7 Ways to Measure Marketing Performance

If you want to make sure your company is successful, you need to have knowledge of marketing. One of the biggest challenges that marketers face is having enough patience and prudence to wait on results and determine which methods are fruitful versus those that are a mere waste of time and funds. Unfortunately, it can take weeks or even months for the full effect of your efforts to become apparent, so it is imperative to start tracking any available analytics that might provide insight into your current performance within a campaign.

The best marketers use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track their progress in specific areas, and then use this data to hone in on effective strategies and identify weaknesses that need to be addressed. Now that you know why you need them and what they’re used for, here are the top seven marketing KPIs every entrepreneur should know about.

Conversion Rates

If you don’t know about this metric as an entrepreneur, you’re probably not very experienced. The conversion rate is the percentage of leads or site visitors who perform a desired action versus the percentage of leads/visitors who do not.

The “desired action” in question could be anything from buying a product, to signing up for a subscription, to opting into a newsletter, to clicking an ad. Obviously, you want your conversion rates to be as high as possible. In fact, that’s the main goal in marketing, which is why it’s at the top of this list.

Sales Revenue

You might not be tracking every aspect of revenue generation or comparing your data to your marketing efforts to find a correlation between your efforts and increases in revenue. But you should be. That’s what tracking KPIs is all about – using analytics to identify what works.

If you’re not analyzing your sales revenue in relation to marketing efforts on a daily and weekly basis, you’re limiting your businesses. After all, the last thing you want to do is waste time on sales efforts that aren’t yielding results.

Cost Per Lead

It’s also important to calculate how much each lead and customer is costing youin terms of advertising budget. Are you spending more to acquire customers through inbound marketing than you are through outbound marketing? If you are, the sooner you know about it, the better.

Identifying the most cost-effective method of lead generation is just one of the advantages of keeping track of this crucial KPI. Because spending money to make money only works when you spend less than you make.

ROI for Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is the practice of bringing customers to your company or website passively, rather than aggressively going out and seeking new clients/customers. Inbound techniques might include search engine optimization, content development, banner advertisements, and other methods that increase your brand’s visibility and presence.

The greatest businesses reap huge ROIs from inbound marketing, so this is a KPI that should never be ignored. Remember, sometimes playing hard to get actually works out.

Organic Search Traffic

Reiterating the importance of effective inbound marketing, organic search traffic is a KPI that shows how strong your company’s ranking authority is within the search engine result pages (SERPs). Ultimately, most of your online marketing efforts should be put towards ranking higher in major search engines like Google for popular keywords and queries.

Developing and distributing great content related to your brand is by far the best way to increase the amount of traffic gained from organic search results.

Social Media Engagement

Businesses that are firmly rooted in social media have a higher chance of continuing and thriving, so it’s important to keep an eye on the amount of traffic coming from social media as well as the percentage of those visitors who are converted into customers. Tracking KPIs related to social networking will ensure that you’re at least aware of where you’re at and what needs improvement in this pivotal department.

If you’re slacking on your social media game, you might want to try increasing social media engagement and presence and monitoring your KPIs along the way.

Average Customer Value

Finally, while all of the above KPIs are useful in their own regard, they won’t help you manage your budget if you don’t know the average value of your customers. There are several ways to calculate the average customer value metric, either in the short-term or long-term.

Essentially, your average customer value is the average sales revenue generated by each customer minus the cost of lead acquisition, multiplied by the average number of sales per customer. Figure out this number fast so you know how successful you need to be to stay afloat.

  Source: http://bit.ly/297psQR

5 Things I’ve Learned in Social Media

I have had the great pleasure of meeting amazing people all over the world because of the industry of social media. Each of the relationships may have started online, however, many of them came offline and I now have more meaningful connections, friendships, and business partnerships because of social media. I wanted to share with you a few things I’ve learned from social media.

We know you want to know! By implementing these simple things you too can see how social media can help you in your business endeavors and much more!

