Measure Your Marketing: What You Can Track

Several months ago, you were sent an email about the difference between marketing and advertising. Hopefully you took that message to heart. After all,one of the greatest benefits of marketing is the ability to measure your efforts. And, for a business owner, this is a valuable ability.

You see, when you measure your marketing efforts… and then take the time to make the appropriate changes, you are going to see the results in the increased number of sales.

A few months ago I attended a seminar, where Jay Conrad Levinson (Father of Guerrilla Marketing) spoke, I was actually able to get some quality one-on-one time with him. One of the things that he stressed during his presentation, was“So many businesses STOP marketing when they do not see immediate results.”… “It takes a little bit of time to determine if the advertizing and marketing you are doing is working!!!!”

You will never know what is working with out MEASURING!!!!!

Early in my career I worked briefly learning from Dr. Deming, (Father of Total Quality Management and the primary reason of the Re-Birth of Japan in the early 50’s) He used this phrase and it has has stuck with me for many years…“If you can’t measure it, you can’t change it., If you don’t measure it, you will never change. Know what to measure and use it to change for the better.”

In fact, this last point is one of the primary reasons, people and businesses keep doing the same thing over and over again. They can’t measure the results they are getting back… Interesting.

So how can you measure your marketing efforts? Well, good tracking and measuring is going to take a combination of Internet know-how and automated, marketing systems. But, between the two, you can easily track and measure:

• Lead sources
• Email open rates
• Email opt-in rates
• Email links
• User interactions
• Promotion responses
• And, of course your resulting sales!

When you are able to SEE what is working, your marketing will become more specific, targeted, and successful. Even with a stellar marketing campaign, there is always room for improvement. Measuring your results gives you the chance to keep getting better, and bring in more and more sales.

Remember Dr. W. Edwards Deming words, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t change it., If you don’t measure it, you will never change. Know what to measure and use it to change for the better.”

Also remember Jay Conrad Levinson’s words, and I will paraphrase here, “Do what you are doing long enough to get good numbers to MEASURE….”

When uncertainty rules… marketing campaigns are nothing more than a shot in the dark! With the ability to measure, track, and tweak, you can become a marketing powerhouse and start adding more money to your bank account!