From Leads to Revenue: The Marketing Story Unveiled

Join Anthony Karls and James Patterson from Rocket Clicks in this episode of Revenue Roadmap. Learn about effective measurement and tracking in paid media campaigns, how to connect marketing efforts to revenue, and ensuring you're asking the right questions to your marketing experts for optimal results.

00:00 Introduction to Revenue Roadmap
01:01 Meet James Patterson: Marketing Expert
03:49 Diving into Paid Media
03:59 Understanding Measurement and Tracking
06:00 The Importance of ROAS
06:47 Building a Marketing Waterfall
14:01 Challenges with Platform Metrics
19:03 Evaluating Your Marketing Strategy
22:24 Conclusion and Next Steps

Check out our blog here!

#DigitalMarketing #Sales #BusinessGrowth

Curious to discover your personalized roadmap to scaling a law firm, no matter where you are in the business?

Follow these steps:

1. BOOK A FREE 30-MINUTE AUDIT WITH US: https://rocketclicks.com/schedule-a-family-law-quick-audit/

2. CONNECT WITH US:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonykarls/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/rocket-clicks

Facebook: http://facebook.com/2311.karls.anthony

http://facebook.com/RocketClicks

Instagram: http://instagram.com/karls.anthony

https://www.instagram.com/rocketclicks/

3. TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT:

Tell me in the comments if you liked this podcast and what other kinds of topics you would like to see.

Transcript

Anthony Karls: 0:00

All right. Welcome, welcome. So this is Revenue Roadmap, where we talk about sales and marketing for local entrepreneurs. So I'm Anthony Carls, president of RocketClicks. Today, I'm with James Patterson and I'm sorry, he's not the author. He is the marketer. Uh, don't thank him for the books. Uh, but so James is one of our paid media experts here. At Rocket Clicks. And today we're going to be talking with him. So James, thanks for, thanks for joining us.

James Patterson: 0:25

Yeah, it's great to be here.

Anthony Karls: 0:27

So, all right. So our topic today is we are going to be in the realm of paid media, and we're going to be talking about measurement tracking and platforms. So James has got some words of wisdom here as it pertains to that. Like always, we are going to be connecting. These topics to revenue. How did these impact driving revenue for your business? And number two, how do you know as a local entrepreneur, whether or not this is being done well? So if you work with a freelancer agency, or you got, you got some schmo like, like James working on this internally, you can ask him all the right questions. So, uh, So James, before we dig in there, so what is, what's your history with marketing? How long have you been in marketing? How'd it get started? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

James Patterson: 1:11

Yep. So, uh, graduated college in 2017. So I've been in, uh, marketing ever since. Um, you know, it was kind of choosing my path. I had an attraction towards digital, just knowing that, you know, probably the place to be with the way the world is changing. had the opportunity to actually work for a, um, really small business. And they basically had no marketing Um, whatsoever. So they decided to go cheap and they hired a kid straight out of college who didn't really know what he was doing to do marketing. Um, but it forced me to learn a lot about it. And, um, really the fortunate thing for me is I got to, um, learn what I like to do within it and, and where I had interest. Um, from there I worked for a big, um, corporation in Wisconsin here. Um, I was part of the digital marketing team there. Um, kind of similarly, I had an opportunity to do kind of jack of all trades type work, actually. Ironically, um, now much more paid than, than anything else. But, uh, starting out, I actually was doing more SEO work than I was paid. Ended up, uh, kind of liking the paid side of the business a little bit more. So really kind of dive, dived into that. Um, kind of got to a point in my career was like, Hey, I'd like to, uh, join kind of a team of, of experts realizing agency life is really the place for that. Um, you know, kind of the rest is history. So I've been at RocketClick since, uh, 2021. and yeah, it's been a great ride. So my story.

Anthony Karls: 2:36

And why did, so why'd you pick marketing as a career? What, what interests you about it? What's uh, what's intriguing?

James Patterson: 2:43

Yeah. So it's kind of a funny story. So, um, my mom was an HR and she's kind of my role model in my career. Yeah. Um, so I knew I was, I was always attracted to business of some sort and I didn't know where to go. And, um, I think if you probably, you know, surveyed a large group of marketers that probably all would say this, or a large percentage of them was like, nah, just kind of sounded good. Um, so that's what I went with. I went with it. Um, you know, obviously going, uh, with the marketing, um, degree and going through the coursework and stuff like that, I was really attracted to the idea of like, you know, Being able to understand the kind of psychographic elements to selling things and stuff like that. So, um, really when I started getting through those college courses are really reinforced, I was in there in the right space, but I was this close to, to being a sales guy, but, uh, uh, stayed on the light side of things here and, uh, it out with marketing.

