While talking to a friend the other day about his marketing efforts for his small business, I asked ‘so how’s it going?’
He said it was hard to tell and he wasn’t sure if he was really getting anything from half of his marketing.
I obviously looked puzzled (I don’t have a poker face) and asked ‘well you track it, right?’
He said ‘of course’ and explained how he knew exactly how much he spent. And he knew he had 7 new clients.
But the problem was that he didn’t track his marketing SEPARATELY! He said he asked people how they heard about him, but half of the time they weren’t really sure.
[Funny side note: people really don’t know. When I was trying to track my marketing without tools, I would ask people. One day I decided to see how effective this really was. I decided to throw in a few avenues that I really wasn’t using. And remarkably I had several people tell me “oh it was definitely television.” ]
He knew down to the penny what he spent every month, the totals, and so much more. And he even knew the cost of each. But he wasn’t tracking the client acquisition.
So how can you truly evaluate if a marketing program is working if you don’t know how many clients it is giving you (and how much it costs to get the client)?
YOU CAN’T! And that is exactly why you need to track every marketing or sales tactic SEPARATELY so you can get the most bang out of your marketing dollars.