eliquid
Digital Strategist
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2014
- Messages
- 1,196
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- Degree
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@Unngabunga
1. I think for your example, with or without you, this happens with the ROAS and profit example. Even if I wasn't running ads and I did nothing ( like you said ) - it would happen.
Based on that, I don't think about it. If it can happen without me, it will happen with me so a lot of it is out of my control. I could be working on ad creatives and pushing NC CPA down but someone on the design team redid the checkout flow and messed everything up and not told me and now my conv rate is horrible or we hit summer and now we are in the summer slowdown and many less people are buying. etc
So I focus on very few numbers which means you really have to understand your numbers and your business and what drives what.
For 1 client, they want NC CPA (new customer cpa ).
That number alone tells me how well my conv rate is, my ctr, my audience/targeting, and my ad messaging is. Because if any of those are off, I will see it in the NC CPA compared to the timeframe prior.
And I just have that dumped into a CSV ( along with some other numbers like CTR and CVR and ad spend, etc ) into CSV daily via a tool like SuperMetrics.
That way if I see NC CPA doing more than a 15% change I can quickly look at the other numbers and try to nail down the issue without logging into FB or Google or w/e Im advertising.
If a client comes to me and says they want to improve ROAS, I tell them "they can't follow 2 masters". I really do. I'm brutally honest with them. They wanted NC CPA, and that is what they got.
If they want to focus on ROAS now, they won't have good NC CPA. Why? Because new customers don't drive ROAS - they make small test purchases to try your brand out. The ROAS will always be low.
If I increase ROAS, that means I'm getting existing customers. The people who's AOV is larger and trust you. Can a new person have a higher AOV if you start bundling and cross selling.. sure but most of them are going to buy a sample or a low ticket version or a 1 qty product to test you out.
Also ROAS is a fake BS number. Yes, it is. That's for a different convo though in another thread. Most other metrics are also BS too. So you can ease some stress focusing on what is a real number and a real driver instead of all the other BS stuff.
I also judge my performance on longer time scales which helps in this data overload and knowing what to do.
For example, I notice a lot of clients like to look at day to day stuff. Can't do that.
Or they look at week to week, eh - that's not too bad.
I generally look at month to month or quarter to quarter and if the numbers ( average ) are good at that time frame, that's it. Too much can happen in a week that is "false data" in my experience and makes too much noise.
If we are hitting metrics on month to month, I don't look further as there is no need to a lot of times.
But it's only when the 1 single metric Im judging goes bad over the month ( in this client it may be NC CPA ). by more than 15% do I start looking at others and digging in.
2. I think this is where 25+ years experience comes in.. which isn't a great answer for you if you don't have it.
In that time, I know what types of creative work ( in general, each brand IS different ) and I know where to get it and how to make it. Same with data analysis.
So I can run SuperMetrics or another related tool and get data daily on every metric I need into a Excel sheet and it just appends the data to the next row. Then I have other sheets in that Excel file that do VLOOKUP and finds and do a bunch of formulas on the sheet with the daily updates and does pivot tables too ( well I have run those, but it's largely done for me ) and then I can use color formatting to "heat map" my data now.
With that I can easily spot trends in my data and the data analysis is done in 5 minutes, if that. Ai is making this easy for people now too.. but Im not sure I need Ai for that because my system is pretty well run for me in how I do things.
For all the creative stuff, it's like swipe files. You should have swipe files of things you know work. I no longer need a physical or digital version of this. I've had so many and looked the over for so long, I know what creative is needed and when in my head now. But because I basically memorized them, I had swipe files of what I knew worked based on my experience and what I seen prior.
I also read alot and pay attention to other people's accounts and what worked for them when I audit their accounts. This all plays into knowing what in general works.
And then there is "buying assets", like https://creative-donut.com/ which are templates in Canva ready for you to simply edit right in Canva.
So imagine over 25 years how many assets I've bought from similar places like this. Imagine how many scripts I've written and seen ( and stole ) from others. Imagine how many video tools and shortcuts and macros I've made and bought.
