Stop Guessing: How to Know What’s Working in Your Marketing

If you've ever felt like your course or membership marketing is just guesswork, or you can't confidently say which marketing activities are actually bringing in students, this episode will transform how you approach marketing.

Most course creators and membership owners are flying completely blind—posting on multiple platforms, running webinars, sending emails, but having no idea which activities are actually generating enrollments. They make decisions based on what feels right rather than what the data tells them, and it's costing them time, money, and sanity.

In this episode, I'm breaking down exactly how to measure what's working in your digital business marketing through simple, practical methods that give you clear answers—no complicated analytics dashboards or expensive tracking software required.

You can't improve what you don't measure. This episode shows you exactly what to track and how to use that data to make smarter marketing decisions.

Connect with me

Website: www.newschoolofmarketing.com
Facebook: @newschoolofmarketing
Instagram: @bianca_mckenzie

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https://newschoolofmarketing.com/accelerate

🔵 MARKETING MOMENTUM: a 6-week 1:1 mentoring package designed to get your marketing unstuck. With three strategy-packed sessions and personalised support, you’ll gain clarity, confidence, and a plan that actually moves your business forward—no more guesswork or going it alone.
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Transcript

Hey. Welcome to the New School of Marketing podcast. I'm Bianca McKenzie, and this is the place where we break down marketing strategies that actually work without the overwhelm. Before we dive in, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land I live and work on, the Palawa people of lutruwita.

I pay my respects to elders past and present, and I acknowledge the deep connection they have to this land, culture and community.

Now let's dive in and make marketing work for you.

So if you've ever felt like your course or membership marketing is just guesswork,

or if you can't actually confidently say which marketing activities are bringing in the students or members,

or if you're making decisions based on what feels right rather than what the data tells you,

then this episode is going to transform how you approach marketing.

Today, we're talking about how to actually measure what's working in your digital business marketing.

Not through complicated analytics dashboards or like expensive tracking software, but through simple, practical methods that give you clear answers. Because here's the truth.

You can't improve what you don't measure. We've all heard that right?

And most course creators and membership owners are flying completely blind with their marketing decisions.

Let's start by acknowledging how most course creators and membership owners currently make marketing decisions.

You try something because you saw another course creator have success with it.

Maybe it's Instagram reels or a launch webinar or LinkedIn content.

You do it for a few weeks, and if it doesn't immediately generate obvious sales, you assume it's not working and then you're going to move on to the next thing.

Or maybe you you're creating content across multiple platforms,

running webinars, sending email, posting in Facebook groups,

basically staying busy with marketing activities, but you have no idea which ones are actually bringing in enrollments.

You just keep doing all the things because you're afraid to stop something that might be secretly working.

And here's what that usually looks like in practice.

I hear people say things like I think most of my students come from Instagram, but I'm not sure.

Or I'm posting on Facebook, on LinkedIn and Instagram because I feel like I should be everywhere or I hear people say things like I ran a webinar last month, but I only got two sales, so I don't know if it's worth doing again or I think people find me through my podcast,

but maybe it's YouTube. I don't actually track it. If this sounds familiar.

It'S what marketing without measurement looks like.

And it's really expensive in both time and potential Course sales okay,

before we dive into the how,

let's talk about why measuring your marketing matters even more when you're selling courses and memberships.

The first reason is that digital products have different buying journeys.

Someone doesn't usually buy a course the first time they see it.

Sometimes, yes,

but not usually.

They might consume your free content for a few weeks or months before enrolling,

and without tracking, you can't see which touch points actually matter in that journey.

Reason number two is that you can't feel digital sales patterns like you can with service clients.

So when you're doing client work, you often have a sense of your pipeline through conversations with your courses and memberships.

People can buy silently at like 2am without ever talking to you, so you need data to understand patterns.

Reason number three is launch success compounds on data.

If you run launches repeatedly without measuring what worked and what didn't, you you're basically starting from scratch every single time.

Course creators who measure can improve their launch conversion rates by 2x or 3x over time.

Reason number 4 Membership retention depends on understanding behavior.

