The Dull Men's Club

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We've all got used to the fact that Facebook knows way more about us than it should and that it tailors what we see on our newsfeeds accordingly.

For example, I get shown lots of ads for mortgages - because I’m often visiting mortgage brokers’ websites as part of my work.

Then there are all the ads for products or services that will make my hair thicker or my belly smaller (ok, I get that – I'm a man in his late 40s).

Slightly more concerning is the fact that a few weeks ago I was having a WhatsApp conversation about inheritance tax bills with a friend whose dad had just died and, within minutes, I was getting ads on Facebook for probate services and IHT advice.

(Meta owns WhatsApp as well as Facebook, don't forget)

I can cope with Facebook having pigeon-holed me as a fat, bald, middle-aged man with mortgage issues and inheritance tax problems.

But I draw the line at this......

For about six weeks at the start of last year, Facebook kept suggesting posts to me from a Facebook group (that I was not a member of!) called Dull Men's Club.

The thing is, though (and you can draw your own conclusions as to why I think this) some of the suggested posts from the Dull Men's Club were actually quite interesting!

Take this one, for example, that popped into my timeline quite early on:

In case you can't see it properly, it's a post where someone has spotted an arrow with a line above it scored into the wall of a building. And he's asking if anyone knows what it's for.

Do you know what it is?

I'll save you the bother of asking ChatGPT.... It's a benchmark.

Now, I thought everyone knew about benchmarks (I remember my dad pointing them out to me when I was a kid).

But it turns out from the comments that I was wrong.

So let me enlighten you (because I'm sure you're not dull enough to already know about this)....

If you keep your eyes peeled, you can spot these curious little marks etched onto the side of old buildings all over the UK.

As I said earlier, they're called benchmarks and they date back to the early 19th century. This was a time when Britain was expanding rapidly, both industrially and geographically.

As the railway network burgeoned and canals carved their way through the landscape, there was a pressing need for accurate mapping.

So along came the Ordnance Survey – Britain's national mapping agency, born out of the requirement to map the Scottish Highlands after the Jacobite uprising.

But how does one create accurate maps in an era without GPS or laser measurement tools?

Well, the answer lay in a meticulous system of measurement using something as simple yet important as benchmarks.

These benchmarks, typically consisting of a horizontal line with an arrow pointing upwards, were not haphazard doodles. They were carefully carved into the stonework on significant and immovable structures like churches, bridges, and public buildings.

Each mark represented a precise point whose height above sea level had been accurately measured. The idea was to create a network of reference points across the country, a constellation of marks mapping out the contours of the land.

These marks were really important. After all, imagine trying to construct a railway line or canal without knowing the exact elevation of the land. A slight miscalculation and your train might be going for an unintended swim!

And so these benchmarks were the unsung heroes of Britain's industrial revolution, aiding in the construction of some of our most iconic bits of infrastructure.

(I won't make any comments about how differently the Victorians might have approached the HS2 project).

But the role of benchmarks wasn't just confined to construction. They also played a part in settling boundary disputes and were vital in ensuring that accurate maps were available during the two World Wars.

Today, with the advent of satellite technology and digital mapping, these benchmarks are redundant. Yet, they remain dotted across the landscape, a testament to the ingenuity and precision of a bygone era.

Some are hidden in plain sight, while others have become the focus of a niche but enthusiastic group of history hunters (aka dull men?).

Now, just like those old benchmarks were crucial for surveyors to accurately map the British terrain, there's a parallel in the world of online marketing for your business.

We might not be chiselling marks on stones, but we still need to be able to make precise measurements and have clear reference points if we're going to run marketing campaigns that are profitable.

Otherwise, you're navigating blind. And you won't be able to see which bits of your marketing are working and which aren’t.

To fix this, you must make sure you have your conversion tracking working properly right from the very start of any online marketing campaign.

Conversion tracking (also called "key events" in the latest version of Google Analytics) lets you see which of your marketing efforts generate you leads and which ones don't.

So you can put more budget into the campaigns that perform well, and stop wasting money on the ones that don't.

This week I've audited three Google Ads accounts where conversion tracking either wasn't in place or was configured wrongly.

And so, in every case, the business owners were throwing money down the drain.

Conversion tracking isn't difficult to set up and it doesn't cost anything to do. It's just that most people don't realise it exists.

If you have a website with an enquiry form on it, you can use the conversion tracking in Google Analytics to detect when people submit your enquiry form. And there are a couple of different ways you can do this.

The simplest approach is to use the form submission tracking that’s built into the current version of Analytics. But, in my opinion, a better options is to redirect people to a dedicated "thank you" page after they complete your form.

I prefer this method because it gives you a specific page that only people who've submitted your form will see. You can then set up a custom event in Google Analytics that triggers whenever someone lands on this thank you page.

Using a separate thank you page makes it crystal clear to the user that their form has actually been submitted successfully (compared to just having a tiny “Submission complete” message appear underneath the form). You can also use the thank you page to display additional information, next steps, or useful resources whilst they're still engaged with your website.

Here's how it works in practice:

Someone clicks on your ad or finds you through Google search, lands on your website, fills in your contact form, and then gets redirected to a page like yourwebsite.com/thank-you.

You can then configure Google Analytics to count every visit to that thank you page as a "key event" (which is what conversions are now called in the latest version of Google Analytics).

The beauty of this system is that it works regardless of which marketing channel brought the visitor to you in the first place. Whether they came from Google Ads, social media, your email newsletter, or just found you organically, you'll be able to see exactly which sources are generating the most enquiries.

This gives you a complete picture of which marketing channels are working best for your business – just like those Victorian benchmarks gave surveyors the reference points they needed to create accurate maps.

Without this data, you're essentially marketing blind, unable to tell whether your efforts are taking you in the right direction or leading you off course.

Anyway, that's all from me for today. I did eventually end up joining the Dull Men’s Club on Facebook and so now I'm off to rearrange the spice rack into alphabetical order.

Bye for now,
David.

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