Baseball Analytics and Your KPI’s
source: MLB TV
I am sitting here watching my San Francisco Giants beat the snot out of the New York Yankees.
This is a pleasure only surpassed by the San Francisco Giants beating the snot out of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
However, since the Dodgers apparently get to sign every good free agent in existence, I suspect this will no happen for some time. But I digress…
My joy and satisfaction has inspired me to write a blog post about “Key Performance Indicators”, also known as KPI’s.
Whether you are here because you need help writing the patient education content for your healthcare business…
Or emails, ads, and kickstarter pages for your board game crowdfunding campaign…
This is a blog post you will find relevant.
Usually in these “story driven” posts, I bury the lead and jump right into a fun, relatable, interesting story.
However this time I will avoid that classic mistake and tell you why this story is important in as plain language as I can.
Here is why you need to track your KPI’s:
So you know if you are doing good or not.
Its that simple.
KPI’s tell you if you are achieving what you want, to the degree you want to.
Let me explain with an illustration…
Just in case you didn’t know, the San Francisco Giants and New York Yankees are baseball teams.
And baseball is a game with LOTS of numbers.
Like… tons and tons and tons of numbers.
Here is a picture of all the batting numbers for arguably the greatest overall baseball player ever Willie Mays:
source: baseball reference
In case the awards on the far right (20 time All Star?!?!) don’t give it away, Willie Mays is clearly a GREAT baseball player; it doesn’t matter what numbers you choose to look at when you are considering the GOAT.
All of them will leave you saying: “Dang… THAT guy knows how to play baseball”
But what about an average player?
Or an undervalued player?
What stats do you use to determine if this or that player could actually be good if they were coached differently or put in a better situation?
What numbers should you use to determine a good or bad baseball player?
As many of you know, this was the premise of the real life experience of General Manager Billy Beane, popularized in the book/movie “Moneyball” (here is a clip from the movie explaining it).
In the past, the most popular numbers to use were batting average (AVG) and runs batted in (RBI).
Batting average is what percentage of plate appearances you get a hit. And runs batted in is how many times you hit the ball and you or another player scores.
Obvious, straight forward value… right?
Sorta…
While these numbers are still important, they are misleading.
For example, if one guy hits 3/4 with three singles (.750 batting average for the game), and another guy goes 1/4 with a homerun (.250 batting average for the game), the guy with the home run did more to win on his own that the guy with three hits.
And if one guy hits three home runs, but no one was on base when he did that, then he only gets three RBIs. But if another player strikes out two times and then hits a double when there are three guys on base with two outs, then he will get three RBIs. And yet, the player with the home runs is CLEARLY a better hitter!
But some statistics have flaws in tracking value.
This has led to the polarizing analytics revolution in baseball, startin with tracking numbers like OPS (On Base + Slugging Percentage) and WAR (Wins Above Replacement):
OPS is generally better than AVG at tracking a hitter because getting on base is usually more important than a hit (which raises the value of walks) and hitting for power (“slugging”) is more important than hitting in general.
And WAR takes into account EVERYTHING a player does… running, fielding, hitting… to calculate overall value rather than just liking a guy that belts homers but makes dozens of errors when they are in the field.
But then, with new statistics made possible by advanced techology, teams tarted liking even more statistics more to judge a player. Things like Launch Angle, which measures the angle the ball comes off the bat, or Hard Hit Rate, which measures the speed the ball comes off the bat, became the benchmarks for a good player.
Different teams had different statistics to measure players, and as a result some teams got better players than others.
Why is that relevant?
Because picking the wrong stats has consequences for your business decisions.
Baseball Analytics Demonstrate the Value of Key Performance Indicators in Your Business
What all these baseball analytics do is MEASURE the performance and ability of players.
Rather than relying on eye test, which can be deceiving…
OR going off gut and vibes, which has contextual and individual bias…
The baseball analytics measure what is practically working in a player, and key performance indicators measure what is practically working about your marketing.
KPI’s measure the performance of your marketing.
Thankfully, nowadays most marketing platforms track data relevant to their marketing channel automatically; so you don’t have to go and get some sort of KPI specific software.
But there are different KPIs for different marketing channels. Here are a few examples of each:
Open Rate: The number of subscribers who open your email
Click Thru Rate: The number of subscribers that click on a link or button in your email
Spam Rate: The number of subscribers who report your email as Spam
Websites
Bounce Rate: the number of site visitors who get to your site and leave within a few seconds
Load Speed: the amount of time it takes for your website to load
Conversion Rate: the percentage of visitors who do the task you want them to do when they visit your website
Search Engine Optimization
Keyword Rankings: the number of searches and traffic a certain keyword search receives
Organic Clicks: the number of clicks your unpaid google results recieve.
Impressions: the number of times your webpage appears on search engine results and is seen by users.
Social Media
Likes: the number of people who like a post
Shares: the number of people who share a post
General Marketing
Return on Marketing Investment: the amount of money your marketing efforts generates compared to how expensive your marketing is.
Customer Lifetime Value: How much money you make on average per customer.
Cost Per Lead: The amount of money you spend to get a single lead.
So what are the benefits of measuring KPI’s?
In some ways, the benefits are obvious.
You fill in the gaps of your understanding so you have a better picture of your business and marketing
When you track results you can notice trends and can respond much faster than you otherwise would.
You can save time and money by stopping marketing attempts that are not performing and spending more time on marketing strategies that are working great.
But in terms of marketing, KPI’s are ESSENTIAL.
That is because marketing is always a guessing game.
Yes… even if you hire a professional copywriter like myself… you are merely elevating your guessing to educated guessing.
And yes, even if you NEED marketing in order to grow… it is still somewhat of gamble of your finite resources.
In fact, not only should you track your KPIs, but you should track your TESTS for marketing as well!
Which begs the question:
What specific numbers should YOU track to measure if your specific marketing efforts are working?
And THAT is a question we can talk about during a discovery call :)
