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Marketing Metrics. It’s a scary sounding term, but it’s not as complicated or time-consuming as many small business owners think. If you want to get more clients and make more sales, it’s essential to be able to assess which aspects of your marketing, sales, and products/services funnels are working and which aspects aren’t.
Ultimately you need to be able to (easily) understand why clients are buying and why they are not. To get you started here are six things you can do to help create easy to track marketing metrics that will help you get more clients and close more sales.
Evaluate: Look at your sales process and evaluate whether there is a specific spot in the process where you consistently lose potential customers and clients. If there is such a spot, try to evaluate exactly how this loss happens, and use this information to improve your sales process.
For example, I have a client who is a coach with a nice sized list. She was having a really hard time filling her coaching programs and turned to me for help. When we evaluated her marketing and sales process, we discovered EXACTLY where in the process clients stopped taking the next step. Once we knew this, we were able to address the problem. Now she has clients “Coming out of the woodworkâ€.
Listen for feedback. If there is something that many of your clients say they want, make sure you provide it for them.
For example, a client of mine is a web designer who only used to create custom wordpress themes. She was receiving daily inquiries from people who LOVED her work, but couldn’t afford her prices. So, she created a few designs that allowed from minimal customization (such as a banner on top) and created a less expensive and more turnkey product line. The result, more sales by listening to feedback.
Ask clients what they want. Whenever you get the chance, ask your clients what you can do to better serve them. Then, create a “do better” file and try to identify themes.
This is a question I always ask my clients. Early in my coaching business, my clients let me know I could “do better†by using some sort of software to make collaboration (during the session) easier. So I have been using GoToMeeting with my clients for years. The result is that my clients are more plugged in during our coaching sessions because we are able to share computer screens and information.
Take complaints seriously. Whenever a client makes a complaint, don’t just dismiss them. Even if it hurts your pride, accept that there is probably something valid to their complaint, and consider how you can prevent such issues in the future.
This is such a tough one for everyone, including me. If one person complains, usually another 10 people are thinking it. Most people don’t take the time to complain, they just take their business somewhere else. So it’s critical to be responsive to complaints.
Try split testing: Create with two different marketing messages, and send one message out to half your list and the other message out to the other half of your list. Which one does better? Why did it work so much better than the other one?
Knowing what your clients respond to will help you create more compelling marketing messages, which result in more clients.
Ask how clients heard about you: Keep track of where your clients and sales are coming from. This will help guide you in your future marketing efforts.
For instance, if you are doing social marketing and spending one hour a week on Facebook and 10 minutes a week on Twitter. By tracking how clients heard about you and discovering that most of the sales you’re making are from Twitter, you can then increase the time you spend on Twitter which will increase your sales.
In the end, the goal of gathering all this information is to help you get clients.
