A lot of business owners I know are doing lots and lots of marketing right now. They’re trying to make sure their names and brands are still out there, reminding people that they’re still in business and ready to welcome new customers now that Covid restrictions are easing.

Marketing is one of those things that most business owners know they need to do, and they might even know what good marketing looks like, but a lot aren’t really sure how it’s all measured. And so they keep doing what they’re doing, with no real idea of if it’s working or not, and if it’s generating them a profit, or if it’s actually making them a loss. But can you really measure marketing?

 

What Does Success Look Like?

Before you can possibly say if your marketing is successful or not, you need to know what success looks like for you. This is important, as success for one business isn’t necessarily the same thing as success for another. So ask yourself, what are you trying to achieve through your marketing? Are you looking for more new enquiries from your website? Do you want more people to see your Facebook posts? Do you want more people to download your e-book.

These measures might change depending on the current aims of your business at the time, but that’s ok! That’s the beautiful thing about marketing. If you decide to change your focus, then you can change what you are measuring to match it. Once you know what success looks like, measuring it becomes a much simpler job.

 

Test and Measure

There is absolutely no point in having 6 different marketing strategies going if you don’t know what they’re doing for you. You might have dozens of new leads coming in a day, but if you have no clue where they came from, they’re useless. Effective marketing all about knowing what strategies are giving you results, where the ROI (Return on Investment) is, and following that success. For that, you need to test and measure.

Business owners need to be able to make decisions based on facts and figures, and marketing is no different. In the ‘old school’ days of marketing, you could make X number of calls a day, book Y number of meetings from those calls, and get Z number of new clients from those meetings. That’s pretty easy to track back. But in a more digital world, when we’re putting so much ‘stuff’ out there, it’s more difficult to figure out what’s working. Tracking and measuring each campaign means you can see where your success is and do more of that, while dropping the strategies that aren’t working. It sounds complicated, but trust me, it’s simple once you get the hang of it!

 

Some Measuring Tips

A lot of my clients will look a bit blank when I talk about measuring marketing, particularly when we’re talking about online efforts. But analytics are everywhere, and if you know what you’re trying to measure (see above), then there is a tool to help you measure it. A few of my go-to examples are:

Google Analytics: A simple little plugin that, when installed on your website will let loose a huge wave of information. With Google Analytics, you can see how many people visit each page of your website, when they visited and where they came from. You can find out basic information about them, see how long they spent on each page, what they looked at and what they clicked on. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And the best part is – it’s free!

Facebook Insights: If you’re running Facebook advertising campaigns or use Facebook to communicate with your customers in any way, Facebook can provide you with a lot of information. How many people viewed your page, when, what was clicked on, how many engagements you had, and even their basic information. All really useful information that can help you hone in your messaging. Pretty much every social media and marketing platform now comes with a built-in analytics tool, designed to help you see the benefits you’re getting and how well your marketing is performing. All you need to do is use them!

Use branded links: A lot of businesses will just share their main domain link on all of their offline marketing materials. But instead, try creating unique landing pages for each of your campaigns, locations or marketing methods, and use a unique link for each of them. For example, you could use mybrand.link/mag for a magazine advert, or mybrand.link/camberley for a campaign in Camberley. It’s more memorable for the people seeing your marketing, and it means that when they do visit your website, you know where they came from.

Call Tracking Links: Not everyone who sees your offline marketing will want to engage with you online. Plenty of people prefer speaking on the phone, or by other methods. But how do you tell if a customer is calling you because they’ve seen your posters, or because they read your magazine ad? Call tracking numbers are perfect for this. They’re the telephone equivalent of a custom landing page. Instead of your normal business phone number, you can use a service that allows you to choose different phone numbers for different campaigns, and redirect them to your standard number. This way, you can tell exactly where the phone call came from based on which number they called. Neat, huh?

Discount Codes: Everyone loves a discount. And one of the best things about them from a business point of view is that they are unique. So they incentivise people to engage with your business, and help you track where they came from at the same time. Just issue slightly different discount codes to each of your marketing channels, and when they are used, you can see where they came from, and measure the volume from there.

 

I know that sounds like a lot of work, and when you’re first setting everything up it can be. But it’s worth it, because you’ll be able to see what’s working for you right away, and make quick changes if you need to. So less money wasted on things that aren’t working, and more money spent on the strategies that are getting you leads. If you want to know more about building a marketing strategy that includes tracking, or you need some help getting things back on track after Covid, I’d love to help. Click here to arrange a coffee and a chat with me, to see if coaching could be just the kick up the bottom your marketing needs.