I was about to spend an afternoon rebuilding my lead magnet.
I wasn't getting the optins I wanted so in my head, I assumed the freebie must be the problem.
The fix? Brainstorm new lead magnets. Rebuild and refine the existing one.
Buuuut...
All of that 'planning' came from an assumption. A guess.
Do you do that, too?
(I'm prolly not the only one, right?)
My brain has been so used to planning stuff based on what I think is the problem...
Even though I knew I have to make 'data-driven decisions....'
I would track my data but I seldom make sense of it.
Which means I'd still end up operating on guesswork.
And trust me, that's not a good business practice.
In my head, I understood the logic.
I knew I need to track numbers. I knew I need to analyze those numbers.
In practice though?
It takes a hell lot more than just knowing. I had to make it a habit.
Not just the tracking piece.
But also the data analysis piece.
Which is why when I wasn't getting the optins I wanted, I immediately made an assumption.
But thank goodness I've been building my data tracking & analysis muscle.
I caught my bad old habit and checked my dashboard.
(oh right, I've been using a data dashboard which has been extremely helpful that I made a video about it....check it out here)
Anyway...
That simple shift in behavior saved me hours (if not days) of working on something that's actually not broken.
Turns out, the numbers were telling a completely different story than the one in my head.
My CTR from email to the landing page is below the benchmark.
You see, the main traffic source for my lead magnet is through my collab partners.
They promote my freebie to their audience.
And when I looked at the numbers, people weren't even getting to the lead magnet.
The emails weren't driving enough clicks to the optin page.
I was about to spend an afternoon renovating a room nobody was walking into.
Good thing, I didn't allow myself to fall back into my old behaviors.
You know what's interesting though?
A couple of weeks before that, I was coaching a business owner. He's part of my client's business community and we were talking about increasing his sales.
He was frustrated that his sales this year has significantly decreased. He wanted to drive more traffic using IG reels and convert them into buyers.
But after a couple of questions, I discovered that 50% of his sales last year actually come from Etsy. A portion came from wholesale clients.
The problem? His Etsy account was shut down.
I told him: No wonder your sales are down.
It's not because he's not getting new eyeballs. It's because the channel that's driving half of his sales revenue is no longer available.
Had we not brought that into the open, he'd be chasing IG engagement and reach with an expectation that it will increase his sales.
Which is unrealistic given his sales history.
Sometimes, the thing that feels broken isn't actually the thing that's actually costing us.
So where do we go from here?
Before you rebuild the thing you're sure is broken, check your numbers. Find the leak, not the one your anxiety picked.