Transcript
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Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing Podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the top.
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Welcome back to another episode of the Marketing Millennials Podcast. Today I'm solo and I'm going to talk to you about how to catch marketing problems before they spiral out of control. Imagine walking a marketing tightrope juggling campaigns, ads and KPIs. One slip and everything can fall apart. That's where tripwires come in. These are real time alerts that catch issues early so you can step in before a small problem in your marketing turns into a big one. So today I'll walk you through seven steps for setting up tripwires in your marketing funnel. So let's just get into these seven steps. So step number one is start with your North Star KPIs. You cannot turn catch problems if you don't know what success looks like. Your Northstar KPIs should be clear and intentional. Think of them as your destination with micro KPIs acting as rest stops along the way. For example Northstar goals revenue Pipeline Generated TAC Return on ad spend ROAS micro KPI's website traffic click through Rate MQL to SQL conversion rates email rates Break these down into awareness, consideration and conversion stages so you can quickly pinpoint where in the funnel these are breaking down. Step number two is set tripwires at critical checkpoints. Think of tripwires as marketing fly traps. They catch problems at key funnel stages. So how would I set them up? Identify your riskiest areas for example Ad performance Click through Rate CPM CPC Landing page Bounce rates MQL to SQL drop off so those are some risky areas. And then do I would set realistic thresholds so if click through rate drops below 1.5% trigger an alert. If website traffic drops 10% week over week trigger alert. If email open rates dip below 25% trigger alert. Those are just arbitrary numbers but I want you to get the point. And number three automate these alerts so you can use things like Hub fraud, Google Analytics Looker to set up alerts. And then what I would do is integrate them into your Slack or Asana or email so you don't miss these alerts. The next step is Step three is monitor the leading metrics to stay ahead. So leading metrics really act as your early warning system. They can let you course correct before bigger problems emerge. So key metrics to track. These are just examples are ad click through rate, landing page boundary form, submission rates, session to lead conversion rates. Why? Because if C click through rate drops, it creates a ripple effect that impacts your whole funnel. So catch it early and you can fix conversion rates before it tanks. Instead of waiting months before you say oh wait, what's going on with revenue? Or what's going on with click through? Why are we getting less demos? Or why are we getting less sales? Spot these early and you can catch it way before. Step number four, which I would do is create a response playbook for each tripwire. A tripwire without a action plan is really useless. So here's how you can turn alerts into actual action plans. For example, a tripwire is triggered like landing page balance rates exceed 70%. A response system you can set is you can audit page speed, rewrite the headline, test a new CTA or tweak the design. Do these things to help help improve that bounce rate. Another tripwire trigger click through rate on ads dropped below 1.5%. What is the response for that? Adjust targeting refresh creative test new ad copy. This is another example for tripwire triggered email. OpenRA dropped 25%. What is the response? Okay, maybe we should ab test more subject lines. Maybe we need to refresh our email list. Maybe we need to segment our list better when we sending it and keep this playbook centralized in a place where everybody could see. So if you have an internal notion, you have confluence page, you have Google Drive asana. So when this happens, your team can act fast when a tripwire is triggered. Step number five is review tripwire data in weekly check ins. So tripwires are not just for reacting, they're also for learning. So what would you review in a weekly check in? So which key performing indicators KPIs fell short. What caused the issue? Are they the same tripwires triggering repeatedly? Are your benchmarks too strict or too lenient? Adjust as needed. So you're always refining the process. If you do this quarterly you start messing things. So I always like a weekly quick stand up 15 minutes just to go over these. What's happening? Number six is prioritize issues based on impact. Not every tripwire needs to be red alert panic. For example high impacts are KPIs tied to conversion. So click through rate MQL2 sales quality lead rates. Median impact would be landing page form submissions for example. Low impact would be top of funnel metrics like impressions and reach. So focus on the biggest risk first but also you need to keep an eye on the rest, but make sure you have ranked them based on high, medium and low impact of making a change for those metrics. And lastly, test and refine your trip rise regularly. Marketing changes and it evolves. So should your tripwires every quarter. Ask yourselves are these thresholds realistic based on current data? Do new KPIs need tracking? Were any of these tripwires false alarms and optimized over time to keep your system lean and effective? So here just some closing thoughts for this is Tripwise help you move from reactive marketing to proactive marketing. They help you flag problems early so you can pivot your marketing way so you don't lose time, money and pipeline. I wish I did this earlier in my career. I started doing this later in my career but set these up so if you haven't started setting up tripwire start today, your future marketing self will really thank you. And that's it for today's episode. So if you found this episode helpful, share this with a marketer. Also, if you have any feedback for me, always feel free to DM me. My DMs on LinkedIn are always open. It's Daniel Murray and thanks for listening and catch you next time. See ya.