1. Reach Out and Say Thanks –

Everyone would love to hear that they have made someone’s day. The next time you are reading an article on someone’s blog or you see a sentence in someone’s tweet that really speaks to you, reach out and say THANKS to that person. Whether you send an email, a personal note, a DM (direct message) or you post it publicly on their wall, everyone loves to be appreciated. Far too many people only take the time to reach out to someone if there is something negative to say.  So even if it is the service at the fast food place that happens to be your lunch for the day, reach out and say THANKS! Not because you want to get acknowledgement, but because it might just be what someone else needs in their day to keep them going.

2. Research Your Influencers – 

As in any field you want to make sure the people that you think are great and influence worthy are all they say they are.  Have you ever read an article on a blog post and just felt that it was scam-like or not really a ‘tested theory’ but more so someone just blowing smoke? Sometimes it might feel that obvious and other times it might really seem much more difficult to tell.  I’ve found that once you put yourself into the industry you are seeking to learn more about, you can really start to see certain people popping up all over the place and ‘doing a great job’ or as being an ‘influencer’.  The reason it matters is because you want to ultimately have great people to look up to and learn from within your field. Specifically in social media, I love checking out about 5-10 websites every single day of people that are ah-mazing and I know they are credible, trust-worthy and putting out consistently great content. If you are just following someone as an influencer because someone told you so, it doesn’t really give you the edge you really should have by knowing the ‘why’ they are great.  So, dig down into google, check around and really get to know the people that are out there doing amazing things. Trust me, the research will pay off in the long run because you’ll feel confident in the people that you are connecting with as influencers.

3. Not All Social Media Platforms Are Created Equal – 

You may just use some of the social media platforms such as Facebook and Pinterest but you don’t even know what Instagram is or even more so, how people are using it for business. Maybe Twitter intimidates you.  Or maybe you find yourself in a conversation at lunch with someone and you say, “I got twitted today” and everyone looks at you like you have three heads.  There’s a lingo, there’s value and there certainly is a purpose for all the various social media platforms.  For instance, Twitter is extremely powerful for using targeted searches to find potential clients by joining conversations that are already taking place. It is also great for reaching out to and making connections with influencers. Instagram is great for all visual graphics because it has a focus on one photo and allows you to bring stories to life through beautiful pictures. Whether you want to sell something, offer a service or give tips, encouragement, etc.. And the list goes on.  But what is true is that you need to focus first where you really want to get strategic and really be on social media and do it well.  It is far better to do one thing such as Facebook and do it consistently well rather than doing Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Instagram sporadically and with little clarity of what you are on social media for in the first place.

4. Hashtags are Powerful –

If you don’t think that the pound sign has any significance we’ll make sure that you know that is NOT THE CASE.  In social media, when you use the pound sign (called hashtag from this point forward) in front of a key set of words (with no spaces between) it is very powerful because it allows you to search and focus on specific things. For example, if you want to make a post and put #ColumbiaSC in it because that is the city/state that you live and you are a local hair salon, that might be a smart strategy to not only see who else is using that hashtag so you can join in on some conversation but also because it would allow for someone else that is searching that hashtag to find you. Hashtags are found among most social media platforms (especially Twitter and Instagram) however hashtags are really not encouraged to be used on Pinterest. It might seem overwhelming but before you give it a try maybe think of a hashtag and keyword on a topic that matters to you or your business and type it in the search bar on Twitter for example and see what you find?

5. Money can be Made for Your Business Using Social Media –

I know it is true because I have done it myself since 2011. I used Facebook primarily to launch my first company ElizabethtownFamily.com to a booming website filled with amazing family-friendly information for a small community near Fort Knox, Kentucky. We’re talking about a town that has 30,000 people in it and a greater surrounding area of maybe 125-50,000 people. It started with a Facebook page and then once I had the website developed I simply had a strategy to make 80% of every single Facebook post I made have a link going back to the website.  Today, 4 years later, I’ve been able to have this as a profitable business since 30 days of the business launching and use content marketing to attract the community and thus monetizing the brand via local businesses and non-profits that want to advertise to that very targeted audience. I’ve also personally, of course, launched Sweet Tea Social Marketing as well where I can help small and medium business owners that want to have help with their social media so they can see great results for their business.  Just via the social media platform of Linkedin alone, I was able to secure a $10,000 client. It is one thing when people use hypothetical ideas to tell you that social media can grow your business. I’m not here to tell you theory. I’m here to tell you via hustle, strategy and pulling up my sleeves and daily being in the trenches of seeing what works and what doesn’t work, social media is a powerful resource in marketing to grow my businesses and it can do the same for you.

