You probably don’t know this about me.
I played guitar, piano and saxophone in my teens and into my early 20’s. But I was never very good.
But for some reason I can sing, and I’ve stuck with it ever since. In fact, I joined a 100-year-old singing group about 5 years ago and we’re about to go on a 10-day international tour.
What does this have to do with business you ask?
Nothing!
Except I tend to always have a tune in my head. And usually, I’m humming along.
So there I was, reviewing some marketing data with a “data driven marketer” and I started to hear this Fugees song:
Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Now I don’t have the slightest clue what the songs about. But the song leaves you with a sense of comfort combined with an eerie sense of despair (hey it’s my head).
And that’s exactly what this marketer was doing to me.
You see he started by showing me how many people entered his email journey’s. No wait it was the total number of emails they sent.
I asked about the high bounce rate. He said I’d need to watch some YouTube training to figure out what it meant.
Finally, we moved on to social media with a summary of the total # of posts and engagement rates (likes, shares, follows, and comments).
When I asked about conversions and how much money all this activity made I got a look as if he was saying…
“What the hell Yako, look at all the stuff we’re doing!”
I see a lot of things that businesses are doing.
What’s missing in these metrics is measuring INTENT.
An action the customer takes that signals his desire to buy or, at least, move further through the Customer Journey.