How to Know Your Marketing Efforts are Working.

I am a huge advocate for reviewing your marketing plan every few months. At the very least, every 6 months. The end of July is right around the corner, and this is a perfect time to closely inspect all of your marketing efforts to determine what is and is not working. 

Most of my clients get stumped over which information to analyze when making decisions on spending more money on something or stopping it altogether. 

I'll make it simple for you... 

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Here is the focus: How well does your marketing strategy deliver traffic to your website?  
Your website needs to be an aesthetically pleasing, effective, user-friendly, call-to-action based website. This is where your audience decides to call, email, or buy your product/service. Your website is where most potential customers decide to move forward with you in some form. A major part of marketing is driving traffic to your website. 

Take the amount of money you spend on marketing. For example: $2,000 a month. Let's say you are getting 100 people to your website each month. Divide $2,000 by 100 and you get $20 per person, or lead. The goal is to lower that per person or per lead cost. $20 per lead is a pretty big number. However, if that $20 lands you a $20,000 deal, you might decide, this is working for you because quality leads are finding your website. But if you sell a $50 product and only two of the leads turn into a profit, then it's time to reevaluate your marketing efforts...and fast.

Your marketing effort might not be effective due to one or more of the following reasons: 

1. It does not target the right audience, so therefore they are not compelled to visit your site.
2. It isn't compelling enough. Your ads, messaging, or overall brand strategy, is not doing the job, and needs to be changed.
3. It isn't consistent, so people are confused about who you are, what you are offering and how they fit in.
4. You aren't using the right (or enough) marketing channels. For example: you focus on social media only, but your target market is reached more through ads or e-blasts. 

So, start paying attention to your web traffic. Install Google Analytics to all of your website pages, and start looking at the analytic information monthly. Then tweak your ads, messaging, and marketing channels until the right traffic starts reaching your website. And make sure the cost per person or per lead makes sense for the income you want to generate and for your current budget.
As always, to your illumination!