Some Personal News

#12 Growth engines are stalling > Measure what matters > Cut the fluff

Oct 23, 2022

Happy Sunday. A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

In this edition of Some Personal News:

Measuring what truly matters, and some questions to consider
Outlearning is a growth strategy
Linking content ideation, creation and performance

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Let’s dig in!

News to Peruse

Snapchat unleashed yet more potential and practical value from AR sharing key lessons in life-saving CPR techniques - in a collab with The International Federation of the Red Cross.
Top 50 Most Viewed YouTube Channels this week: kid-friendly channels usually top the charts but this week there are some exceptions.
Google launched “My Ad Center” - a portal where users can sign in and indicate their ad preferences across Display, Search and YouTube.
Google Search ads will now be labeled with “Sponsored” in bold black text on mobile search results.
TikTok released a new campaign type: Focused View. Ads will get delivered to the viewers most likely to either watch the ad for 6 or more seconds, or interact with the ad in the first 6 seconds.

Measure What Matters

Someone on the Exec Team decrees: “Our goal should be to move Metric X up Y% with this End of Year fundraising campaign.”

Rather than nodding and diving in head first to get on with the building of the campaigns, take a beat.

The goals you agree to determine what you build. It’s the same for products, as is it for campaigns. Goals are incredibly important to healthy digital fundraising at scale. Consider them carefully.

Here are 5 questions to consider:

1. If we were wildly successful this End of Year, what’s the ideal outcome for donors giving to our mission?

The point of target metrics is to keep ourselves accountable for driving the best outcomes for the organization (donors included), and in turn our mission.

Any metric will be a proxy; THIS (question) is the real goal. This has to always remain top of mind.

2. In what scenarios would we get closer to our ideal outcome but not make progress against our goal metric(s)?

From experience, when you can come up with tons of examples you need to pick better proxy metrics.

A few metrics typically work better than a single metric as a proxy for success.

3. In what scenarios would we hit our goal metrics but actually be getting further from our ideal outcome?

If you can come up with many examples, consider setting counter metrics that you hold steady or improve as you go after your main goal metrics.

Any metrics can be gamified - so figure out how to prevent it in advance.

4. Will it materially matter to our organization if we hit our goal metrics?

If the answer is no, your teams’ time is better spent working on something else.

5. If we launched absolutely nothing this End of Year, where would we expect to land on our goal metrics?

Know your forecast. Sometimes you'll face headwinds and other times, tailwinds. What goal your team works on should be on top of that.

Ahead of this End of Year fundraising season, what % confidence do you have that you will hit your goals? Good metric goal targets should be realistic yet aspirational. Shoot for between 50-50 and 70-30.

Picking the right goal metrics is as much art as science. You want a mix of the following: Alignment with the mission, Operational, Realistic and Aspirational.

Make sure you and the Agency Partners you’re working with this End of Year understand your team's chosen goal metrics and targets. If not, ask questions. Dig deeper. Hear out a number of diverse perspectives and then commit.

You must be measuring only what matters.

Outlearn > Outspend

The three big questions I’ve been asked this week, aside from “What’s happening in the UK?”:

Is it just the economy?
Are we not doing marketing right?
Where’s the leak in our bucket?

Growth engines are stalling and lots of organizations are struggling to diagnose the problem. To understand what’s really going on we might have to zoom out. Here’s a simplified version of how lots of organizations have been approaching growth:

Light touch on message/creative/content
Pay whatever needed to get it in front of prospective donors, within confines of budget
Learn about incremental stuff (e.g. this ad performs better than that ad)

Compare that to the approach winning organizations are pivoting to:

Go hard on message/story and keep iterating
Acknowledge the distribution challenge and balance with organic
Commit to a process that optimizes for maximum learnings - continuously

There’s several reasons for this shift. One of them is that performance marketing is dynamic by nature. Before channels got saturated, paying whatever it took to get distribution was an option and real learning may have been largely an afterthought. Outspending the competition alone doesn’t get it done anymore.

