762: From Data to Direction: 5 Interesting Insights from Our Biz Numbers

0:01Okay, I have been on this ruthless pursuit to purge any clothes that I'm not actually wearing. Like if I haven't reached for it in months, it's got to go. I am trying to be really intentional about what I bring into my closet right now, which means I am only buying pieces that I know I will actually wear and use. Revolve just gets it though. I'm literally wearing my brown Autry sneakers from there right now and my new suede purse. It fits my laptop in it. So it's basically a fancy shoulder bag that works for everything. I love finding pieces like that. Things that look good, but also work hard for my actual life.

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1:15So happy shopping. We have been tracking our launches for one year. So it was so fun to do our Pinterest lab launch this year because we had all of the data and the insights from last year. So we were able to put them side by side and compare them and see how we had improved. Like how motivating is that? Hey, my name is Jenna Kutcher and I am obsessed with all things, business, marketing numbers, and helping you to navigate both the messy and the magical seasons of this thing called life. I'm a small town mama who took a$300 camera, grew a successful photo biz, and now I work from home and run a seven figure online business.

1:51I teach you the tried and true secrets to building a career you adore. Shy away from the real talk? No way. Money, hardship, growth, loss, and marketing are all topics we discuss here. Think of this as your one-stop shop for happy hour with a gal pal mixed with business school. Pull up a seat, make sure you're cozy, and get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn. This is the Gold Digger Podcast. In case you didn't know this about me, I love numbers. I was on the math team as a teen. There is just something about numbers that I love. Now, at the beginning of last year, we started working with a team that would help us track all of our business at a whole new level.

2:29I'm talking projections, traffic, sales, conversions. There's something so powerful about having concrete data behind my business. And I also love learning with certainty what's working, where we can improve, and having these tangible ways to measure the effectiveness of basically every single thing that we do in the business. I feel like measurement is this area that a lot of business owners avoid or put off, myself included, for many, many years. But information truly is power. The more you know, the more you can impact. And as my time continues to evaporate as a mom, I want to make sure that wherever I'm spending my precious minutes that it's worth it.

3:10It is so easy for us to get caught up in the day-to-day and the to-dos that most of us hardly take the time to determine if what we're doing is actually driving results. And that's what digging into the numbers can help us with. In a recent assessment, there were five really peculiar, interesting insights that stood out to us from various places in our business, from the browsers that my audience uses to the number one platform, bringing in organic unpaid traffic to my website. So buckle up and get ready to nerd out with me. Okay, real talk. Are skinny jeans out or are they in? My friends and I continue to have this debate and it just goes to show that trends come and go and come back again.

3:49And the same goes for marketing strategies. Like who can even keep up? Luckily, HubSpot makes it their job to keep marketers on trend and on track to hit their goals. Their 2024 state of marketing report is an all-in-one guide for everything happening this year and how marketers can best approach it all. HubSpot surveyed more than 1400 marketing pros across the world and curated the top trends are thinking about. Sure, there's AI, but there's honestly so much more. The report covers everything from increasing awareness and engagement to ensuring privacy and boosting efficiency and growth. This report will give you all the info you need to shape your strategy for the year and keep on winning into next year.

4:27So friend, do not get caught hopping on an old trend. Visit HubSpot.com slash state of marketing to get your free copy of the report today. That's HubSpot.com slash state of marketing. So before we dive into what we found, you might be wondering, okay, how do you actually track all of this? Like what tools, what apps, what processes are you using for this? Luckily, I recorded an entire episode all about this just a few months ago. So if you go back to episode 726, if you want bigger results, you have to do this. That episode will be linked up in today's show notes and show description for you.

5:02You can listen in on that. You can understand what it is that we're measuring, why this is important and how you can literally get started measuring your results today. That episode is so powerful. Again, episode 726 is waiting for you. So let's dive on in to the five surprising things that we learned from tracking our business numbers. Everything I am about to share with you is looking at stats from the last 60 days. And this is like literal data that we are tracking me and my team and looking at. So keep in mind too, that as I go through this, everything that I'm sharing today is specific to my business, my audience, and my community.

5:40So again, here's my encouragement for you to go out and get this sort of information for your business so that you can take the right actions to move the needle forward. I also want to shout out to Julie from my measurement marketing team. She helped us pull all of the stats and data, and she is constantly every single week giving us insights and knowledge so that we can optimize everything in the business. I'm going to link to the team that we're using for our measurement in the show notes of this episode. In case you're interested in working with them. It has been such a game changer for us.

