Small Business Marketing Self-Assessment: What Gets Measured Grows

⚠️ WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS MARKETING REVIEW IN ONE SITTING.😃 
We recommend grabbing some popcorn, a drink 🍿🥤, a big ol’ notebook, and to take your time. You can come back to it and do a little at a time.

Alrighty, put on your big kid marketing pants, and let’s do this!

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The quality of your outcome depends on the quality of your questions. Through asking the right questions, we can spark innovation and creativity, gain deeper knowledge in the topics that are most important to us, and propel ourselves forward in our personal and professional pursuits.

Warren Berger, on The Knowledge Project Podcast, Ep 26

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Is it accurate, important or useful?

It is certainly possible to build a dashboard that pulls this all together from your various sources. At Content Creators Planner, we use a customized version of our Free Marketing Metrics Worksheets  that you can download and use today and ongoing. In addition, we also use a custom Google Sheet to track revenue and costs per channel so we can monitor profitability each month.

Storytelling and Spreadsheets

“The two skills of modern business: Storytelling and spreadsheets. Know the numbers. Craft the narrative.” 

James Clear

Let’s dive in and begin with some of the more qualitative “Storytelling” things first. We will get into the numbers and spreadsheets further below.

Consider this: Watering things down to “reach more people” to appeal to a broader audience does not work. Focus on specific niches, narrower audiences/segments, and address their needs and concerns specifically. You may have more than one target audience and that is fine. Develop content, messaging, and campaigns specific to each. They may be very similar with only slightly different language and images — but those subtle differences may have big impact on results.

Customer Journey (your sales funnel)

You should be doing something intentional for every step of your customers’ journey. It can be simple. But if you are overlooking a step, you are missing out.

Do you have good content for each stage of your customer’s journey?

Many people simply focus on tactics without an overall strategy. While you may have some success, I would say you have a leaky bucket, and you would have far greater success if you plugged the holes in the bucket before you pour any more effort into it.

Review your activities at the top of your funnel. Record your thoughts as they come to you.

• Are they working?
• Are you consistent?
• Are you growing your audience and reach?

Review this stage of your funnel and make notes as you go.

• Are you retaining your audience?
• Are you getting good engagement on social media and in email?

Trust and authority can impact your sales conversion rate (and your lead conversion rate).  If your rates have improved, it stands to reason that you are more trusted or have greater authority. But also, maybe you simply improved your sales processes or lead magnets.

Trust and authority are hard to quantify…

• Do you have authority signals (certifications, awards, as seen on, client list/logos, etc.) and social proof (testimonials and reviews) wherever you can?
• Are you doing anything to get more of these? 

Increase in referral traffic and backlinks is another sign of increasing authority and trust.

How do prospects get a taste of what you offer? These are things like lead magnets, webinars, complimentary coaching sessions, live workshops, etc.

• Do you have these things in place? How are they working?
• Are you getting new leads? Is your list growing?
• Is your list converting to customers?
  • At what point do they convert?
  • Have you tried optimizing this by testing variables?
• Are your lead magnets specifically designed to capture leads for specific products?
  • Do you have nurture drips in place?
  • Are you segmenting and personalizing the drip emails?
  • Do these need a refresh?

Review your sales from the last 3-6 months (or a year if you are doing a year-end review).

• How much did you make from each product and/or service?
• Which channels drove more sales (in total but also break it down per product).
• What is your conversion rate and cost per acquisition?
• Review other costs — are you profitable?
• Should you consider product refreshes? New products? Product bundles?

Also consider: is it easy to buy from you? Could it be easier?

Look at your current and past customers. It costs far less to sell to existing customers than to acquire new ones.

Are you getting repeat sales from customers? Why do you think that is? What can you do to Improve this?

Consider ways you might stimulate repeat sales:

• Develop new product offers
• Remind them when it is time to replenish
• Offer a VIP incentive
• Offer something special to high value customers (purchased 3x or more, or over a $ threshold)
• How can you re-engage former customers who have not come back in quite awhile?

Are you consistently getting referrals and reviews? Are you asking for them? Or stimulating them in some way? Do you ask for them as part of your onboarding/offboarding processes?

Are you using these for social proof and testimonials on your website and in other materials like ebooks and elsewhere? Making the ask for referrals and reviews is also a good way to spot case study opportunities. 

Work this into your onboarding and offboarding automations to make it easy and consistent. Think about:

• What channels for reviews make the most sense for your business?  Facebook? Google? Yelp? 
• What is the best time to ask for a referral? (hint: it is usually at whatever point the customer is most excited — right after signing up/purchasing and as the engagement is wrapping up.) The easier you make it for them to do, the more likely they are to actually do it. 

Productivity

OK, I have to ask… Are you getting things done consistently? (Remember, consistent imperfect action is our mission.) This is a tough one for a lot of people. Be kind but honest with yourself so you can address whatever the issues are and set yourself up to succeed.