Some have said marketing essentially boils down to content (broadly defined as everything from messaging to presentations) and distribution (everything from online channels to physical events). I don’t necessarily disagree, but there’s a third element that deserves equal attention: learning.

And it all works together: Distribution is changing, the bar for messaging/content is being raised and learning is now a bigger opportunity than it ever has been.
The question becomes: Can we facilitate, nurture and learn from a community of prospects and donors based on what we put out there?

That’s a fundamentally different question than the old: How much do we need to spend to reach X number of prospective donors with our ads/content?

That whole outspend approach or committing a limited budget all into one channel came from an “all growth is good growth” and “growth at all costs” mindset. We’re operating in a different paradigm today.

The only thing we can truly control in this context is our approach to learning. And we haven’t yet talked about when times get tougher, which feels just around the corner.

We won’t have more marketing dollars next year relative to our targets. We won’t have more people. We won’t have more prospects ready to donate as soon as we get in front of them. We’ll be in that classic “do more with less” situation.

Which is why learning about what actually matters to - and resonates with - prospective donors is one of our biggest opportunities. It’s the most effective way to be efficient. We’ll have to look beyond obvious metrics though.

This is about executing against a growth hypothesis and placing bets far bigger than ad variations or button colors on a landing page. It’s about having a growth hypothesis in the first place, learning what can truly have an impact, and turning it into a competitive advantage.

Content Creation + Data

TL;DR

1. Prove impact

2. LEARN and double down on what's working

3. Cut the fluff

Self Reported Attribution

Test "How did you hear about us?" fields on post donation “thank you” landing pages and email newsletter signups. Make it an open text field. Set up monthly reports in your CRM for both.

Compare Data

Every month, standardize and compare that self-attributed data to the donation sources in your CRM. For example, CRM data will tell you the last step in the donor’s journey e.g. paid search, whereas self-reported will tell you what content most influenced their journey e.g. podcast, event.

Summarize the Data - what's driving newsletter signups and what's driving donations? They’re not always different intent and sign ups are a positive signal. Consider teams or programs for each.

Discover which Pages & CTAs Convert Best, and which Pages Influenced

How: Google Analytics + landing page analysis, Hot Jar or Microsoft Clarity (free)

When you set up goals in GA, you can see where donors tend to convert and which pages drive which actions. Now you know which pages to prioritize.

You can also see the last 3 pages donors viewed before converting. It’s important to understand that a lot of content consumption won't happen on your site and most won't visit multiple pages, but you'll get a good idea of an ideal donor journey and what people want to see next.

Capture Qualitative Feedback

-Replies to emails

-Reactions to social posts

-DMs about your brand, content, donation experience, etc.

-Posts about your brand, content or donation experience, etc.

Once you know what's working - which content's kickstarting the demand and which pages are capturing it, evaluate why and use those insights as inspiration to make more content like that. Important to remember as we covered in Edition #11, don’t just re-produce content for other channels. Be adaptive to the way these platforms push out content, the culture within each platform and then create experiences around that.

Recent examples of what's driving interest: Online and in-person events, sponsored podcasts

Recent examples of where donors convert: Why Us page, Donor Programs page

Recent examples of what influences the last steps of the donor journey: Impact case studies in written and multimedia form

Align around goal metrics and targets, and get executing. Don’t let measuring content be a distraction over making and distributing great content, you'll leave money on the table.

Interesting Reads This Week:

Social media advertising is far less effective that it once was. Part venture capital firm, part agency founders share a perspective.
Technology taught us to never wait: are we too impatient for our own good?
The Creativity Supply Chain: is the Creator Economy dead?
The Elon Musk Twitter texts are an absolute masterclass in how things get done at the highest level. If you haven’t read these messages, you’re missing out on the most important thing happening in tech right now.
Some interesting insights on why conversational podcasts win against narrative ones.