Now combine that with all the books and training ( conferences, shows, etc ) on copywriting, behavioral physiology, sales, marketing, and more I've read and highlighted and used in my career.
Mix that all up now and you end up with what makes someone with 25+ years so valuable. And I don't think there is a good shortcut for that other than getting started doing the same things, now.
Like I can go into an ads account and in just 5 minutes tell you:
1. What marketing awareness level you write all your ads at, and what you are missing.
2. What types of static or video ads you make, and all the ones you havent tried yet
3. Where the leak in your funnel is
4. How much testing you've done and what you focused on and where you missed
5. How to correct all that and what scripts you need and visuals you need and what pain points you didnt talk about with your prospective customer yet.
You can create Ai tools that can do like 85% of this. I have several I've made but that's only because I use them as "checklists" instead of relied upon knowledge. I forget more than I know, so having a tool checklist me is valuable these days so I don't miss something, not because the tool is doing something I don't know how to do.
In the grand scheme of things, it's sad how little you do need to know once you realize it.
Meaning, lets take scripts.
There are only 3 frameworks you really need to know to write a good script or landing page. If you follow any of the 3 and just replace the words with the ones tied to your brand and product, you have done almost any and all the work you can do within reason. The rest is just pushing chairs around on the Titanic.
How do I know there is only 3 you need? Because I've researched and used more than 3 dozen over my career. And honestly they all do about the same metrics-wise. So I narrowed it down to 3 because there is no sense in doing more really.
I'm not saying to do the least or not do more, but sometimes it's a lot easier than people make it out to be once you get over the hill you're trying to climb.
3. These are questions I really couldn't answer without knowing everything about your niche really. I don't know what the wall is in this niche, what you think a wall is vs what supply and demand actually is, how high the scale really can be, etc. I can assume things, but these are questions that aren't easily answerable on the surface.
But I can tell you, there are single person operations in the marketing world/paid ads world doing $10m easily a year. Many more doing more. If they can do it, why not you?
4. I'm a freelancer. I don't want the joys of employees or VA's ( been there and done that ).
1. I think for your example, with or without you, this happens with the ROAS and profit example. Even if I wasn't running ads and I did nothing ( like you said ) - it would happen.
Based on that, I don't think about it. If it can happen without me, it will happen with me so a lot of it is out of my control. I could be working on ad creatives and pushing NC CPA down but someone on the design team redid the checkout flow and messed everything up and not told me and now my conv rate is horrible or we hit summer and now we are in the summer slowdown and many less people are buying. etc
So I focus on very few numbers which means you really have to understand your numbers and your business and what drives what.
For 1 client, they want NC CPA (new customer cpa ).
That number alone tells me how well my conv rate is, my ctr, my audience/targeting, and my ad messaging is. Because if any of those are off, I will see it in the NC CPA compared to the timeframe prior.
And I just have that dumped into a CSV ( along with some other numbers like CTR and CVR and ad spend, etc ) into CSV daily via a tool like SuperMetrics.
That way if I see NC CPA doing more than a 15% change I can quickly look at the other numbers and try to nail down the issue without logging into FB or Google or w/e Im advertising.
If a client comes to me and says they want to improve ROAS, I tell them "they can't follow 2 masters". I really do. I'm brutally honest with them. They wanted NC CPA, and that is what they got.
If they want to focus on ROAS now, they won't have good NC CPA. Why? Because new customers don't drive ROAS - they make small test purchases to try your brand out. The ROAS will always be low.
If I increase ROAS, that means I'm getting existing customers. The people who's AOV is larger and trust you. Can a new person have a higher AOV if you start bundling and cross selling.. sure but most of them are going to buy a sample or a low ticket version or a 1 qty product to test you out.
Also ROAS is a fake BS number. Yes, it is. That's for a different convo though in another thread. Most other metrics are also BS too. So you can ease some stress focusing on what is a real number and a real driver instead of all the other BS stuff.
I also judge my performance on longer time scales which helps in this data overload and knowing what to do.
