We are past the halfway point of the Spin Sucks 30-Day Communications Challenge and the feedback is pretty much:
I am drinking from the fire hose!
Which makes me very, very happy.
I want all of your brains to explode.
When I had Andy Crestodina attend my mastermind in-person meeting in November, he left and everyone looked at me and made the motion that their heads were exploding.
I want to be like Andy.
If your heads explode when I am finished with you, I’ll feel like I achieved something great.
So keep at it! There is more coming.
In the meantime, I want to share with you data from Spin Sucks, which include where we started from when we started tracking metrics in 2010 and where we are now (at the end of 2016).
I’m doing this for three reasons:
- It’s important for you to see that everyone starts with nothing and it takes a lot of hard work and elbow grease to grow;
- I want you to see that we walk the PESO model walk; and
- It’ll give you some insight into how the PESO model works in real-time.
Where Spin Sucks Started
In November, I wrote a two-part series on how to effectively measure PR.
I shared the Spin Sucks 75-day benchmarks and goals, which you’ll see are quite ludicrous.
Where the heck are the goals that lead to, I don’t know, revenue?
That’s right!
They’re missing.
We had ZERO idea how we were going to generate revenue from the blog so we focused solely on the vanity metrics.
Shame on me. I mean, really.
Take a look.
Shows you how far we’ve come, huh?
I love to show this because, for many of you, the things we want you to measure this year aren’t even within your scope.
And that’s OK. Because, by this time next year, they will be and you’ll effectively be measuring your PR efforts.
My point is, if your benchmarks and goals look like this for 2017, DO NOT PANIC!
You have to start somewhere.
Where Spin Sucks is Today
When I started doing the 30-Day Communications Challenge with you on January 3, I wrote down the Spin Sucks benchmarks for 2017:
- Domain authority is 65
- Keywords: Four of our top 10 are on page 1 of Google results and six are on page 2
- There were 305,788 visitors last year
- We added 8,286 new subscribers last year
- There were 5,376 qualified leads
- We had 151 students
As that compares to 2015, the growth is as follows:
- Domain authority: 14 percent increase
- Keywords: A 100 percent increase
- Website visitors: A six percent increase
- New subscribers: A 41 percent increase
- Qualified leads: A 91 percent increase
- Students: A 100 percent increase
- Sales conversion: A three percent increase
Now, of course, the goals for 2017, as they compare to our benchmarks are as follows:
- Domain authority: Increase to 71
- Keywords: Get all of top 10 on first page of Google results and get top 20 on pages 1 and 2
- Website visitors: Increase by 10 percent
- New subscriber: Increase by 15 percent
- Qualified leads: Increase by 100 percent
- Students: Increase by 100 percent
- Sales conversion: Increase conversion from lead to student to five percent
Use the PESO Model to Exceed Our Goals
The goals are pretty aggressive, but we can’t grow without stretching.
Every single one of us here is doing the 30-Day Communications Challenge with you, and drafting our own PESO model plans that outline how we’ll contribute to the overall business goals.
Going through the process and having accountability are what ensure success.
And, now that I’ve written it down here, we have to have success.
Each month, we’ll track our progress against our goals, and adjust our plans to stay on track.
It can be easy to lose track of our goals in the day-to-day rush to get through our to-do lists.
That’s why it’s so important not only to document those goals and identify milestones in their progress, but to have accountability partners to make sure you follow through.
If I try to backslide and retcon my goals, you can bet I’ll have my team (and my accountability partner) reminding me what we agreed we’d do.
Or they’ll make fun of me, and that’s worse.
Watching the PESO Model in Progress
For those of you who haven’t yet fully implemented the PESO model, it can be difficult to trust this approach to your PR activities will pay off.
That’s why each month I’ll be blogging about our progress against our goals, and doing a deeper dive into a specific PESO element that can be challenging to master when you’re getting started.
(And this means you’re going to hold me accountable, too. Which also means I’m happy to do the same for you, if you want to message me in Slack. I’m super good at making you do what you say you’re going to do.)
The PESO model can be an incredibly powerful tool for elevating your communications work from a nice-to-have to an indispensable revenue generator.
We are going to show you how.