You can't actually improve retention if you don't know when and why people cancel.

If you don't know what content they engage with or what they're doing journey looks like from joining to leaving.

Reason number five is content ROI matters.

You're probably creating a lot of free content,

so which pieces actually lead to core sales or membership signups?

Without tracking that, you're guessing about what content is actually worth your time.

So here's where most course creators and membership owners go wrong with measurement.

They track vanity metrics that make them feel good, but they don't actually connect to enrollments or revenue.

And these are vanity metrics that I don't want you to obsess over.

They are follow account,

post likes,

webinar registrations and hold on to that because yes, it is important, but webinar registrations are not important.

If you're not also tracking show up rates and conversion rates.

Video views is another one,

or page visits to your sales page. Yes,

page visits are important,

but not if you're also not tracking purchases.

All of these metrics might indicate reach,

but they don't actually indicate revenue.

You can have 50,000 followers and sell three courses or you can have 2,000 followers and sell 200.

So here are the metrics that actually matter for digital businesses.

Maybe you want to grab a pen and paper and write these down or you can find them back in the show notes.

The first one is lead magnet conversion rate.

So what percentage of people who see your lead magnet actually download it or sign up for it?

Because this tells you if your freebie is actually compelling.

I generally want this to be over 50% but that is high by industry standards.

The average is usually more 30 to 40% but I'm a high achiever so I will let you test yours and figure it out.

The second one is email list growth.

So how many new subscribers are you adding monthly?

And this is your growing audience asset that you can actually sell to repeatedly.

Number three is email to sale conversion rate. So what percentage of your email list buys during a launch or promotion?

Industry standard is 1 to 3% but top performance often hit 5 to 10% especially during a launch.

Number four is your webinar show up rate. If you run webinars,

what percentage of registrants actually actually attend or at least watch the video? Some will watch the replay, but if you can get people to be there live that is even better.

And the benchmark is 20 to 40%.

Number five is your webinar to sale conversion rate.

So of the people who attend your webinar what percentage actually buy? And this tells you if your webinar is effective.

Number six is your launch revenue by source.

So during a launch where did your buyers actually come from? Did they come from email? Did they come from social media? Did they come from organic search? From paid ads?

So your launch revenue per source.

Number seven is your cost per student or your cost per member.

If you're running paid ads, how much does it cost to acquire one student or one member and this must be lower than your customer lifetime value. It's so important to know all these numbers.

Number eight is your member or your student lifetime value. So for memberships especially, how long does the average member stay and what is their total value?

And then number nine.

Content engagement to purchase rate.

So which free content pieces correlate with with higher purchase rates?

So you know Your most viewed YouTube video might not be the one that sells your courses,

it might be your podcast, it might be a social post.

And then number 10 is cart abandonment rate.

So what percentage of people who add your course to cart but don't complete the checkout.

And this identifies friction in your purchase process.

So if a lot of people added to cart but don't check out, there's some friction in that checkout, in that purchase process.

So these metrics directly connect to enrollment and revenue.

They tell you what's working and what's not.

So it's super important to look at them.

All right?

You don't need fancy software or technical expertise to start measuring your course on membership marketing.

I'm going to share a simple system that you can implement right away.

Again, if you don't have any pens or papers nearby or anything like that,

you'll find this in the show notes as well.

So step one, create a launch slash sales tracking spreadsheet. So I want you to set up a simple spreadsheet with these tabs. Tab number one has enrolments.

And inside the enrolments tab,

I want you to track the date of purchase,

name the course or the membership that was purchased, the price that was paid,

how they found you,

how long they've been on your email list,

and the last touch point before purchase. So whether that is a webinar, whether that is an email, whether that is a sales page, so, so last touch point,

every single time someone enrolls, add them to this spreadsheet.

It takes two minutes per enrollment and it gives you really invaluable data.

It just takes a little bit of time to set up the spreadsheet, but once it's set up,

it's going to offer you gold.

All right, tab number two,

I want you to create lead sources.

So I want you to track where new email subscribers are coming from.

