Are You Quantity or Quality Driven When Running Digital Marketing Campaigns?

I’ll start by sharing an experience I had after running a digital marketing campaign for a client (Facebook Ads to be precise). The main aim of this post is to highlight a few important things to focus on when helping clients with digital marketing campaigns.

Let’s begin…

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“I have seen the reach, and the numbers are impressive!” she said over the phone.

I held my phone tightly in my palm, close to my left ear; a weak smile broke on my lips. As much as I would loved to accept that commendation, I knew that would be denying the truth.

The statement above was made by a client of mine after I’d helped her run a Facebook Ad campaign to her event. That campaign was an unsuccessful one, from my perspective, but my client was looking at the data differently.

Even though I was approached very late to run the campaign (less than 2 weeks to the event), I knew the possibility of reaching the desired goal was slim, however, I decided I was going to go for it, mainly as a challenge, to see what could be accomplished within a very limited time frame.

The deal was… I hit the goal, I get paid; I don’t hit the goal, I don’t get paid (those were my terms to my client… it didn’t feel right to charge for a campaign I wasn’t confident about, and then turn around and blame it on the fact that my client came to me very late).

Prior to working with this client, I had run a Facebook campaign for another client just weeks before hers, and we had 500 leads within the first 3 days. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

Whenever I set up my digital marketing campaigns, my main objective is to get conversions (i.e. leads or sales), and when that is not achieved, I go back to the drawing board and ask myself these questions:

• Where did things fall apart?
• What should I have added that I didn’t?
• Was I targeting the right people?
• Were my landing pages set up properly?
• Did I have the right headlines and content?
• Was I able to project the value of the offer within my Ad copy?
• Should I have spent more money to scale things up?
• What were my costs and my gains?

There are so many other factors, but I’ll leave it at that. The idea is to really understand what went wrong, where it went wrong, and how to fix it.

Based on that experience, I had to sit back and think about how we view data in business. Do we focus more on quantity? If so, what exactly are we looking at?

Is it the number of customers, or the number of likes, or the number of hits we got? There so many variables, but the truth is, quantity can be pretty deceptive if you are looking at data the wrong way.

Let’s examine the mindset behind quantity and quality within the context of this post and digital marketing.

The Quantity Driven Mindset

This mindset often falls short of the true picture, mainly because it focuses on the wrong metrics. There is nothing wrong in having a lot of impressions from a campaign, if the objective is just to create awareness for a brand.

Where the problem lies is when the quantity of people reached is used to determine the success of a campaign, whereas the primary objective was to generate leads and potentially drive in more sales.

One might say re-targeting (or re-marketing) works based on impressions, and it is very effective when well structured… I totally agree.

However, my point is not about how many eyeballs see an Ad or piece of content, but how many took the required action based on the set objective.

You see, the set objective you is the primary thing you should focus on (because it functions behind the scenes), not what the external data predicting for you.

Most would stop at the number of clicks and shares, but it is always best to measure those actions in line with the ultimate goal (e.g. conversions).

“Small” can mean more!

What do I mean by that phrase?

As a consultant, one of the things I have learnt and tested within my business is that your ability to command premium pricing (i.e. charge higher fees for your services) is not predicated on the number of leads you have, but on the quality of leads you have.

Now, bear in mind that this only applies to certain types of businesses and professions; because obviously, the retail industries would be more numbers driven, which is totally valid, considering what they are selling and who falls within their target demographic.

The Quality Driven Mindset

This mindset is always on the lookout for quality people, and also how best to serve them with value based information.

Only a small percentage of people are driven by this mindset, mainly because it’s not popular within the world of business. The reason is because a good majority of business owners have been trained to look at data based on quantity not quality.

It took me a while to make this transition, and I’m not saying I’ve stabilized it yet, but I’ve made more progress than when I got started. I’ve rejected offers to work with certain clients because I didn’t feel we were a good fit. I’ve rejected some strategic alliance offers because the deal wasn’t right.

Many will look at that as being daft… “just take the money and go”… is often what would be spewed out, but people fail to realize that money is just a means, it’s not the end. Your health, stability in life, happiness, effort and time with loved ones are also key factors to focus on.

Working with a client who stresses you out is almost like being in a stressful job you hate. The only difference is that you are passionate about your business and have the desire to help people… but in this case, you settled for the wrong person (who doesn’t appreciate what you are doing for them).

Avoid being in this situation as much as you can!

Conclusion

To run a successful digital marketing campaign, you have to look at the quality of traffic that comes through, over quantity, based on your targeting. If your targeting is done right, you stand the chance of generating quality leads and sales in the process.

Most people would argue that all you need is massive traffic (quality or not), and that train of thought is the reason why businesses are struggling to make sales online.

In some cases, they end up with a list of leads who are either confused about the offer or just signed up to get the freebie that was offered and head off on their way.

The bottom line is that you have to measure quantity (traffic) against quality (leads/sales), and determine if what you are doing is progressive or you need to make immediate adjustments to ensure desired results.

Thank for reading. Be sure to leave a comment below and share this on your social networks.