Anthony Karls: 3:35

Nice. Well, like we say here, sales marketing is the same thing. Sales is, sales is one to one, marketing is one to many, so you still got it in the sales.

James Patterson: 3:45

Yep.

Anthony Karls: 3:45

All right, so let's jump into, let's jump into some of this. So, paid media, we, we talked in a couple episodes about kind of how to think about it, what it is overall. So we're, today we're talking about measurement and tracking. So let's start first on the measurement side. So James, tell us a little bit about what we. What we think about as it pertains to measurement, um, measuring success with our paid campaigns, how do we think about it? What are, what are things we look for? Just give us an overview.

James Patterson: 4:16

Yeah. So, I mean, I think measurement is probably the, one area that I think most clients, especially when we're kind of kicking off with them or are most interested in, or feeling unsure if they're doing the right things in terms of, um, you know, kind of really understanding what, what is, what are these marketing tactics actually doing for my business? Um, we see a lot of tendencies where businesses are really looking at the front end metrics, right? So like coming to us and like, Hey, is this, you know, is this impression share good? Is this cost per click good? Um, even, you know, a little bit further down looking at cost per lead or conversion rates and things like that. Um, those are places where I think a lot of, uh, businesses start when they're looking at, um, different channels that they're running as, as places for success. Um, where we really see things working best with clients is going much further than just those front facing metrics, because it really doesn't tell the whole story. like in an ideal state, these businesses are actually building a marketing waterfall, so to speak. So seeing basically from. Start to, to finish in terms of, um, you know, completed sale to getting, you know, actually leads in their businesses that are starting out as users, going to clicks, so on and so forth, their way through the pipeline is kind of what's the return there. So like how much revenue, um, am I actually generating per, you know, customer acquisition or whatever your business is. Um, and tying that back to your actual CPL there. So opposed to taking a CPL out of just Google, which is like really doesn't tell you a whole lot. You can really tie it back to ROAS, make sure you're getting a healthy return on ad spend and then getting an actual accurate CPL, especially as it pertains to those higher quality leads really at that sales qualified level versus marketing qualified or even higher in a lot of cases.

Anthony Karls: 5:57

Yeah. So let's just talk about that. Let's talk about two things. So like first, what is ROAS? So you threw that out there. What does that, what does that mean?

James Patterson: 6:04

Yeah, so ROAS is return on ad spend, so it's really, you know, how much money am I putting in and then getting back per, you know, my activity on a given channel. So, um, you can calculate that on, in terms of like how much, you know, marketing spend do you have going into this channel? How much leads am I getting at the end of the day? How many customers am I getting at the end of the day? So instead of looking again at kind of the front facing side of that is like, you can get a row as even if you're a lead generation business, like you can calculate what your average value per customer is and things like that. And really tie it back to that marketing spend overall to understand really what is your return on all of the marketing costs associated with running your business.

Anthony Karls: 6:43

Yeah. So in that, you talked about a marketing waterfall. So let's talk a little bit about that. You mentioned lead, you mentioned, you mentioned MQL, you mentioned SQL, and you mentioned sales. So like, and then you mentioned revenue. So like. Yeah. Walk me through, through these things. Cause I think you also said users and clicks and you said a bunch of stuff. So like walk me through what we, what we start requesting from our clients when we start engaging with them. So we can build that and we can move towards off platform metrics and towards more of a ROAS type scenario.

James Patterson: 7:17

Yep. So it is going to vary, obviously, like every business we work with may, may have different levels to this, but generally speaking, what we're looking for is some, is kind of a flow like this is users. How many clicks are coming from, you know, different channels within your different tactics, how many leads are generated from that and which place you can, you know, kind of determine what your rate is from all those users and clicks coming into your site and then ultimately converting to a lead. Then from there, obviously that lead is going to undergo some process within your sales pipeline, you know, talking to the call center, maybe they're talking to a provider at your health spot, whatever the case may be. then is, you know, the, the transition from just kind of an inbound lead to a marketing qualified lead. there, they're then talking to a sales team member or maybe some, you know, some expert kind of down the line in terms of your business from there, you know, is there some type of rate we can calculate from a marketing qualified lead to then a sales qualified lead? So meaning,

Anthony Karls: 8:14

So Mark, sorry to cut you off. So a marketing qualified lead is what is that more specifically? So basically I'm a lead and then I go to a marketing qualified lead. What is that?