And in this tab, I want you to set up date subscribed lead magnet. They downloaded the source.

So is it From Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Podcast, Google referral, Manychat, whatever,

and whether they've purchased yet.

So this is going to help you see which lead magnets and traffic sources actually bring in buyers versus just the freebie seekers.

Okay, so that's step number one, your two tabs, your enrollments, and your lead sources tab.

Step number two is I want you to use UTM parameters for traffic sources.

And I know this might sound a bit complicated, but it's actually easier than it sounds when you share links to your lead magnets or to your sales pages,

add UTM parameters so you can track where traffic comes from.

You might need to have a little bit of a tutorial on how to add UTM parameters and you can find this through googling.

But basically what happens inside of your Google Analytics, you'll be able to see which sources are driving traffic and conversions.

So it'll look a bit like this. So for example, if you have like your Instagram bio link and you add UTM parameters,

it'll like look a bit weird in like you see like your site URL and then you'll have like forward slash freebie.

And then it has the UTM source as Instagram and the UTA and UTM campaign as bio link.

Do a bit of a tutorial on how to use UTM parameters. It's hard to explain this in a podcast,

but it actually is not that hard if you use something like bitly, like link shortener. They also provide basic tracking,

so being able to tell where your traffic comes from is super useful. So that's step number two.

Step number three is tag your email subscribers.

Most email platforms like Mailerlite, ConvertKit, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, they let you tag subscribers based on their behavior.

So here's what I want you to do. I want you to tag people who download specific lead magnets.

I want you to tag people who click specific links.

I want you to tag people who attend webinars and tag people who purchase specific products.

This lets you segment and see patterns like, you know, people who downloaded the whatever lead magnet you have.

And you can then sort of see who's most likely to buy the courses because it'll be like people who downloaded the Meta Ads guide were three times more likely to buy my course than people who downloaded a content calendar.

So you can sort of like track people's paths.

All right, step number four is set up basic website analytics.

If you have a website, which you should for your course sales pages,

set up Google Analytics. It's free and you don't need to understand every single metric,

but I do want you to check these monthly.

So every month I want you to check total visitors to that specific page,

your top traffic sources.

So that's where people are coming from.

I want you to track or look at the top pages. So what content are people viewing most?

And goal completions.

So you need to set up goals for the lead magnet downloads,

for course purchases, and for webinar registrations. If you're doing webinars,

you want to set up these goals because you want to be able to track them.

Again, you will have to do a bit of a tutorial on how to do this, but Google is super, super easy to set this up for.

So spend 10 minutes per month reviewing these numbers and you'll learn more that most course Creators know about their marketing.

Step number five is track course platform data.

So whatever platform hosts your course, whether it's teachable, kajabi, thinkific, go high level, whatever.

Check these metrics.

You want to track enrollment dates and sources if this is available.

You want to track student completion rates, so figure out at which sections people drop off.

You want to track student login frequency.

And if you have a membership, you also want to track your churn rate. So a percentage who cancels each month.

Low completion rates might mean that your course is too long or not engaging enough.

High churn in month two of your membership means that something's broken in your onboarding.

Every single piece of data will tell you a story.

Okay, here's a simple ritual that is going to change your course or membership marketing.

Spend 30 to 60 minutes at the end of each month reviewing your data.

Lock it into your calendar like it's a date. Like it is. You know you're meeting a client.

So what do you do in your monthly review?

Well, you want to review your email list growth every month. How many new subscribers did you add? Which lead magnets attracted them?

What was the source of your new subscribers?

You know, where did they come from? Was it paid traffic? Was it free traffic? And you know,

and how does it compare to last month?

And it's okay if it was less than last month,

you know, you might have had less traffic, but track it because otherwise you don't know.

Another thing, I want you to review your sales and your enrollments. So how many people enrolled in your course or in your membership,

where did they come from? So I want you to tally up the sources from your tracking sheet.

What was the last touch point before they bought and how long had they been on your list before purchasing?

I also want you to track like your conversion rates. So you need to calculate your conversion rates.

