I'm going to start today with a powerful quote: "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it”. Just take a few seconds to let that sink in and really think about what that means. This quote can be applied to absolutely everything, and a marketing strategy is no different.
If you can't measure your marketing strategy or simply aren't measuring it, then how do you know it's working for your business and how can you possibly make it better? You just can't. Without measurement, testing and analysis, your marketing strategy will surely fail. Here's how to successfully measure your business marketing strategy:
1) Get Started On Google Analytics
One of the first tools you can start using today to measure the success of your marketing efforts is Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a free online platform that you can use to track your website visitors and how they engage with your website. Some of the metrics that you can analyse through Google Analytics are:
- Number of page views.
- Average time on a page.
- Top pages visited.
- Bounce rate.
- Goal conversions.
Google Analytics has a lot to offer for businesses who want to analyse how their marketing strategy is performing and there is so much useful data you can get from it. If you don't have Google Analytics installed on your website then get it installed and start using it. If you do have it and aren't using it, why?
Here are a few key metrics you should be analysing in your Google Analytics:
- Page views by source: You can use this to see which traffic sources are driving the most page views and how users are engaging with your site from these sources. This would be particularly useful for example if you were running a social media campaign. You could see the number of visits from social media and get a feel for what they did on your site.
- Goal conversions: First of all, you'll need to get goal conversions set up. You can do this quite simply by specifying a destination URL of what you'd class as a conversion. So, for example, if your contact form goes to a thank you page, you could add that thank you page as a goal to track how many visitors fill in your contact form.
- Location: Look at where your traffic is coming from. You can look at countries here or drill down into cities and more to make sure your visitors are coming from your target locations. This is particularly useful if you are a small business who only targets a 30 mile radius for example.
Learn more about Google Analytics in this blog article: How Google Analytics Works
2) Ask New Enquiries Where They Found You
This one's simple. Do you have a number of employees who answer the office phone? Do they frequently ask new enquiries how they have found your business? If not, put a system in place! This needn't be nothing complicated and should be a simple set of questions that your employees can ask any new enquiries that call in. Here are some examples:
- "Can I ask how you found out about us?"
- "If Google, can you remember the search term you used?"
It really is as simple as that.
Then all you need to do is start tracking these and keeping a record of them.
3) ROI
Return on investment is probably the most crucial metric to determine the success of any marketing campaign. If you're not making a profit from the money that you put into a campaign, then it's simply not working! You can use the information from the first two points to determine an estimate for your ROI for a given marketing campaign.
Invest In Inbound Marketing
Investing in inbound marketing makes your life easier. Everything is all in one place! This makes any marketing campaign really easy to track and to determine the success of it. There are a number of popular inbound marketing platforms out there but here at JDR, we use HubSpot. We use this for our own marketing and for clients and can't recommend it enough. Also, it helps that we are certified HubSpot Platinum partners, meaning we truly are a cut above the rest of our competition!
If you'd like to discuss your business marketing strategy with one of our experts, call us today on 01332 343281.
