obviously, it’s important data. I would recommend you track it, and then put a system in place for getting all of this stuff tracked and analyzed and it’s easier to deploy to the next campaign, the next campaign, or really the next funnel, the next funnel, the next funnel, right? Okay, how do we collect the data?

A lot of it can be captured automatically with software. This is really good, you just have to make sure you use good software, set up the software properly, but some of it may need to be captured manually. I’m gonna do follow-up trainings that’s gonna cover data collection strategies, data analysis, oops, and that is, all right, there we go, we’re out of it.

Follow-up trainings covering data collection strategies, data analysis, and using data to identify and fix common funnel problems. But here’s really where the big challenge comes in. You’re gonna work with clients, and they’re gonna be like, oh, we’re on Salesforce.

And so it’s like, all right, how are we gonna get into the Salesforce data that’s coming in based on leads and by channel and yada yada yada and this other clients you’re like well we’re on HubSpot and this other clients like well we don’t even have a CRM or this other clients like well we’re a chiropractor and we use proprietary chiropractor software to manage our clients and so that’s really where all the technical logistics issues come in and that’s why you can’t just do a training on how to collect data. So what we have to do is, here’s how you’re gonna collect most of the data, and then here’s how you can try to problem solve for sticking points within the data collection process. All right?

So guys, that is the end of this training. Let me go back to camera here. Let me make sure that we are back on camera properly.

Again, I know when you’re just hearing term after term and a term and term, it’s like, oh my God, a data point, a data point, a data, and you don’t yet know like how these things are gonna come into play, how they’re gonna fit into the puzzle. It can be hard for the brain to interpret, hard for the brain to digest. I just want you to keep in mind, as we continue on in this series, it’s going to make more and more sense, but I also wanna invite you to ask your questions.

If something doesn’t make sense, it’s not clicking, you don’t know why it’s important, you can’t fathom how it’s going to be tracked, whatever, ask those questions. I need to be able to address them either in the comments or in a future video. So that’s up to you.

But this was the key metrics to track for funnel optimization. But this was the key metrics to track for funnel optimization. I’ll be back with another video in this series very, very soon.