So look at your email list to buy conversion rates,

which you can calculate by the number of enrollments divided by the total list size.

I want you to look at webinar registrations. If you're in a webinar, how many registrations, how many attended and how many bought.

I want you to look at lead magnet downloads to email subscribers.

So how many people who have subscribed actually downloaded the lead magnet and sales page visits to purchases.

So out of the people that went to your sales page, how many actually purchased? I also want you to review your content performance.

So which blog posts, videos or social posts got the most engagement?

And not just likes,

save shares, that kind of thing.

More importantly, which Pieces of content did buyers consume before purchasing? And you can ask this in a post purchase survey,

like ask people those kind of questions. And then I want you to identify patterns. Did anything generate unusual results like did you do something this time around that changed things?

Are there any trends over the past three months?

And then which marketing channels are consistently underperforming?

And when you're tracking this, you'll be able to see this because it like it'll be right in front of you.

And then what I want you to do is I want you to make one decision based on what you learned. What's one thing you'll change next month. And just one thing, because if you change too many things, you don't actually know what's going to make the difference.

So you always only change one variable.

Maybe it's creating more content similar to what's converting or maybe testing a new lead magnet or stopping content on a platform that never converts.

Write all of this down in a simple document so that you can actually track changes and your learnings over time. And like I said, only ever change one variable, otherwise you don't know what actually made the difference.

Now, different marketing activities require slightly different tracking approaches for digital products.

So let's break down the most common channels.

Firstly, social media.

Don't just look at likes and followers.

You want to track things like link clicks to your lead magnet.

And you can use trackable links and those UTM parameters.

You want to track DM inquiries about your course or your membership,

comments about asking about your offers and story replies that indicate interest.

Tag anyone who DMs you about your course so you can follow up and you want them to be on your email list so you can tag them.

Some of my best course sales have come from Instagram dms and sometimes even months after the initial conversation.

So you want to tag them so you can actually track.

Okay, the next one is email marketing and this is your most important channel as a course creator.

So you want to be tracking open rates by email,

like really look at what subject lines work and those kind of things.

You want to be tracking click rates so what calls to action and what content actually drives action.

You want to look at unsubscribe rates so if it spikes after a sales email,

maybe your pitch might be too aggressive.

But at the same time, I don't want this to hold you back from selling because we're not running a fan club, we're running a business.

I also want you to track sales by email campaign.

So which emails directly led to Purchases and segment your list. You want to segment your list between people who bought versus people who haven't.

And you want to email them differently.

Your buyers, as in have already bought something in the past. They are your warmest audience for future offers.

The next one is webinars and masterclasses. If you use webinars to sell your courses, which you know, I know many course creators do you really religiously want to track things like registration rate,

so how many people went to your page, like your landing page visitors, and how many people actually registered.

You want to track show up rate out of the people who registered who actually attended.

You want to track replay views. So how many people watched a replay.

You want to track conversion rates out of the people that attended how many people actually bought.

And you want to look at your revenue per webinar.

And if you want to, you can compare live webinar performance to potentially evergreen or automated webinars.

Often live converts better,

but evergreen tends to be more scalable.

The next one is something like YouTube or a podcast channel. So long form content platforms.

So if you have one of those, I want you to track which videos or which podcast episode get the most views or downloads,

look at which ones drive the most traffic to your website. So you really want to be using those UTM links in descriptions and which ones are watched or listened to the most by people who later bought.

And this can be quite tricky.

But this is kind of the thing that you would ask in your post purchase surveys and you might find that your most popular content doesn't sell courses.

While a less popular video or podcast episode with a specific topic actually converts like crazy.

It's super cool to track this kind of stuff. All right, the next one is free challenges or mini courses.

So if you run free challenges to sell your paid course,

you want to be tracking challenge completion rate so who actually finished the challenge.

And you would have to build in ways to kind of do this. Like there's tracking parts in your platform.

But also obviously you need to really encourage people to complete things.

You want to track challenge to sale conversion rates. So who bought also which challenge days see the most drop off because that signals a content issue.

And then you'll be tracking revenue per challenge versus the time invested.