James Patterson: 8:25

yeah, so like, think about it this way. So if, if a lead was coming into your business, all they have to do, right, is either call or maybe the, you know, a lot of cases to fill out a form. Well, somebody could fill out your form and it could be a college student. It could be a bot, you know, it can be all kinds of different things. So you still need some evaluation process from just like receiving the contact information or the, or the call from the person to evaluate. This is somebody that I should actually have talked to my sales team member, whoever. Kind of the next layer down is in terms of your customer acquisition strategy. So it's really that first step of, of like, um, ensuring quality in terms of this person is looking for my service. They understand, you know, generally what we're offering and they can move forward to kind of the next step.

Anthony Karls: 9:06

Yeah. So then a sales qualified lead is basically a marketing qualified lead that sets an appointment for most of our clients. That's usually what it looks like. Is that kind of what you're saying?

James Patterson: 9:16

Exactly. So working, um, with a law firm, what that looks like as a marketing qualified lead, they would be getting into the system and hand it off to like an attorney to actually have. Conversation with that attorney about their case and, you know, uh, interest in, in potentially moving forward and hiring that attorney ultimately.

Anthony Karls: 9:32

Got it. And then from there. Then we're taught then it's did this turn into a client. Is that correct?

James Patterson: 9:39

Exactly. Yep. So from there, sales qualified lead, obviously kind of, depending on your business, you know, maybe they don't really stay in that, in that, um, status very long in some businesses like the law firm, like, you know, usually people need to think about it. There's a kind of a consideration phase from there. Um, but yeah, ultimately the goal is, you know, your sales qualified leads, you're converting those at a pretty. Um, high rate, just knowing that they've kind of gone through all these stages throughout that journey.

Anthony Karls: 10:03

Awesome. So, and then what we wanted then so then that's we have a sale that sale has revenue associated with it, whether it's contracted or immediate, and that's the number you're actually trying to plug back into whatever marketing platform they're using.

James Patterson: 10:19

Exactly. So like best case scenario is you can look back, you know, in time, you know, it's over the course of, you know, probably two years, something like that. I mean, it can be short if you don't have that data, but longer, the better to determine what is the value of the average customer that we get. and what's that average revenue. Cause if you have that number. Then you can work back all the way to the top and determine what's actually the value of just that first step, just a click coming in or the, you know, the first step in the inbound lead. Um, and you can work yourself down there to really understand what's the true value at each step. And then what's the return necessary, obviously at the end of it all to make it all make sense from a marketing costs perspective.

Anthony Karls: 11:03

So when we're thinking about, so, and so we, we talked about cost per lead at the beginning and a lot of people start there and that's, you're probably tracking phone calls and you're probably tracking just like web form submissions. So if I have, if I have revenue back in my platform, how does that change that number and what does that give you the power to do as a paid media expert?

James Patterson: 11:27

Yeah, exactly. So like one of the things that we see a lot, just to like show it an example is like, let's say on average last year you're getting like a 50 CPL and you're not everything back to revenue in your business. And so here's the next year you're expecting about a 50 CPL. And let's say things are starting to increase a little bit, right? Now things are more like a 75 CPL for a business. That's not tying this back to revenue. Sirens are going off, right? They're like, Oh my God, what's happening? I can't afford this. This is, you know, that's going to compound naturally, right? Well, if you're doing everything correctly in terms of the tying it back to your kind of backend metrics in your business, can actually, you know, show or prove that maybe I actually can afford to spend 25 more because maybe those leads that are coming in are actually generating higher value than let's say our average that we've determined through all these exercises. So that's really where it comes into, into play is like. If you get so focused on those front end metrics, what you could be is like, you know, you're saying, Oh, I want to keep my CPL low. Cause I'm trying to protect my business and my business health and financials. You actually could be indirectly hurting your business, getting too caught up on rising CPLs, for example, unless you have those metrics and can really tie it back. Cause there, you know, of course there is, there is a, uh, too expensive lead that probably exists in your business. But if you're not doing all those steps. You don't truly know what that number is to make sure that you're getting the return that's, that's necessary.