6:11Okay. One thing to note is that a lot of time when we look at this data, it's going to drive one of two decisions. So the first decision is to double down on what is already working for you and let that be the focus. So a lot of times with data, you can see clear winners. Your first option is just to go all in on what is proving to work. The second option is to focus on optimizing the areas that aren't currently performing well for you. Now, one thing that I found is that our nature is to double down on what's working. And I think that's brilliant. What's beautiful about measurement is when you see that you have optimized what's already working for you to the greatest extent, you now have the bandwidth and the energy and the insight needed to work on optimizing the areas or the offers in your business that aren't working.

6:59I think a lot of times we have to kind of choose one or the other, but with measurement, you get that hard data to understand like, oh, that tweak actually made a difference. So first thing that we found, have you ever wondered what devices your audience is using to consume your content? I've thought about it, but I didn't think about it as much as I should have been, especially because when I think of design and how we build out pages for my website, for my offers, for my opt-ins, I am always thinking about desktop first. The funny thing is, is that many of us think this way. I'm not alone in this.

7:36You design desktop first and mobile is secondary. Here's the thing. This is one of the most important findings that we had in the last 60 days. Here's what we found about the difference between mobile and desktop use. Two thirds of my traffic comes from mobile. Two thirds, two thirds of people are landing on my pages from their phones. But two thirds of my revenue comes from desktop. What does this mean? This is really interesting. So this stat is really interesting in and of itself. Two thirds of the traffic comes from mobile. Two thirds of the revenue comes from desktop. So we are seeing that the majority of my audience is coming onto my site and finding my content on their mobile phone.

8:22This means that mobile optimization and design is absolutely critical and it should be an absolute priority for us. Like no questions asked. But the fact that two thirds of the revenue is being driven from desktop tells me that people are maybe being introduced to our brand on their phone, but they're going deeper on their desktop. That is my guesstimate based on this insight and information. The other thing that I consider when hearing this data is that people that are purchasing are more likely to be attending webinars or doing different deeper dives that are way easier to do on your desktop, which is leading them to purchasing decisions, which is again, why more revenue is attributed to desktop.

9:05But I just thought that was so interesting. Now get this, this was so fascinating to me. Mobile converts five times more leads and the conversion rate for mobile is more than double of desktop. So when we are talking about leads, most of the time we're talking about like email list subscribers, okay? New people into our ecosystem that we can serve. And so mobile converts five times more leads. That's insane. And it converts double than desktop does. Meaning when somebody lands on a page, two times more people actually sign up, put their name and email in on mobile than desktop. Now, this is huge.

9:45Now, what this tells me is that we should definitely do an audit and a run through of all of our freebies and our lead generation pages that we want to make sure that they are fully optimized for mobile. Again, a lot of times my brain works desktop first, mobile secondary, but this data right here tells me that we need to prioritize mobile design. Now, what's interesting to me is that this could also be insightful for our ads. So when you are thinking about running ads, if you know that your mobile traffic is more likely to convert and that it's generating five times the amount of leads, you could really focus your ads and make sure that all of your ad graphics for mobile are formatted correctly, are clear, the call to action is there, and people are actually taking action on that.

10:31And so I thought this was really insightful too, because again, a lot of times we design ads desktop first, mobile second, and I think mobile has to be the priority. Now, one thing that I think is, again, interesting with all of this data as a whole is that my guesstimate is that people are finding our content and opting into our email list using their phone, and then they're going deeper with us on their desktop. That's my analysis of this. Now, I also just think too that this could be a sign that we should focus on optimizing or improving our mobile buying experience for our audience. So if we're seeing that people are having a better purchasing experience on desktop, how can we take some of those things and scoot them over to mobile to make sure that that experience of checking out on your phone is very easy and simple.

11:18Okay, moving on to the next thing. Now, the next takeaway wasn't something I'd given much thought to until I started to learn more about it. So I hope that today I am planting some seeds for you. Now it's funny because I think that when we use a certain tool or software or browser, we just automatically think, of course, everyone is using the same thing as us, but it is important not only to know this information, but to ensure that your user experience and how you're creating it is consistent, no matter where your audience is consuming your content from. So again, we were talking about mobile and desktop.

11:51Now we are talking about browsers and operating systems. So get this, nearly 75 % of my traffic is on some sort of Apple device. We're talking about Macs, iPhones, like 75 % of my traffic is on those devices. Now that's what I personally use. So maybe birds of a feather. Only 12 to 13 % of my audience are on Windows or Android, but the overwhelming majority of our audience uses Mac products. This tells us that when we are creating our new user journey or implementing new tech, we want to make sure that we are testing on Mac operating systems to make sure the experience is as it should be. Now, again, I use a Mac, so I feel confident that we're doing this well.

