A-B split test. Visitor Flow. Clickthrough. Do you measure any of this with consistency? If you’re like most small business, you don’t. It’s shocking, but true. Measuring results is something that everyone knows they need to do, but few people actually do.
According to marketing firm Yodle, about 64 percent of all small businesses and bloggers don’t use any kind of paid analytical or scheduling tool. Yowzers. So, what’s the return on investment for all this marketing? No one knows. That’s why you have to start tracking this stuff. Otherwise, you could be throwing away perfectly good marketing dollars, or worse, your precious time.
Get Started
The most important thing is to get started. Do some research on analytical tools. They don’t have to be complicated. They just have to give you some basic information like traffic flow, unique visitors, bounce rates on your site, and clickthroughs for goals (i.e. sales, downloading of a report, etc.). This way, you have something to measure. You have the all-important data.
Keep Lists
Keeping lists is the second thing you must start doing right now. Actually, keep two lists. One will be for prospective clients and the other will be for actual existing clients. Make a note of how you acquired your clients and prospects (i.e. what source they came from).
You should also keep track of when you contacted them, or when they contacted you. So, for example, if someone contacts you via email, you should write down the contact time and date. You should also write down the phone number of the person along with his or her email and of course the person’s name.
Finally, write down how you met them. For example, if you met someone via social media, note the website, and exactly how you met them.
Review
Periodically, you should review your data. This will give you insights as to what’s happening in your business. So, for example, if you passed out 50 different marketing postcards, received 10 business cards from people who seem to be interested in your offer, called 5 of those people, left 3 messages and talked to one person, you can figure out how effective that marketing campaign in.
This is the basis for all direct marketing tracking, in fact. It’s how marketers are able to know, with reasonable certainty, that they can send out 1,000 postcards and receive a 3 percent response every single time. You may even be interested in EDDM Postcards Printer to take care of your needs on your next campaign. Always a good idea when you are able to turn it over to the professionals to best take care of you to get the best results.
This is the kind of consistency you want to build into your marketing. You don’t want to guess at how many people will end up walking through your door, or visiting your website. You want to know.
If all this sounds like a lot of work, it is if you’re doing it manually (which isn’t recommended). Fortunately, there are an almost endless number of customer relationship management programs out there. For websites, analytics programs are also plentiful, with Google Analytics being the most popular.
Frances Meyer’s career is based on marketing strategies across decades. When not building plans or branding new businesses, she enjoys blogging about the basics of marketing in today’s world.
