Measuring your marketing activity

Marketing is not a set and forget activity.  A more effective approach is to set, measure, refine and then reset.

I was recently talking to a business owner who was spending a significant amount on Google Ads each month, but had no idea if she was getting a return on her investment.  I did a quick search on Google and found that her advert was a long way down the Google search and outranked by her competitors.

Some of the things she could have been measuring were:

• Where her ad was ranked for her search term compared to her competitors
• How well each search term was performing
• How many clicks through to her website each month
• What the cost per click was

Once she knew what these results were, she could refine her ad/search terms, let it run for another week/month then measure again.

I am not a Google Ads expert, and I usually recommend using experts in this case as it is a refined art that is constantly changing.  The experts will also know what to measure and how to refine, however the principal is the same for any type of marketing.

Some marketing activities are easier to measure.  Activities such as having an active website (Google Analytics), Google Ads and Facebook advertising make measurement easy as they come with a large amount of data and analytics that is easy to access.  If you are not tapping into that data source, I suggest you start looking at what is available.

One method is to find out the referral source for all new customers.  It is easy to tell those that contact you through your website inquiry form, or perhaps through Messenger, but think about all the other marketing methods that you don’t get direct data from (eg through building or vehicle signage).  Do you ask your customers?  This could be part of your sales process to collect and record this information.  It could be a question asked during a phone call, or it could be a question on a new customer form for example.  Once you have this information, don’t forget to measure it to see what is the most effective, and what is not coming up with any results.

Knowledge is power, so make sure you understand how to measure each marketing activity.  How many customers do you get from each activity?  What is the average lifetime value of each customer?  Is the cost of the marketing activity less that the number of customers x average lifetime value?

Don’t just set and forget.  Have a measurement and refinement plan to make sure you are making the most of your marking spend.

Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter. I hope you have found it helpful.  If this is a topic you would like to learn more about, please get in touch. Please share this newsletter with others who would find it useful.

Ann Gibbard - Oxygen8 Consulting

ann@oxygen8.co.nz

021 682 014