Some course creators find Challenges convert at 10 to 15%,

so they are super, super valuable.

Others find that they really just attracts freebie seekers.

Data will tell you which one you are.

And then there's launch tracking. If you do launches,

you need to track everything.

You need to track your cart open Emails like the open rate, the click rate.

You need to track your daily sales. Did you get like a spike on certain days?

And why could this be?

You need to track sales by traffic, source your total launch revenue, your launch expenses, like ads, software, contractors,

and your email list size at the start of the launch versus the end of the launch.

And you want to compare each launch to the previous one. Your goal is to improve conversion rates over time,

even if your list is not growing massively.

Here's something that makes course marketing measurement really tricky.

Students rarely take a straight path to purchase.

They might discover you on Instagram,

download your free training,

ignore it for three months,

binge your YouTube channel, join your email list from a different lead magnet, get your launch emails,

watch your webinar,

not buy,

and then finally purchase during a flash sale six months later.

So which marketing channel actually gets the credit for that student?

So really the reality of a course buyer journey, Most course buyers need seven to 15 touch points before purchasing.

They might consume your free content for weeks or months.

The marketing that gets the credit, you know, when they tell you I find you on Instagram might not be the marketing that actually convinced them to buy,

which could have been your webinar or your email sequence.

So how do you handle this for digital products?

Well,

you want to use first touch tracking.

When someone purchases your order form should ask, how did you first hear about me?

And this tells you which channel is best for initial awareness.

And then you also want to track the last touch. So you also ask what made you decide to enrol today?

And this reveals what actually triggered the purchase decision.

And often it's a specific email, a webinar, or maybe a content piece.

You also want to send post purchase surveys. So within a week of enrollment,

send a simple survey asking about their entire journey.

And it doesn't need to be a long survey, even though you're asking about their entire journey. But you'll discover patterns. Like, you know,

most people watch like five to 10 YouTube videos before buying,

or people who attend the webinar are 10 times more likely to buy than those who won't.

So then you know that you need to get people their life.

Like, whatever it takes, whatever incentive. You want to use your email platform's data.

So most email platforms show you which emails buyers opened before purchasing. So you want to look for patterns.

And then in the end you also just need to accept some mystery.

You won't be able to attribute everything perfectly. And that is okay.

You need to just let that go. It's okay.

Look for General trends and not precision,

not perfection.

If 70% of buyers mention YouTube, you know that's important.

So don't worry about it being perfect.

Okay, so beyond the specific metrics, there are also warning signs that your digital product marketing isn't effective. So let's have a look at, you know, some red flags that your course or your membership marketing isn't working.

Red flag number one is that your email list is growing, but sales aren't.

If you're adding like 500 subscribers per month, but you're only selling five courses,

something is broken.

Either you're attracting the wrong audience or your sales process isn't working.

And I'm talking about you've got everything set up like, not like you're attracting all these email subscribers, but then you're actually not emailing them because they're not magically going to find out about your course.

But look at that.

Red flag number two is your webinar registrations are high, but the show up rates are low.

So if 500 people register for your webinar but only 50 show up your webinar topic or your timing might be wrong.

So have a look at maybe doing multiple webinars on different days, on different times.

And you might also want to look into your registrations, as in they might not be qualified leads.

So each part of your webinar registration process needs to sort of link to each other.

Like your topic needs to really be clear when they sign up and things like that.

Red flag number three,

high sales page traffic, but no purchases.

If thousands of people visit your sales page but nobody buys your page is not communicating value.

Maybe your price is wrong. Usually it's the messaging, not the pricing.

Or maybe you're attracting the wrong traffic.

So I would look at pricing last.

I would look at messaging first and then obviously there's also traffic.

So you might be sending the wrong traffic.

Red flag number four is people join your membership but cancel within 30 days.

If your membership has a high churn rate in the first month, your onboarding is broken or you're not delivering on your promise.

So look at that.

Red flag number five. Your course completion rate is below 15%.

Low completion might seem like a student problem, but it's actually a marketing problem.

