You see an ad for a new traffic gimmick that sends you thousands of visitors a day. Or maybe it's someone bragging on the forum that they get 50% opens on their emails, or that 25% of their email recipients click the links inside the emails.
I've only got one question for those who spend time on such things – how do you pay your bills with opens, clicks and visitor numbers? Because if they can tell me that, then I'm all ears. Otherwise, it's about time some one said what needs saying – those numbers don't mean a darned thing.
Let's say you get 10 visitors to your website and your competitor gets a million visitors. I'm using crazy numbers here to prove a point, so bear with me.
Out of your 10 visitors, 5 of them buy a $1000 product. You've just made $5000. Your competitor doesn't sell a single thing to any of those million visitors, but there they are, bragging about their traffic and trying to sell you a product on how you can replicate their results...
...while you quietly grin all the way to the bank.
Or maybe you send out a series of emails that only get a 10% open rate and only 10% of those opens click the link, but again you outsell your competitor who's getting 50% opens and 25% clicks.
Are you going to think you're doing poorly? You are if you measure your success by their terms. But again, all that matters is the bottom line.
So much of what they try to peddle in marketing is simply smoke and mirrors. It's a wise person indeed who can see through the nonsense to what is truly important.
Let's say you have a subject line that says, “Naked hot movie star pics” and you get a 100% open rate. But you're selling a product on blogging. How many sales will you get? Likely none. But you got a 100% open rate, that should count for something, right?
Wrong.
Let's say you're still selling the exact same blogging product, but your subject line is, “How to make $100 a day blogging.” This time your open rate is a dismal 10%, but from that 10% you make 50 sales.
Which is better? The 100% open rate and no sales? Or the 10% open rate and 50 sales?
The next time some one is bragging about their opens, clicks and visitors, ask them one question: How much in SALES are they doing? Because that's the only statistic that pays the bills.