How To Tell If Your Marketing Is Working

Just as important as putting together a solid marketing plan, is knowing if it’s working. Here’s some ways to tell if it’s working, as well as some things that your plan cannot do for you.

Tracking. It’s important to have measureable metrics in place – or else how will you know what worked and what didn’t? Having these metrics in place makes it easier to make decisions for next year’s plan. Ways to measure success can include tracking codes, which can be used in print ads, mailers, e-newsletters. Another form of this is the use of unique phone numbers that are only used in certain promotions, landing pages or ads – so that you can find out which promotions are driving calls.

Read the reports. Google Analytics is another great way to see where your leads are coming from and know which promotions are driving traffic. It can tell you where your referral traffic is coming from – let’s say that you’re listed in a directory on a chamber of commerce’s website – you can see how many people are finding you on that chamber website and are clicking directly to get to your website. If you find that this directory is responsible for a significant number of leads per month, it’s worth keeping it in your campaign.

Ask. Train your team to always ask how they heard about your company. And it’s ok to give prompts, as people’s memories are not always the greatest. ‘Did you see our ad in X magazine?’ is fine to ask. The more information you can gather about how they heard about you, the better.

Sales. Check your sales to see if your campaigns are bringing in more sales in the areas that you are promoting.

What it can’t do. Remember, marketing’s job is to make the phone ring, drive leads to your website, or create opportunities. It does not close deals – that’s your job, or that of your sales team.

Without tracking, there’s no accurate way to tell how effective your campaign was. Not the best way to treat your money.