How To Track Marketing Effectiveness
It doesn't work if you can't track it.
For example, you send out 3,000 mailers to a local neighborhood advertising your new business and services. 5 people walk in your door the next week with the coupon attached to your mailer.
You had a .16% conversion rate. Which seems...less than ideal. What you didn't know, however, is that 38 people saw the mailer and went to your website or Facebook page, interested to see what you were all about and what you had to offer. You just have no way of tracking these people. If only you did...
You can track your website visitors in detail.
It's easy. Sign up for a Google Analytics account and install the tracking code in your website.
The hard part is deciphering the data within to understand what it means, but Google has made their interface a lot easier to understand, so you can with ease find out at least these things right off the bat:
What percentages of visitors to your site are new vs. returning
How long visitors stay on your site
What pages they visit
What time they visited
What are their demographics (age, gender, interests, etc)
This screenshot from a client's account is a snapshot of 1 of the 100s of pages of data you can find in Analytics. Being able to track your users is invaluable. And many social media platforms will allow you to do the same.
Google Adwords and using Facebook Pixel will allow you to retarget specific website visitors too in advertising.
If you could track those 38 visitors who showed interest after getting a mailer, you could retarget them with ads online, and direct them into your marketing or sales funnel. Your .16% conversion rate goes to a 1.4% conversion rate because you were able to track potential customers through a the lifecycle of your sales and marketing funnel.
Getting Started
You want a hub to record people at every stage of your marketing funnel. Use a CRM.
You want to track all of your website visitors and have goals set up to determine which visitors are closest to entering your funnel, and then get them there.
You want to utilize all of your social media channels to track viewership. Are there any trends, and what's causing those trends?
You want to track all email activity. Who is actually opening your emails, and why? People who are engaged and already on your email list are hot leads.
The bottom line is, if you can't track it, you'll never know how effective your digital marketing is. Always be sure you can determine numbers behind any campaigns, promotions, and just the everyday running of your business online.
These tools should help, and you should be well on your way to having effective digital marketing for your small business.
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P.S.
If you're interested in getting more leads and sales, you need to get my "5 Things You Can Do Today To Get More Leads And Customers" In-Depth Guide.