For example, I notice a lot of clients like to look at day to day stuff. Can't do that.
Or they look at week to week, eh - that's not too bad.
I generally look at month to month or quarter to quarter and if the numbers ( average ) are good at that time frame, that's it. Too much can happen in a week that is "false data" in my experience and makes too much noise.
If we are hitting metrics on month to month, I don't look further as there is no need to a lot of times.
But it's only when the 1 single metric Im judging goes bad over the month ( in this client it may be NC CPA ). by more than 15% do I start looking at others and digging in.
2. I think this is where 25+ years experience comes in.. which isn't a great answer for you if you don't have it.
In that time, I know what types of creative work ( in general, each brand IS different ) and I know where to get it and how to make it. Same with data analysis.
So I can run SuperMetrics or another related tool and get data daily on every metric I need into a Excel sheet and it just appends the data to the next row. Then I have other sheets in that Excel file that do VLOOKUP and finds and do a bunch of formulas on the sheet with the daily updates and does pivot tables too ( well I have run those, but it's largely done for me ) and then I can use color formatting to "heat map" my data now.
With that I can easily spot trends in my data and the data analysis is done in 5 minutes, if that. Ai is making this easy for people now too.. but Im not sure I need Ai for that because my system is pretty well run for me in how I do things.
For all the creative stuff, it's like swipe files. You should have swipe files of things you know work. I no longer need a physical or digital version of this. I've had so many and looked the over for so long, I know what creative is needed and when in my head now. But because I basically memorized them, I had swipe files of what I knew worked based on my experience and what I seen prior.
I also read alot and pay attention to other people's accounts and what worked for them when I audit their accounts. This all plays into knowing what in general works.
And then there is "buying assets", like https://creative-donut.com/ which are templates in Canva ready for you to simply edit right in Canva.
So imagine over 25 years how many assets I've bought from similar places like this. Imagine how many scripts I've written and seen ( and stole ) from others. Imagine how many video tools and shortcuts and macros I've made and bought.
Now combine that with all the books and training ( conferences, shows, etc ) on copywriting, behavioral physiology, sales, marketing, and more I've read and highlighted and used in my career.
Mix that all up now and you end up with what makes someone with 25+ years so valuable. And I don't think there is a good shortcut for that other than getting started doing the same things, now.
Like I can go into an ads account and in just 5 minutes tell you:
1. What marketing awareness level you write all your ads at, and what you are missing.
2. What types of static or video ads you make, and all the ones you havent tried yet
3. Where the leak in your funnel is
4. How much testing you've done and what you focused on and where you missed
5. How to correct all that and what scripts you need and visuals you need and what pain points you didnt talk about with your prospective customer yet.
You can create Ai tools that can do like 85% of this. I have several I've made but that's only because I use them as "checklists" instead of relied upon knowledge. I forget more than I know, so having a tool checklist me is valuable these days so I don't miss something, not because the tool is doing something I don't know how to do.
In the grand scheme of things, it's sad how little you do need to know once you realize it.
Meaning, lets take scripts.
There are only 3 frameworks you really need to know to write a good script or landing page. If you follow any of the 3 and just replace the words with the ones tied to your brand and product, you have done almost any and all the work you can do within reason. The rest is just pushing chairs around on the Titanic.
How do I know there is only 3 you need? Because I've researched and used more than 3 dozen over my career. And honestly they all do about the same metrics-wise. So I narrowed it down to 3 because there is no sense in doing more really.
I'm not saying to do the least or not do more, but sometimes it's a lot easier than people make it out to be once you get over the hill you're trying to climb.
3. These are questions I really couldn't answer without knowing everything about your niche really. I don't know what the wall is in this niche, what you think a wall is vs what supply and demand actually is, how high the scale really can be, etc. I can assume things, but these are questions that aren't easily answerable on the surface.
But I can tell you, there are single person operations in the marketing world/paid ads world doing $10m easily a year. Many more doing more. If they can do it, why not you?
4. I'm a freelancer. I don't want the joys of employees or VA's ( been there and done that ).
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