If your students don't get results,

they won't buy your next course or refer others.

So really focus on completion.

Help people with the process.

Red flag number six is you can't explain where your last 10 students came from.

If you genuinely don't know how your most recent students found you you're just not tracking properly and you're flying blind.

These red flags tell you it's time to stop,

to audit what is happening before you actually invest more time and maybe money in marketing that isn't working.

Once you start tracking your marketing, you can start testing improvements and you can do it systematically.

So here's a testing framework for course creators.

The first step is that you need to identify what you want to improve.

Maybe your webinar show up rates low or maybe your email open rates are declining or your sales page has a high bounce rate.

You choose what you need to improve.

Step 2 Form a hypothesis so you might be saying something like I think my webinar show up rate is low because I'm not sending enough email reminders.

If I add a reminder sequence, more people will attend.

So it might be a little bit of guesswork,

but come up with something like that.

Step number three make one change.

And again I will repeat myself.

Only make one change one variable at a time.

Don't change your webinar topic and your email sequence and your registration page all at once.

Only one thing because otherwise you cannot test it properly.

Step number four is measure the result.

So run your webinar with the new reminder sequence.

Did your show up rate improve and if so, by how much?

And then step number five Keep what works and ditch what doesn't.

If your show up rate went from 25% to 40%, keep the new sequence.

If it stayed the same or it got worse,

try something else. And again, one variable at a time.

And here are some example tests that course creators can run.

And again, test one of these at a time. Don't test too many. You can try different lead magnet topics and you can test which ones attract buyers versus freebie seekers.

You can test different webinar titles and hooks.

And it doesn't mean that you need to change the content of your webinar, but testing different titles and hooks is super useful.

You can test different email subject lines,

so test a little bit with that. Sometimes you can do AB testing within the platform.

Test different course pricing I would leave this for last, but it is something that you want to test like you know, 297 versus 497 versus 997.

You can test it Test payment plan options.

Does offering a three part payment plan increase the sales?

Test your sales pace structures.

Maybe you know, flipping it around a little bit might make changes.

Test different course launch timings.

You know, does a Tuesday or a Thursday open cart convert better?

All these things can actually make A difference.

Maybe test some different bonus structures.

The key is being systematic and patient.

I know it's going to take time.

Test one thing,

measure it properly,

and then move on to the next test.

It really does take time.

There's no, you know,

right way or wrong way. It comes down to you knowing your audience really, really well and then starting with some educated guesses and then start tracking.

Okay, so here's a simple dashboard that I recommend for course creators and membership owners. And you can create this in like a spreadsheet in Notion or even just in a physical notebook.

The idea is that you need to track so whatever works for you.

Like I could give you a spreadsheet or something like that, but you need to.

Use what you normally use or what actually make you do it.

There's no point in having a spreadsheet that's like sitting pretty on your drive and you're not using it.

So weekly snapshot. You want to track new email subscribers as a number,

new enrollments as a number and revenue this week, an amount and then also content publish. So what did you actually create and publish then? A monthly overview.

You want to be tracking email list growth.

So total size and the new subscribers.

You want to be tracking subscriber sources.

So you know a breakdown by lead magnet or by channel.

You want to track total enrollments as a number enrollment sources. So where did buyers come from the launch or or promotion revenue, if this is applicable,

your conversion rates.

So the percentage from list to buyer course completion rates,

that's for tracking student success membership churn rate if this is applicable,

your top performing content. So which pieces drove the most engagement on the most traffic.

Track your lessons learned. So key insights from this particular month and then next month's focus. So what are you going to prioritize based on the data from last month?

Also add in launch specific tracking.

So if you did a launch, you want to track your launch revenue versus your goal,

your conversion rate versus your previous launch,

your list size at launch versus your previous launch,

your best performing emails and content,

what to replicate next time and what to change next time.

And that's it.

Two pages that tell you what's working and where to focus.

And you want to review the weekly snapshot just for five minutes and your monthly overview for 30 to 60 minutes. And this is that date that you need to book into your calendar every month.

30 to 60 minutes.