Anthony Karls: 12:54

From, uh, from a learning perspective on some of these platforms, um, like specifically Google, I know we, we do this a lot for a lot of our clients in Google. Um, What does this allow us to do from a strategy and actually leveraging the power of their AI versus like, all we have is a call and a web form. Like what, what's the difference in performance?

James Patterson: 13:17

Yeah. It's, it's usually drastic. I will say that because especially if you can, if you're using systems like Salesforce or other CRMs, or you can tie back metrics from your system. A lot of times you can actually understand like which part of your campaign strategy or platform strategy is actually driving, you know, the most number of those sales qualified leads, for example, and things like that. Um, so what you're going from is kind of a, uh, thumb and, you know, finger in the wind type scenario on the kind of, uh, first version to like, no, we know specifically this campaign is a big driver of our revenue. And if we were to turn this off, Even though we're seeing, you know, kind of normal fluctuations or the case may be in performance front facing. We know on the backend that things are really healthy and, you know, it's critical to our operation.

Anthony Karls: 14:00

Yeah. So, um, We got one more question in here. So what about how accurate are the, the metrics that we're seeing in the platform when we're measuring, even when we're measuring return on ad spend, whether we're measuring that or CPL or any variant there they're in, what's the general accuracy that we see? And like, how do we think about the in platform metrics and why is it so important to look at the offline?

James Patterson: 14:32

Yeah. So basically the only metrics that you can guarantee are close to a hundred percent accurate are going to be your offline metrics for sure. Um, the problem is, is that a lot of these platforms, right? It's attribution is going to vary. We have the changes in, in all of these privacy laws that have been I'm sure a lot of people are aware of at this point, third party cookies. I think everybody, even people that aren't in this industry are, are, are hearing these things in the news and whatnot. Um, the more and more of these, these laws go into place, um, the, the less and less accurate these platforms can be at really telling us if, you know, it's, it's driving, um, you know, leads or the performance that kind of we're expecting from it. making it more critical to really go through the exercise of creating a business waterfall. So you can really understand outside of what's in that platform, what is actually happening as we're spending money in these different channels, or the case may be to. Um, you know, help our business grow or to our detriment. Do we need to scale back? You know, that's, that's always fun too, right? It's like, we, we see sometimes working with clients, it's like, well, actually we're doing really well and we need to like take the, take the gas off the fire because we know our metrics are working so well, so, um, yeah, unfortunately the, the front facing metrics especially are going to get less and less, um, accurate kind of, as we move forward. It makes really. Being able to tie your backend numbers to your marketing, you know, um, strategy overall more and more critical to really understand how these platforms are playing into your business growth and goals for the year.

Anthony Karls: 16:07

So just as like, uh, I know the rule of thumb we typically talk about here internally is the, it's, it's about 60 to 70 percent accurate when we look at an attribution perspective. And I think you talked about it really well, um, as it pertains to tracking, which is our next topic. So just to like cap off measurement. So why is it so important to like, if you're going to be entering paid strategy to, to understand this and to invest in, you know, The connections of data for driving revenue.

