Hi there,
Did you get some sand between your toes this week? If you haven’t yet, I hope this little nudge helps you remember the feeling and relax, even for just a moment.
This week I have something very personal for you and I’m sure many will easily relate. Scroll over to the “life hack” section of the week and I hope it helps put some thoughts in order 😉
MEME of the week
Author’s Note: before we go serious, though, this is for all of you fellow martyrs, stuck in the office when there’s so many better places to be at
On a few occasions I’ve said that some metrics don’t really matter. Well, this one is different.
The click-through rate is perhaps one of the most important metrics you’re ever going to work with, because it represents an action that’s taken by your audience.
Why does it matter?
Because the Click-Through Rate tells you when you’ve hit that sweet spot for your audience and given them exactly what they want.
Quick Explanation: the click-through rate is simply the proportion of people who have seen a piece of content, seen a link, and clicked on it.
It’s real simple: if 100 people have seen your ad (impressions) and 5 of them clicked on a link, that’s a 5% click-through rate. The same is valid for email. If 100 people received your email, and 20 clicked, that’s a 20% click-through rate.
The exact same thing applies for social media, AND it even applies for other types of advertising where you may have a QR code that leads to a site. Granted, if you’re doing print ads you’re unlikely to measure the number of people who have seen it, so getting a realistic click-through is kinda hard…
Important: Set a Benchmark
In a moment I’ll share some average click-through rates, but before I do, please note that these are truly average. They’ll be different for every business, audience, medium, all of that. The only way you can measure your own success is by setting up a benchmark – choosing a specific click-through rate that you feel is right for your business, and working off of that one.
If something performs worse than your benchmark, ask yourself what can you improve. If it performs better, see what you can learn from the success and replicate it.
Average click-through rates on different platforms
- Facebook Native Ads (a.k.a. looks like a post): 0.33% – 0.38%
- Facebook Video Ads: 0.5% – 0.73%
- Facebook Carousel Ads: 0.30% – 0.85%
- Facebook Interactive Ads (more here): 1.25% – 1.33%
- Google Display Ads: 3.17%
- Google Search Ads: 0.46%
- LinkedIn Ads: 0.44% – 0.65%
- Good email click through rate: 2% – 5%
- Average email click-through rate: 1%
Sources:
Facebook Ads: https://madgicx.com/blog/average-ctr-for-facebook-ads
Google: https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/whats-good-click-rate-ctr-industry/
Email: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/knowledge-base/what-are-good-email-metrics
Yesterday someone I managed for a while called me and said:
“I’m struggling. I start working on something, enter a meeting that’s on my calendar and get given another task that is urgent so I start working on it. Shortly after I get a phone call with another urgent task, so I drop everything else and start working on that. Two days later I remember what I was initially working on, but don’t remember what I was going to do and it takes forever to get back to it.”
And then he added:
“I’ll fix it, don’t worry”.😨
This last bit is truly concerning, so here’s what I’ve got to tell you if you’re ever in the same place.
1. Working is chaotic.
Whether it’s for yourself of for others, that what it is. Surely, worse when it’s for others, but it’s the same nonetheless.
Listen, YOU CANNOT FIX IT. This is not going to change. Others are not going to change. You must accept that it is what it is and learn to deal with it. The sooner, the better.
2. If it’s not your job to prioritise tasks, don’t assume responsibility.
When you get YET another task, ask the question: “I’m working on X, Y, Z this week. Which one can wait so I can do what you’re asking me for?”.
When you get a call from a third person, say: “So and so asked me for this and I also have X & Y to do. Can you please sync with them and find out which task comes with priority?”
It’s OK to add that you’ll try to do as much as possible, but make sure you know what order people want tasks in. It’s not just for you – you make it easy for others to organise their thoughts as well.
3. Honestly, don’t multitask.
If you start work on something, bring it to a logical conclusion before moving on to something else. I’m not saying complete it. If you’re writing text, finish your sentence, paragraph, chapter (whatever you can) before moving on to something else.
4. Write everything down.
I genuinely don’t understand why anyone would like to walk around trying to remember everything. Make your life easy – dump it down on a piece of paper and let it sit there.
5. When the day is over, move away from the work.
If you didn’t do it by the end of the work day, it wasn’t meant to be done. If you’re a junior, you get paid less than seniors because you’re expected to do less. It’s capitalism. When you’re a senior, you’re paid more because your knowledge and experience allows you to do more within the set time. It’s simple.
Besides, the best way to f-up your work is to get yourself tired, or worse – burnt out.
THERE ARE NO REWARDS FOR BURNOUT!
Gosh, I hope it helps and if you’re feeling anything like what I just described, I am sending you a massive bear hug. Also, if you can, please cry it out.ls.
We manage to make our robots just as mentally fragile as we are.
Now joke aside, or joke it, did you know that Curiosity, NASA’s famous Mars exploring robot had what we would call an “existential crisis”?
Yup, it happened, and it’s hilarious.
In short, since the moon is fairly far, we don’t have real-time communication with the robot, so commands are sent in batches. Once received, the robot executes them.
Until it didn’t.
Whilst there’s a lot more technical explanation and you’re welcome to read up about it here (CNN), the short story is that a minor blip in the system caused the robot to lose awareness of its surroundings.
Because of this lack of awareness, even when it received commands it remained frozen: it couldn’t figure out what needs doing first.
Sounds familiar? I bet it does…
Dear Curiosity, don’t worry – we, humans, go through this daily and we’re ok… I think…