Look at all your data.

So what should you see when your course on membership marketing is working and when you're measuring it properly,

you should be able to say things like.

My meta ads guide, Lead magnet converts at 45% while my content creator converts at 15%.

People who download the meta guide are three times more likely to buy my course, so I'm focusing my traffic there.

So you need to be able to really have that confidence in saying that that Lead magnet converts much better and I'm also getting more sales from that.

Or you might be saying, my email list converts at 2.5% during launches.

I know I need to have about 400 subscribers to sell 10 courses at 4 97,

which means $4,970 in revenue per launch.

You need to be able to go,

yep, if I have this many people on my list and that list converts at this percentage and I charge this much,

then my outcome will be this much.

Literally. It's a numbers game. Launching and selling courses is a numbers game, and knowing the numbers will make it more predictable. You'll be able to say, ah,

I will be able to have this kind of launch.

You also want to be able to say things like, my webinar show up rate is 35% and 12% of attendees buy during or within three days of the webinar.

So when I run a webinar with a hundred registrants, I can expect about 2,000 to $3,000 in sales.

Because you have the numbers,

you know that 35% show up, 12% buy.

So if you have a hundred,

you can calculate your sales people with memberships. You might be saying, my membership churn rate is 8% per month, but members who complete the first weeks.

The first weeks of content only have 3% churn.

So if I'm improving my onboarding and focus on that first week's completion,

I'm going to drop my churn rate.

And this literally is what data informed course marketing sounds like.

It'll be specific, it'll be confident and actionable. Because you know your numbers,

it becomes very predictable.

Now let's talk about the mistakes that invalidate your data and actually leads to bad decisions.

Because data, it's.

It can be a little bit of a minefield.

And not everyone likes looking at numbers. But you really need to.

All right, mistake number one is to only track during launches.

If you only measure during your twice yearly launches, you miss all the data about what content and what lead magnets work between your launches.

So you need to track consistently, not just during promotion periods.

Mistake number two is not connecting students back to their source.

Most course platforms don't automatically tell you where the students came from.

You need to ask this during the checkout or in a post purchase survey,

because otherwise you're guessing.

Mistake number three is assuming correlation equals causation.

Your email list grew by 500 the same month you sold 50 courses. That's exciting.

But were those 500 new subscribers the ones who bought or did the sales come from your existing list?

You need to dig deeper.

So don't assume that correlation equals causation.

Just because you had 500 new people on your list, it doesn't mean that the 50 buyers are from that 500 new people.

They could be,

you know,

people are already on your list, so do some digging. Mistake number four,

not tracking student success.

Your course completion rate directly impacts future sales through referrals, through repeat purchases.

So if you're not tracking whether students finish and get results,

you're missing crucial data.

Mistake number five,

comparing yourself to others benchmarks. And I know this is a massive trap for us course creators, especially because there's a lot of people marketing about,

you know, or two course creators. So this can be huge.

So someone says their webinar converts at 20% and yours converts at 5%,

but their audience, their price point, their topic are completely different.

Compare yourself to yourself over time.

There's massive differences within industries.

Within audiences, within price points. You really cannot compare yourself to other people's success.

It's just apples and oranges. So you can, however,

have your own benchmark and start comparing yourself to yourself over time.

Mistake number six is ignoring small sample sizes.

If you run a webinar with 12 attendees and two people buy,

that's a 16% conversion rate.

But it's also too small of a sample to be meaningful. You need larger numbers before you actually can draw conclusions.

So yes, you have a 16% conversion rate,

but can you multiply that?

Can you grow that? And will it still be 16% conversion rate? You can't just go by the one sample and the small one small sample.

Okay.

The hardest part of measurement isn't setting up systems, it's actually maintaining them.

And I want you to make it stick.

That's why I kind of said, you know, lock in dates and you come unknown stuff, but here's how you can make it part of your workflow.

So when someone enrolls,

immediately add them to your tracking sheet. It takes like two minutes or have a VA do this for you.

At the end of each week,

I want you to update your weekly snapshot. That's like five minutes.