 Source: http://bit.ly/1Vd5PrZ

Expand your business with 5 creativity tactics

With so much PR and marketing advice floating around online, it’s important that you stick to an essential information.

Focusing on “the essential” can bring peace of mind—and can help you develop your business.

Business growth is not necessarily about getting more of everything. Instead, think of it as focusing your efforts to get more meaningful results.

Here are five ways to boost your business online:

1. Step up your social media game.

When marketers want to improve their brand’s presence online, they usually look to add a channel to their repertoire.

Although starting a Pinterest account seems productive, there’s little point in investing your time and energy into a channel that you don't enjoy using or don’t know enough about.

Instead, dedicate more time to the platforms you already use.

If you're actively sharing on Facebook but not using Facebook groups or ads, make those your next steps. If you're tweeting a lot, but aren’t using buffer to automate your tweets and reach users across multiple time zones, you're probably not maximizing your engagement.

If you're using Pinterest but aren’t seeing results, your next step could be taking a free Pinterest course or maybe a workshop at your local library or community college.

2. Repurpose your content.

This approach is beneficial if you’re overextended on a project or short on time.

When you write a series of blog posts, you can repurpose some of them as free opt-ins for white papers or parts of an e-newsletter.

If you’re creative, you probably don't want to use old content everywhere, but you should feel free to reuse your best work when you’re in a time crunch.

To start, ask yourself strategic questions such as, “Can I turn this series into something I can sell?” or, “How can I use this important piece of content in my welcome emails?”

The right questions can bring countless opportunities.

3. Package your services.

If you run a client-based business, you know the challenges of bringing in sustainable income. Luckily, there are ways to turn the famine into a feast.

I recently talked with a woman who runs a copywriting business. She's creative, but she struggles to get new business. I advised her to package her services, which means not to give clients an hourly rate of services but, instead, to offer "bundles.”

You shouldn't just put your services on your website and hope clients will find them. A better approach—as suggested in a recent webinar—is launching your services as you would launch a product. Try debuting a series of blog posts or emails as a way to introduce yourself to a new opportunity.

4. Streamline your processes.

So, what can you streamline? Start with your social media strategy, your sales channels or your list-building and networking.

Here’s how I streamlined my list-building process so it gets me a dozen new subscribers every day.

Most people find me on Twitter, where they can also find a link to my website. Once they're on my website, the home page sends them to any of three places:The Blueprint, my blog and the free guide. If they go to The Blueprint, they'll be directed to my coaching page. If they read my blog posts, there will be a link to my opt-in offer (free goodies for creative rebels), and if they go to the free guide, they'll see a sales page with a sign-up.

Every step of that process has a next step. You can achieve this by anticipating a potential client’s needs.

Many prospective clients will visit your “About me” before committing to an opinion. Make sure to introduce yourself in a way that makes them want to know more.

5. Invest in your business.

If you don't reinvest some of the money you make, your business probably won’t grow. The marketing and PR climate is very competitive, and it’s important to come up with ways to stand out.

I reinvest 50 percent of whatever I make on outsourcing tasks that I can't do alone, or on improving something in my business that lacks.

For example, you can budget for social media tools (buffer,Edgar, Tailwind), email marketing (Mailchimp or Convertkit), improving your website’s look (Squarespace), building your mailing list (LeadPages), and podcasting and webinars (microphone and webcam). You could also hire a virtual or physical assistant.

As online entrepreneurs, we can't just be creative and rebellious; we must also be savvy. It’s important to be strategic with your investments.

Source: http://bit.ly/22bUrvy

Best Frank Underwood quotes.