Note from Josh, co-founder at Interact: This post is courtesy of our Tayler Cusick Hollman, CEO at Enji.co. Enji is a partner of Interact’s, and they do really great work providing marketing tools to small businesses owners that are complimentary to Interact. Thanks Tayler for sharing with us!
When you think about the reasons you decided to start your business, what were they? Well, if you’re anything like the thousands of entrepreneurs I’ve talked to over the years, your reasons likely include at least one of these: you wanted to work for yourself, you wanted to help other people, you’re really good at something, you wanted to create something for yourself. All really great reasons! But after a while of living, breathing, and eating everything that is your business, you probably found yourself at a proverbial fork in the road. Walk down one path and your business stays pretty much how it is because that’s what you want or need. Walk down the other to make it bigger and better. Now, there is no right or wrong answer here (it’s only about what’s right for you!), but if you picked the “grow your business” path, let’s talk about that.
Because figuring out how to grow or scale your business is no easy feat. It requires thinking about almost everything you do. It means you have to plan and solve for all new problems. It means the ways you market yourself are probably going to need change. And when it comes to figuring all that stuff out, what exactly are you supposed to do? Where do you start? Well, you start by understanding your marketing metrics!
So today, we wanted to share some advice to get you started with tracking your marketing metrics so you can know if your marketing is working. Read on to learn:
- What you need to do before you start tracking marketing metrics
- How to decide which marketing metrics to track
- What the most important metrics for small business to track are
- How often you should look at your numbers
- Tips to help you grow your business based on what your numbers tell you
Before you start to track your marketing metrics, set goals
You’ve heard this before, and here you are, hearing it again. But it’s a great reminder because pretty much everything you do with your business requires having goals set. And when it comes to figuring out how you are going to grow your business, your goals are incredibly important! That’s because these goals help you set the direction and make the plan to grow. Without them, you have nothing to hold yourself accountable to or know whether you are on track or off.
So, let’s talk through an example—and one that goes hand in hand with the big picture goal of wanting to grow your business. Grow your email list. Because once you’ve decided this is something you need to make moves on, you can start making those moves:
- Create or update lead magnets
- Build out email sequences
- Work sharing your lead magnets into your content planning
- Decide on an ad budget to promote some of your lead magnets
How to decide which marketing metrics to track
We could go on to create a list a quarter mile long, but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to do deep on marketing metrics. So now it’s time for you to figure out which marketing metrics you need to track. And you’ve got to go back to those goals to come up with this list. That’s because the metrics you pick should help you understand the health of your business and the impact of your marketing—but not everything, everywhere, all at once. What’s the impact of what you’re doing on your goals?
So, if we go back to the “grow my email list” goal, here are some examples of metrics you can track:
- Total email list subscribers
- New email list subscribers
- Number of unsubscribes
- Number of website visitors divided by new email list subscribers (to get a high-level conversion rate)
- Conversion rates for each of your lead magnets
And we know you’re wondering: How many metrics should you track? The answer is different for everyone—depending on their goals. But resist the urge to track everything under the sun because more is not always better. You should start with the most core metrics you can think of and only add to that list if you start to have new (and specific questions) over time.
The most important marketing metrics for small businesses to track
Those 5 metrics we just talked about are a great place to start if your goal is to grow your email list. But what if it isn’t? What if you’re reading this and really just want to know what you should definitely track (regardless of what your goal is).
Normally I would say you have to give me more to work from. But, okay, okay. Here are the most important marketing metrics for small businesses to track.
Traffic sources: You need to know what is driving traffic to your website (the place people are ultimately converting to being clients or customers). So track this metric and include a breakdown of the top marketing channels and/or referral sources.
Social media reach: All that time you spend on social media is supposed to be in the name of helping you grow your audience. But if you’re only reaching the people who already follow you, that’s not exactly the point. Tracking your reach helps you know your posts are getting seen by more folks than you have followers—which hopefully will turn into more followers over time.
Social media link clicks: Unless you can make a sale on social media without requiring people to click somewhere, you want to know that your content is getting people to the place they can actually convert.
New email list subscribers: More helpful than simply tracking your email list subscriber count is tracking how many new folks you’re getting each month. This helps you see whether your lead magnets are doing their job—and when they might need a refresh.
Click through rates: Similar to social media link clicks, you want to make sure your email sequences and newsletters are compelling people to click to the place they can actually purchase from you!
Leads or sales by marketing channel: This is a big one because most small business owners wonder where their marketing is working best. So tracking how many leads and sales you’re getting by marketing channel is the best way to know where your marketing is working (and where it isn’t).
Build looking at your numbers into your monthly routine
When it comes down to it, this is most likely your responsibility as the business owner. Sure, you might have folks who can help you gather your numbers, but in the end, you are the person who needs to make decisions based off them. Whether you have a CEO day or celebrate KPI Day (like we do at Enji), working this into your monthly routine is key. That being said, you can look at them too much or too little. So:
- Don’t let this be like your bookkeeping where you only look at it once or twice a year when you’re basically forced to
- But also, don’t look at it too often because then it’s like day trading in the stock market
Pro-tip: You can track your marketing metrics in a spreadsheet, but if those aren’t your thing or you’re more of a visual person, Enji’s marketing analytics dashboard is an easy-to-use option.
Tips to help you grow your business based on the numbers
Making the right decisions to grow your business is a mix of trusting your gut and your numbers. Because you know your business better than anyone. It’s your future we’re talking about. So, your intuition is very important in this process. But the reality is, sometimes we have to make decisions we don’t really want to make. And instead of taking the emotionally easy way out, we need to let our metrics say what they need to say—they are brutally honest like toddlers and will call each and every one of us out. But this is the balance you need to strike and taking both into account just helps you make the smartest decisions.
So, let’s go back to our “grow your email list” goal one last time and talk through the kinds of questions you might ask yourself (and make moves on) based on your metrics.
- If your email list isn’t growing:
- Do you not have a lead magnet?
- Are you not sharing your lead magnet?
- If you do have a lead magnet, it is exhausted?
- If your number of website visitors to email list subscribers isn’t growing:
- Do you have a lead magnet on your high value pages of your website?
- Is the lead magnet not effective?
- When looking at your lead magnets:
- For your best performing lead magnets, can/should you put some money behind it and promote via advertising?
- For your worst performing ones, what can you adjust? Would they be more effective on another page of your website? Is the offer just something no one wants?
Pro-tip: Quiz lead magnets have an average 40%-50% completion rate—which is awesome! So if you’re looking for a more effective way to grow your email list, Interact’s quizzes are easy to set up. Plus, they help you learn about the folks your marketing is attracting so you can get better at knowing them over time!
Growing your business isn’t going to be the easiest thing you’ve ever done, but you already did the hardest part—you got it off the ground. So now is the best time to set those goals, decide which marketing metrics you’re going to track, commit to tracking them, and then make the decisions you need to grow!