12:35Now, this was interesting because I use Google Chrome, but Google Chrome is only used for one third of my users. Now, this is important to know because our measurement marketing team sees this often quite a bit higher, usually over 50 % for other people. So this is specific to my audience. My audience is using Safari for 60 % of the traffic. Now I have not been testing my sales pages or landing pages in Safari. I don't use Safari. I use Google Chrome, but this is such a great reminder that we want to be testing everything out on basically every browser and operating system. One of my team members uses Android.

13:15And so we often have her do the mobile checks to make sure that everything is lining up. the spacing is correct, like everything is loading correctly. So you just want to make sure as an action item is you want to quality check all of your assets on different browsers, just to ensure that the user experience is as you intended it to be, whether they're on an iPhone or an Android, whether they're using Google Chrome or Safari, you want to make sure that every user is getting a consistent experience tailored to their device. When we were young, we dreamed of castles and fairy tales. And as we grow up, those dreams might shift into building something real, like starting a business.

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14:53Look, I've become kind of a systems nerd and anything that gives me more space in my day, I'm all in. And a reliable connection is a huge part of that because when the internet lags or cuts out, everything pauses and suddenly the simplest tasks take forever. I learned really early on that dependable internet, it's not a luxury, it is a must. Whether you're a content creator like me, a restaurant owner, or running a busy dry cleaning business, you need that steady connection to support your team and your clients. That's why I'm excited to share a solution for my fellow business owners. Spectrum Business keeps businesses of all types connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, and mobile services, all with connectivity solutions built for your budget.

15:35And they have a truly incredible offer. Business owners can get free business internet advantage forever when you add four or more mobile lines. It's simple with no contracts and no added fees. Visit spectrum.com forward slash free for life to learn how you can get business internet free forever. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Okay, next up, let's talk about traffic. This is one of the most important metrics for a business owner to track. Traffic is like the number one thing that I'm looking at because if you have a funnel or a process or a landing page or a sales page that is working as it's intended to, the easiest lever for you to pull to drive more results is getting more traffic onto the page.

16:24And so it is absolutely critical that you understand where your traffic is coming from, how you can drive more traffic, and what is the quality of that traffic? Like traffic alone is impressive, but if that traffic isn't actually converting into real results, it's probably not going to do much for you. And so we are constantly, every single week, tracking our traffic, looking at these numbers, because we understand the systems that we've built are working. And so the easiest lever to pull is traffic. And we can do that through organic strategies. So here's what we found regarding traffic. Pinterest brings the most unpaid traffic to my blog.

17:05I've talked about this so much as an organic traffic driver. Pinterest is the MVP for us. And what I love is that it's not just sending people to a website where they're like, okay, what do I do now if I'm not ready to purchase, or if I don't know what I need, it is sending people to my blog where they are getting served. And what I love and what I teach about Pinterest is that Pinterest is a search engine. And so essentially what's happening is that Pinterest is connecting people to my content as an answer to their search queries. What's amazing is that once they land on my blog, there are so many different invitations and opportunities to have them opt in so that we can not just get that traffic, but capture that traffic and serve them well.

17:44We're already serving them with a blog content, but there are additional call to actions built in, baked into our content so that when they're landing on our blog, they're likely getting invited to opt in for our email list. Pinterest is such a game changer. So many people are not using it and they should be. If you want to learn more about how to use Pinterest to 20X your traffic, just like we have, you can either go to Instagram at Jenna Kutcher, DM me the word traffic, or you can watch my free masterclass at teachmetopin.com. I'll show you how to 20X your traffic using Pinterest. But again, Pinterest is our number one organic MVP driver of traffic to our blog.

18:23That's where we can actually capture that traffic and turn it into meaningful leads. Now, when we're looking at our overall traffic, our top other traffic source is paid social media traffic. So I'm talking about Instagram and Facebook ads. I look at those as basically putting fuel to the fire. So we create the fire, right? We have the funnel, we have the process, we know exactly how it's going to go. once we have that optimized, we throw ads behind it. And that is how new people are entering our ecosystem and how things are running more on autopilot for my business. So paid social media traffic, Facebook and Instagram ads.

18:58We also sometimes run Pinterest ads followed by Google organic and direct traffic. And one thing that's interesting is our paid traffic and our organic traffic actually perform similarly when it comes to sales and leads. So whether we're spending money to get someone into the ecosystem or they're stumbling upon our content or finding it from a search engine, they are performing very similarly in terms of converting into an email subscriber or an actual purchaser. One thing that is super interesting is we get a ton of organic traffic to my page, meaning people are going onto Google, they're typing in my name or they're typing in, you know, the podcast or my content and they're being brought to my website organically.

