Are you tracking the right business metrics? EP #155 - Shorty

G', day, guys. Dan Lanney here, host of the how to Scale a Video Business podcast with this week's Shorty. It is Tuesday 9th February.

Just come off a coaching call with my video business accelerator Mastermind clients. And today's training was, in their words, a game changer. And I'm going to share why that was with you because I like to, you know, share what we're talking about in the Mastermind, see if it really resonates with you, see if it can offer you some help and guidance. And today was a big one. It's something I've been working on for about three or four months, and it's really all about data tracking.

You know, if we don't track the right data in our business, we can end up spending a lot of time chasing the wrong data. And by data, I mean sometimes people spend a lot of time focused on vanity metrics. You know, how many, you know, people so reached a post, or how many people clicked and liked a post or commented. And that has some play in overall, you know, brand awareness. But I see a lot of people wasting a lot of time focusing on the wrong things and not focusing enough time on the right things. That's because, generally speaking, the data you want to be tracking is, is kind of, it's harder to do, you know, in terms of what you've got to do to kind of make that data work. And I'm talking about that kind of, you know, fundamental data. You know, does your data track how clients are coming into your business, how you're getting them? And is it tracking the number of conversations you're having? And is it tracking the number of sales that you're making? And do you know, if you're spending money on ads, are your ads actually delivering your results? Because the challenge is if you don't track the right data, you'll end up, you know, spending a lot of time and effort and potentially money on things that you don't know are working. So, so how do you know what to track and pay attention to? Because, you know, if you take Facebook, for example, you know, my Facebook page, I've got like number of actions on a page. I've got number of page views, I've got the page likes, I've got the post reach, post engagement. And you know, on one page, for example, In January, between 10 January 6th of February, 36,997 post reach, that seems like a big.

And, you know, we had 228 video views and 3,822 post engagements. But what does that actually mean in terms of business revenue? Well, not a lot. And the challenge you've got with all of these platforms is they've all got advanced metrics. But is it the right thing to be looking at? Because not all data is actually useful. You know, vanity metrics may not be an important metric unless you're a YouTuber who is trying to attract sponsors. And you can say, well, I've got 100,000 subscribers and you know, 50,000 people watch every video. That's a different thing. But as a video production company, we're not in that game. We're in the content production game for other people. And so what we need to do is track weekly performance.

Data so that you can focus on directing activity in the right places. So you want to move away from vanity metrics and into useful data that actually helps to drive a sale. And you know, there are lots of things you can look at tracking, you know, you could look at your ad spend, you can look at your click through rate, you know, number of clicked in LinkedIn connection requests, number of connection accepts, LinkedIn conversations, what's your website traffic doing, what landing pages are getting there clicks, what landing pages are getting opt ins. And if you don't know what that is, then, then there's something that you should be thinking about. You know how you look most people on video businesses, right, I've got a contact us from on their page and nothing much more advanced than that. Maybe get a quote button. But, but what, what I think is missing from a lot of businesses is a funnel of some description, some way of converting casual visitors who stumble across your website into prospects. People who have said, I'm actually interested in what you've got to offer here. So I'm going to give you my email address in return for something of value. And that thing of value might be an ebook, it might be a quote template, might be a video revealing something. But, but what I feel happens is a lot of video businesses are kind of scared to do that because they think, oh, if I make someone jump through a hoop, they might not buy from me. But here's the big news guys, if they're not going to give you their email address, they're not going to give you their credit card. Simple as that. So we have to overcome this fear of marketing and actually start attracting people into our business who have something to offer. You know, I'm going to share a story with one of our clients, Grant, who's just rebuilt his website and he focuses Largely on the.

The distribution industry, you know, haulage, that kind of thing. And he's been having incredible success reaching out LinkedIn to his target market. And people are saying to him, oh my goodness, I get so many people reaching out to me, but you're the only one that specialized in my area. And he's securing deals already. So, you know, being specific is absolutely the way to build your video business. But most people listening to this won't do it because they're scared. They're scared to actually just trust the instinct on that.

And the instinct is this is a proven process. I know this works. I've seen it time and time and time again. And my clients are getting outstanding results because of this. And the ones who question it, the ones who don't want to do it, they're, they're, they're falling by the wayside and, and they'll, they'll fail. Their businesses will fail. Now is not the time to be, you know, jackassing around going, oh, well, I want to try and do this and the patron to try and do that. You have to be specific, you have to solve a specific problem. The world has changed. You simply cannot dilly dally around and kind of like hope that, you know, work will come in. It doesn't work like that. You've got to be proactive, you've got to be clear on what market you serve, how you serve them, how you're going to help them, and what your unique offer is. So, you know, once you get to that, you can start to track, you know, website traffic and landing page clicks and landing page opt ins and who's completing your survey? Is your email list growing? How many sales calls are you doing in a week? How many sales conversions are you getting in a week? And what are your financials doing? And so we actually launched a scorecard template this morning that our members are using now to track that on a weekly basis so they can make really informed decisions. And then you can build detailed dashboards that you can actually then show. You can look at it every day and see how your business is performing. And again, most video businesses don't do this. Most video businesses fly by the seat of their pants.

And kind of wing it week to week. And you know what, that's okay. If that's you, that's fine. But you're never going to build a business. To build a business, it needs structure, it needs discipline, it needs process. And once you start to understand.

Your costs of acquiring a customer, that is when the real magic happens. Because you know that when you spend a dollar, you get $10 back. That is the nirvana of business. And that's for any business, not just video. And, you know, I'd say less than 5% of video businesses around the world are doing this, maybe less than 3%. And I'd say majority of them are in the video business accelerator, and that's why they're succeeding with such a, such a rate, because they're implementing tried and tested marketing systems. I've been reading a book recently called Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. It was written in 1927, and I recommend you go read this book. It's mind blowing. If you take away the language and the technology of the time, which was newspapers and direct mail, and you listen to the psychology, it's like it's identical. For today, we haven't changed as a human race. Our technology has changed. The way in which we consume content has changed, but fundamentally we haven't changed as humans beings. And that, and that is what makes this kind of stuff so fascinating. So this is predictable. This is a way to predict, predict how you can scale your video business, but you have to lean into it. You have to stop bullshitting yourself. You have to stop making excuses because you can make money or you can make excuses, but you can't do both. And I've had some quite interesting conversations recently with people who are, you know, are not yet in the space where they realize how big their problems are. And, and, and I'm going to go as far as saying some of them are deluded and the world has changed people. You know, you just simply can't hope that work will come in anymore. There's just too much competition. There's too many people stepping their game up and there will be a culling of the weaker businesses. So, you know, don't take the risk, don't take the chance. Implement these systems. You know, if you've been listening to the show for a while, how much of what you're listening to are you actually implementing? Are you still sitting there thinking about it? Because thinking about something isn't executing. And what I want you to do is take one thing you've learned from this podcast and please just execute, execute it and let me know how you went on. Because, you know, there's a danger of consuming too much content, a danger of consuming too many ideas and never acting on any of them. And that is the number one challenge that I see video businesses face. And when they come into our program and they start to focus, they start to get results and that is what is the game changer. So, guys, I'm going to ring off this quickly today because I've got a lot of stuff to do too, because it's my birthday this week and I'm taking a few days off. So I will talk to you on Thursday. You've been listening to the how to Scale a Video Business podcast with me, your host, Dan Lenny. If you're a video business owner, it's hit a ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support and coaching. Then check out how you can work with me over@denlenny.com don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review. And don't forget to share. If you feel you've gotten value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers you know, then please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.