RECENTLY, I DOVE into the top five key performance indicators (KPIs) that will transform how you market your pet business (petsplusmag.com/11191). Today, we’re going to carry those through to a few top marketing channels to turn your business’s metrics from scary and something you avoid to something you’ll be asking for! The following are a few simple targets that even those who dread data will learn to love.
Competitor Reporting
Set up Facebook competitor reporting to see your top competitors’ top-performing posts. If you haven’t already done this, this is one to set up right now. Buried within Facebook insights is something called “Pages you watch.” Add your top competitors here, and Facebook will automatically deliver you a fresh serving of those pages’ top-performing posts each week — for free! You’ll be able to see what they’re posting in one place and which of those posts got their customers’ attention. (Pro tip: Chances are, if you are competitors, it will get your customers’ attention too.) This is a great way to see instantly how you’re measuring up and get ideas for what will work well for you. It can also give you an idea of how your competitors’ sales posts perform in relation to your own.
All Posts Published
Review Facebook’s All Posts Published report to see which topics are performing best on your page. Facebook makes this super simple and shows you in list form which of your posts received the highest engagement rates in the last 30 days. While some may be obvious — cute or controversial topics tend to have high engagement — some things may surprise you and let you know to talk more about them. For example, we have a pet business that kept trying to talk about topics unrelated to what they sold. However, a quick look at this report proved that posts dealing directly with the products and services they provided had the highest response from people who followed their page. Suddenly, the other kinds of posts were a lot less important to their strategy.
Audience Reports
Take a peek at Facebook and Instagram’s audience reports to see when your audience is online (and when to post). Both Instagram and Facebook pages provide businesses with a roundup of what time of day your audience is using the platforms. Consider posting shortly before the morning rush and evening rush for maximum exposure. Likewise, some email platforms will suggest times of day for emails based on where the people in your list are located.
1,000 Followers
Get past 1,000 followers on each important social channel, then reevaluate whether you need more. We’ve often noticed that 1,000 followers seems to be a sort of magic threshold for pet businesses: Suddenly potential customers are able to see that other people like and trust you, and are therefore more likely to do so as well. Yet, our experience shows that struggling to hit 10,000-plus seems to make little difference for local pet-industry brands. While some additional functionality is opened up at 10,000 followers on Instagram and it’s helpful for national entities, keep a close eye on whether it’s worth the time and money to get there. You may get more bang for the buck on building out recent stellar online reviews, or placing your products on Pinterest once you pass the magic 1,000-follower number as a local business.
Traffic Drivers
Take a quarterly peek at which channels are driving the most traffic to your website and to your store. Typically, these will be very different and not include Instagram at all. Many pet brands that have well-optimized websites find that Pinterest, email and Google drive the most clicks to the website while Facebook’s still a strong performer for foot-traffic (along with Google and email). Knowing which channels will lend themselves to driving specific actions will help you streamline your communications and prioritize your budget based on the sales goals you’ve set.
Give the above five KPIs a quick scan every few months to see what stands out and surprises you — that’s usually a good indicator of an opportunity!