19:38So again, And this also speaks to search engine optimization and brand recognition. So here is the focus that we're focusing on here when it comes to this. Continue to leverage Pinterest. This is a huge way. Again, my Pinterest strategy takes us an hour a week, but it is the number one way that we organically drive traffic to our blog where we can capture that traffic. And the other two focuses are to ensure that our Facebook ads are generating both traffic, but also leads and results. And lastly, focusing on search engine optimization to make sure that when people are searching for me or the types of content that I create, they're finding it right away and they're being brought to the correct page.

20:15So we are watching what are people typing in to the search bar? What are they trying to find? Here's kind of a funny finding that we found when we were preparing for this episode, but we were looking at what are people typing into Google? And it was a ton of Jenna Kutcher, Jenna Kutcher podcast, Jenna Kutcher course, Jenna Kutcher Pinterest, Pinterest, Jenna Kutcher webinar, all these different things. But we found a trend that gave us data that we literally put into use within an hour. So we found that when people were going onto Google, they were typing in how to get logged into the course that they purchased.

20:46Now we send out different emails. We tell people to bookmark pages, all these things, but trust me, I've signed up for so many courses. And then I'm like, wait, how do I even access that? And so we took that insight that we saw from what people were typing in. And I immediately went onto my website, designed buttons and pages so that people could log into their courses easier and that it was more obvious for them to access the content that they purchased. So again, getting data and information like this can literally help you take the right action immediately to make things better, easier, or more optimized for you and your audience.

21:21So speaking of Pinterest, I want to talk about our course launch measurement. So we recently did our launch for my program, the Pinterest lab, and I wanted to pull in some data and insights from that because there's so much information that comes in when you do a launch. And one thing that is so beautiful about harnessing the power of these insights is that you can take what you're learning on one launch and apply it to the next and the one after that. And the one after that, in theory, you should be getting better every single time you launch something. And for us, we have been tracking our launches for one year.

21:57So it was so fun to do our Pinterest lab launch this year because we had all of the data and the insights from last year. So we were able to put them side by side and compare them and see how we had improved. Like how motivating is that? So for our live launches, we generally have a webinar on the webinar. We teach, then we talk about our program, invite people to join. now for people that sign up and register most of the people will show up live because i give out awesome bonuses when people show up live but if people don't show up live we can send out a replay link so one of the first findings that we found in this launch this year is that historically speaking our replays don't convert as high as the live version that makes total sense to me because when someone is live there's just such a different energy we also have those incentives so people know when they're watching the replay, you're not going to get the free bonus that you would have if you would have showed up live.

22:50So we have known, and this is like industry standard, that replays don't perform as well as the live version. So here's what we found during this launch. The replay funnel that we sent out for people who signed up for the webinar, but didn't attend it actually did extremely well this time around when we mentioned a bonus or added urgency to the email subject line. This makes us think that when our audience was going to the page prior and just clicking to check out the replay, they were just curious. They didn't necessarily have a reason to buy or make a decision right then. So our sales page click right when it went to the replay went from two to 3 % up to 10 to 14 % on the emails, just from changing the subject or adding in a bonus, making people make a decision.

23:40So from two to 3 % to 10 to 14%, that is a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge difference. And this was so exciting for us. And we're already thinking about further ways to optimize that experience. So it's so fun because we're like, okay, this worked. Now what if we tried this next time? So the next finding was that our average order value was around$30 higher for those participants who actually attended a webinar and went through that specific email sequence. This tells us, and this will inform how we construct funnels for our future launches. So a funnel is basically just an email sequence that follows up based on an action.

24:17Now,$30 might not sound like a whole lot, but when you multiply that by hundreds or even thousands of customers, it really adds up. Now, what this tells me is that we can just send out emails saying, Hey, our course is back open again, join today. But what we should really focus on and what we do focus on is getting people into the masterclass. They get so much more context. They get free value. They start to understand the what and the why of what we're talking about. And the course is the how. It makes it a lot easier to make a confident purchasing decision. So again, we want to give them the right amount of information to help them make a decision.

24:53It showed us the proof was in the pudding and the results that when people attended the webinar, they spent more money and they were more confident in their purchase. Another thing that we found during this launch was that paid traffic or traffic that was coming directly from paid ads did not perform as well on the sales page as other traffic. Now, this is to be expected because traffic that is warmer, meaning they know who I am, they trust who I am, I am credible, they understand me and what I'm all about, is likely going to convert higher than other traffic. We call this warm traffic versus cold traffic, which is what ad traffic is.

25:28So based on understanding this and knowing this stat, this might help us try something different next time, or just limit how much we're going to spend on paid traffic to these specific pages during the launch and utilize that money for other traffic in different ways. For example, we could use that money for ads and push people into a freebie that then invites them into the webinar versus sending someone right to a sales page. This is very industry standard. You don't necessarily just want to start a relationship with buy this thing from me, which is why we always want to lead with value first and serving first.