James Patterson: 16:39

Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest thing is this is like, you know, if you're, if you are relying on these platforms to help grow your business, You're looking at the wrong things. You're, you're more likely to make a mistake in terms of evaluating it. So like understanding the tracking isn't perfect is a big part of that puzzle is like, Hey, we need to figure out how we can track this with our own data, right? You're at the end of the day, you're, you're the business, you own the, the customer data to really tie that back to understand what's working and what's not. Cause if you rely so closely on what's in platform. You know, it's like I said, you, you could be, you could think you're really healthy business and actually, you know, your, your, your spend or strategy is not working and driving a return that's profitable for you. And to hit your goals this year or vice versa, you could be putting caps on things and, and potentially kind of shooting yourself in the foot because you're looking at these front facing metrics or, you know, I don't think we're getting enough leads from Google specifically, but what really could be happening is that maybe Google is not getting credit for everything that that it's driving. Um, it's always fun doing experiments and stuff with businesses. Um, being, uh, strikes out as, as an example where, you know, front facing metrics, we were seeing things weren't super strong. Um, so one day someone just said, Hey, why don't we just turn that thing off? And, you know, it doesn't really do anything. Well, because we had good access to the backend numbers, as soon as we turned that off, all of a sudden we saw, we saw something weird. We just saw our CPL, uh, continue to increase across our whole marketing waterfall. It's like, what's going on here? All of a sudden we're getting, we're paying more for, for leads than ever. And we just took out a bunch of spend. We paused a whole channel. Well, it turned out that yeah, it all goes back to this. The tracking and attribution is just not, not all that great. looking at just the front facing metrics, you're going to make Decisions like this, because you don't truly know if it's, if it's playing a factor in, in achieving your goals. And sure enough, um, we put Bing back on and all of a sudden that CPL went right on back down to where we wanted it. So it's, always a fun, fun example to call out. Cause it's like, yeah, if you, if you stay focused on the front, you're pro, unless you have a really strong back, backend system to really measure this, like you could be, you know, causing detriment to your, to your marketing operation. That was definitely a fun lesson we learned.

Anthony Karls: 19:04

Uh, so, so if I'm, if I'm working with a freelancer agency or someone internally, how do I know, how do I know I'm being guided correctly? Like what should I be looking for?

James Patterson: 19:17

Yeah. I, I would say a big red flag is a lot of what we just talked about in terms of like, what, what's the data they're bringing you, like, are they, are they coming to your, you know, monthly meetings or whatever your cadence is or giving you reports and it's all just front facing metrics, like, it's just like, Hey, we drove this many leads and it's the conversion column and Google ads, and this is the CPL we're getting in, um, providing insight there. Um, I would say that would be kind of a red flag to me. Cause. Agencies at this point in the game, knowing all these changes to data, privacy and stuff, it's like, this isn't groundbreaking that, that we really need to tie back marketing performance to your, your business and the financials and understanding values and things like that. Cause if you're not doing that, then yeah, it's just finger in the air. So that would be a red flag. I would say a green flag is very much the opposite. If you're coming to a call, like I always call it out, you know, Ro we've been talking about row as. A lot, a lot of businesses think that's an e com metric. That is definitely not an e com metric. That could, that is applicable to any business that exists. If you're spending money on marketing costs, you're getting some revenue from your customer acquisition. You should, you can tie back revenue to the costs acquired to drive leads for your business. So if they're bringing things like that. Despite you being a lead generation business, um, for example, then I would say you're, you're probably working with a pretty good partner.

Anthony Karls: 20:39

What are some of the questions that will be asking me? As the, as the local business owner, like, what, what should I expect them to be asking for me? You're like, they're, they're asking me for, they're asking me for information. I'm like, why are you asking me for that? But so like, what are the, I should be, I should be considering as like a good, a good signal that I'm being managed. Well,

James Patterson: 21:00

Yes. So a couple of things. So timelines, like I talked about earlier, plays a big part in this too. I would say metrics that they should be looking at is leads your whole business. Um, categories like we talked about. So you should have some, um, you know, different differentiation between a lead, a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead. So usually you'd want to see all three of those metrics if possible. And then of course, you know, funded customers or however you want to say that completed acquisition in terms of, of the customers coming in. Um, the timeline piece to the, to this is huge though, too. So like, if they're like, Hey, we want last month's only. Um, I think there's a better version of that for sure. We probably want to be looking at things like up to two years, maybe even further to really see what the pattern is. Like where, where are you guys at for a business? Um, that's going to help the agency really plug in and determine like, Hey, what do we need to do with our strategy? To either stop this, you know, maybe negative pattern or on the opposite side, not play a negative role in a very positive pattern, for example. So I really think it'd be those. And then of course, you know, revenue coming in from, from those levels from there, generally they can calculate the different, um, you know, metrics that they would need. So like a lead to marketing qualified lead rate. sales qualified lead rate, uh, you know, value of each of those different lead statuses and things like that.

Anthony Karls: 22:22

awesome. This has been great. I appreciate it, James.

James Patterson: 22:26

Yeah, it's been fun. Thanks for having me.

Anthony Karls: 22:28

Yeah. Thank you for this. And then we'll, uh, continue picking up next time.

James Patterson: 22:34

Awesome. Looking forward to it.

Anthony Karls: 22:36

Thanks.