And at the last day of each month,

do your monthly review.

Lock in that 30 to 60 minutes like schedule it in,

do your monthly review.

I also want you to automate what you can.

So use something like Zapier,

which is a linking software. I use it. You can use Zapier to automatically add new email subscribers to a Google sheet with their source.

It's like one of those, you know, if this happens, then that happens. You can do that. Set up automatic post purchase surveys that feed into a spreadsheet.

You can do this with Google Sheets,

super easy.

Use your course platform's built in analytics rather than manual tracking where possible.

And most of them have analytics to some degree.

I also want you to create accountability.

So maybe find an accountability partner and share your monthly metrics with them.

You might even want to do this monthly thing like this monthly review together so you like it's a date like it's scheduled in and I want you to set goals based on your data and track your progress.

And one other thing that I really want you to do is to celebrate when you improve your numbers.

I know it's sometimes really hard to do this for ourselves because we are mostly focused on serving our members,

serving our course students,

serving our clients.

I am no different here.

I celebrate all of my client wins with my clients.

But I sometimes forget to celebrate my own. So definitely celebrate when you improve your numbers. And another thing is I want you to start small.

If tracking feels overwhelming,

start with just email list growth and your enrollment sources. So where did they come from?

That is super valuable information.

And your email list grows. You should be able to just pull that from your email marketing software.

So start with that and then you can add more metrics over time.

When you've got that habit down,

something is better than nothing.

Knowing where your sales come from and you know, looking at your email list goes,

that is a good start.

So there you have it. How to stop guessing and actually start knowing what's working in your course or membership marketing.

The key takeaway for you is this.

You don't need complicated funnels or expensive tracking software. You just need to track the metrics that matter for digital products.

And you need to review them consistently and then make decisions based on the data instead of guesswork.

So here's your action step for this week.

Set up your simple enrollment tracking spreadsheet today.

Just create those basic columns, date,

name,

course or membership purchased, how they found you last touch point before purchase,

and then commit to filling it in every single time someone enrols for the next month.

At the end of the month,

analyze where your students actually came from and I guarantee you will learn something that changes how you spend your marketing time and you probably discover that your assumptions about what's working are wrong.

All right, if you found this episode helpful and you want more practical no BS marketing advice specifically for course creators and membership owners,

I have two favors to ask.

First,

make sure you're subscribed to the new School of Marketing podcast so you don't miss any future episode. We release new episodes every week with strategies that you can implement.

Second,

if this episode helped you see your marketing more clearly,

would you please leave a review?

It only takes two minutes, but it makes a massive difference in helping other course creators and membership owners discover the show. Here's the thing. I read every single review and I want to say thank you to you.

So if you leave a review and send me a screenshot via email or DM on Instagram,

I will send you my Marketing Momentum playbook for free.

I normally charge for this.

It's not just another template, it's actually the complete framework that I use with my clients to build their entire marketing foundation from scratch.

Inside, you'll get clear worksheets and prompts to nail down your goals.

Define your ideal customer beyond basic demographics.

Clarify your offer and positioning so that you stand out.

Map your complete customer journey from stranger to buyer.

Create your traffic plan for getting discovered.

Build your content plan around what actually converts.

Set up your email and lead generation system.

Identify the metrics that matter for your business.

Allocate your budget and resources strategically and create a realistic 90 day action plan that you can actually follow.

I know, this is why I normally charge for this.

It's everything you need to stop guessing and start building a marketing system that actually works works for your course or membership business.

So just take a screenshot of your review and send it to me at hello biancamackenzie.com or DM me on Instagram and you'll find me at Bianca McKenzie McKenzie and I'll get the Playbook over to you straight away.

Remember, most successful course creators and membership owners aren't the ones with the biggest audiences.

They're the ones who know what's working and do more of it.

So stop guessing,

start tracking,

and watch your enrollment numbers transform.

Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the new School of Marketing podcast.

Remember, data beats intuition every time when it comes to growing your digital business.

I'm Bianca McKenzie and I'll catch you in the next episode.

Until then, keep make marketing work for you.