There are various ways to market your business, but how do you measure marketing results? How can you be sure which method will be the most profitable? By knowing which marketing tactics pay off, you will save time, money and effort by not pursuing those that don’t. In short, by learning to measure the effect of marketing endeavours you can make more money. Most small business owners effectively market their enterprise in a vacuum, spending money on brochures, flyers, and advertisements, without linking specific results to specific marketing tactics. Without associating sales with the specific marketing methods that generated them, how can you possibly know which is working and which is not?
In short, how do you measure marketing results? To maximise your marketing investment, you need to be aware of the results of your marketing methods in order to better allocate your budget. You can save money by eliminating unproductive marketing tactics and make more money by reinvesting in those that are yielding results. For example, if you are running both a search engine advertising campaign and an email campaign, without a method to work out the results of these campaigns it’s impossible to know which is generating the most amount of new business.
So, how do you measure marketing results? There are different ways you can gather the necessary information to make a sound marketing investment decision. With this information to hand, you will be able to get inside the heads of your current and future clients and cater your marketing material to their requirements. In turn you will generate more leads and sales.
Marketing 101: How do you Measure Marketing Results Effectively?
The first step to take in your quest to measure marketing results effectively is to create a database that you can use to track individual marketing methods and the corresponding leads and sales that are generated. Be sure to include fields to track certain campaign dates, descriptions, as well as the number of leads generated and sales made.
So how do you measure marketing results from here? Well, you will have a centralised location containing all the information needed to make the necessary analysis of how best to market your business. The next important aspect of measuring marketing results is to ask questions. Whenever you make contact with a prospective client, make sure to ask them how they heard of your business. Did they find you via an advert in the paper or were they referred from elsewhere? Many small business owners fail to ask these questions, yet it is such a simple and effective way to gather information. It’s also worth spending time on making it easy to enter the information into your database garnered from your prospective clients. Potential investors or financial institutions you are hoping to borrow money from may well ask how do you measure marketing results? Being able to answer confidently with a tangible marketing measuring system you can demonstrate will certainly help your chances. Once put into action, you will also be able to move the most effective marketing mechanisms forward and assign to the trash can those that are yielding minimal results.
Guest Post by Ros, EZBOB
