“Marketing is free, when you do it right. In fact, if we don’t make you more money than you make us; than, you should fire us.”
This is what we tell our clients during every pitch. This is what we tell our team during brain-storming sessions. This is what we tell ourselves during the decision-making process of every marketing campaign we start. It’s true. After all, what’s the point of marketing, if it doesn’t make you money?
This philosophy has pushed us to develop innovative tracking and analytics’ systems. In fact, we might be turning these tools into a revolutionary set of analytics’ product; but I’ll write more about that later. The point of this article is to teach business owners the value of tracking their marketing dollars. I’m going to share real-life stories, actual results and best of all, I’ll teach you how to start tracking today!
Case Study #1: A $45,000 Mistake.
One of the first clients we worked with was a popular B2C company. They were six-years old at the time, and 80% of their advertising budget went toward newspaper flyers. This particular company had multiple locations across various western states, so their flyer budget totaled about $45,0000/month!
Here is a graph of newspaper readership over the past ten years. Needless to say, something that once worked won’t always be a viable option.
One of the first questions we asked was, “Are you tracking that?” In other words, if you are going to spend 45K, you’d better make sure you are making at least 46K back (and preferably much more). I’m sure you can see where this story is going; they weren’t tracking their marketing spend, so we started tracking it for them.
It turns out that this company earned between 25-30 customers a week from that budget. Those customers would have needed to stay with the company for ten years to recoup the cost to acquire them. We helped this business reallocate that budget into the marketing streams that were returning a higher profit (in this case through digital marketing) and the company started to pick up steam.
So what’s the point of all this? The point is that you never know what parts of your marketing will work until you track them. How many of you small business owners have hired a sign waiver, or run an ad in the local TV station? Great! I’m glad you are trying something, but track it.
Buy some trackable phone numbers, set up questionnaires in your shop, ask your customers questions and track everything that you do.
Pro Tip: Never let your staff talk you into trying something (for marketing) unless you can track it. I promise they will try, but it’s your job to run measurable campaigns. Tweet
Case Study #2: Let’s Paint A Picture.
Another one of my favorite stories in tracking comes from a client who has a popular e-commerce site (again, they will remain anonymous). I worked with their team for a year and one-half. During that time I was able to help them identify their most profitable marketing channels.
When I first started working with this company, their digital properties were all over the board. In fact, their home page, their store, their forum, their blog and their online school were all hosted on different domains!!!
As usual, the first thing we did with them was to set up tracking and analytics. Try to imagine the look on my face when I realized how hard it was going to be to track customers across so many different domains. I think I looked like this.
Step one was to consolidate their digital foot print. I moved as many of their properties into one domain. Next, I set up a few different analytic suites and started testing the conversion rate of each one of their marketing channels.
After the first month of tracking, I was able to prove that their top referrals to conversions were in order:
1.NewsLetter
2.Facebook
3.Search Engine
I wasn’t surprised to learn that their newsletter drove conversions; that is pretty common. We used this information to help them double the size of their newsletter base over the course of only three months. Their subscriber count continues to rise.
I’ll admit that I was surprised to learn that Facebook drove so many conversions. We were able to use this information to add thousands of fans to their page through some updated social strategies.
Lastly, we started restructuring the keyword architecture of their entire website which was a HUGE POJECT. We set them up to rank for hundreds (and eventually thousands) of long tail keywords that drove traffic to their product pages.
All three of these innitatives helped them increase their traffic, the number of sales and the amount of people in their community.
What’s The Point?
The point in all of this is that you’ll never know where to put your efforts unless you are able to track to discover what’s working and what’s broken. In each of these case studies, we found unexpected results. In the first study with the brick & mortar company, we realized that sign waivers were actually effective. You never know what to put your budget toward unless you are able to track everything that you’re doing. This is one of the most fundamental truths of marketing, and it is our favorite thing to do.
I live for the look on a clients’ faces when we show them that they can spend $10K on something that will make them $50K in return! It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of this job.
So, go back to your office, find something to test and start testing. Of course, you can hire us to help you (shameless plug) if you want to, but either way don’t ever let yourself forget to test your marketing spend.