Ask yourself:

• Are you spinning your wheels?
• Procrastinating?
• Are things taking too long?
• Do you have documented processes in place?
  • If yes, are they working well? Why/why not?)
  • If no, get on that!
• Are you over scheduled/overwhelmed? Are you trying to do too many things? 
• Are you spending time on things that do not matter?
• Are you tasking yourself with things that would be better delegated or eliminated?
• Do you have a documented strategy or plan in place so that you know what to execute on? Or is it more freeform? (I know of a great content marketing planner that can help you with that.) 😉

Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. There are so many ways to play to your strengths. Don’t let bad patterns or gaps in skills be the obstacle. If you aren’t getting this done, be honest as to why… and then take action to change it.

• When it comes to content creation, if you can’t or won’t be consistent, for whatever reason, maybe you should create a few strong cornerstone pieces of content (hire a writer) with good lead magnets and nurture campaigns…. then run paid traffic to these pieces of content.
• Consider guesting on podcasts, or guest posting on authority sites instead of producing your own original content.

It really can be that simple. With a plan like this, (notice I said the “P” word), you can have a marketing machine where you are not producing an endless stream of content.

THE METRICS
Monitoring, Measuring and Analyzing the Digital Marketing Data

You will need access to:

• Google Analytics
• Email Marketing/Marketing Automation
• Facebook Ad Manager
• Google Ads
• Any other paid traffic sources you may be using
• Social Media Accounts

If you are new to Google Analytics, here are a couple of great resources from Neil Patel to help you get started.

• How to setup Google Analytics
• How to use Google Analytics
• Bonus: How to setup and use Google Search Console.

Marketing Reach is a good indicator of how well the content you are publishing is engaging your network, and how effectively you are growing your entire marketing database. If this number isn’t growing, it will be challenging to grow your number of leads. 

Total reach is the total number of people you can reach across all your channels/networks combined. Think of this as your total potential prospects count. Ideally, your reach should be increasing month over month.

Reach by channel tells you how many people follow or subscribe on each channel. Ideally, each should be increasing month over month.

• Is your reach growing month over month?
• Do you see any opportunities for improvement?
• Is there anything you might want to abandon?

The number of website visits details how many people came to your website in a given time period. Tracking this activity is key to understanding how well your marketing is succeeding at attracting and directing people to your website.

• Are you producing quality content and promoting it and optimizing it for organic traffic?
• Are you running paid traffic?
• How are these campaigns working? Are they profitable? 

How many people are visiting your website? Is this number growing month over month? As your reach grows and you publish more content, this number should be increasing.

People come to your site via numerous pathways. Use this info to gain insight on where to focus your effort moving forward.

• Is one source performing better than another?
• Where can you iterate?
• Where can you improve?

Look at traffic from each source:

• Direct traffic
• Email marketing (automations and campaigns)
• Organic search
• Paid search
• Paid traffic (ie: Facebooks ads)
• Referrals
• Other

Lead measurement is one of marketing’s strongest ROI indicators. Leads nurture into paying customers, and it is important to measure how much new interest you are generating for your products and services.

How many leads are you generating each month? How much is this number growing over time?

When you factor in your conversion rates for traffic-to-lead and lead-to-customer, this can become a predictor of future revenue.  XXXX Traffic > xxx Leads = xx Customers worth an average of $xxxx per sale (and $xxxxx lifetime value).  See next tab in the Marketing Metrics Worksheets.

Use this metric to help identify your most effective lead-producing channels. Are you generating more leads via social or email? If you know this, you can improve your marketing campaigns and focus on your most valuable sources… or perhaps try to improve on the others.

Look at leads generated from each source:

• Direct traffic
• Email marketing (automations and campaigns)
• Organic search
• Paid search
• Paid traffic (ie: Facebooks ads)
• Referrals
• Other

How many customers were acquired by your marketing efforts?

Track which marketing campaigns and sources are yielding the most new customer acquisition. Double down on what is working well. Focus on others for improvement.

Other things to look at:

• One-time purchasers
• Repeat customers
• Recurring revenue opportunities
• Reviews/referrals

It costs less to get more sales from existing customers than it does to acquire a new customer.  Think about ways to stimulate repeat purchases. Also what can you do to stimulate Referrals and Reviews from them?

These are your VIPs.  Consider what types of related products and services you can offer these customers to provide more value and enhance your relationship with them. Also encourage them to refer others to you and/or to write a review.

These are people who visited your site, you have captured their email, maybe even had a sales conversation at some point… but they have not purchased. They might also be former customers who have not come back in awhile.

How can you engage them and nurture them to a sale? Think of where they are in their journey and what you would say to them next if you were to you run into them. Think in terms of a real world conversation.

You’d probably ask how they are, what’s going on in their world? How’s business?  This is a great place to start. Your email automation tool is probably tracking their interests and what pages they visited. Use what you know about them to re-engage and nurture these relationships.

Conversion rates measure the number of people moving from one marketing stage to the next. An increase in conversion rates implies an improvement in the quality of content, or traffic or other relevant factors (like landing page design).

How many of your website visits are becoming new leads for sales? One way to improve this metric is to better guide your visitors to your landing pages with calls-to-action to opt-in for something.

This metric helps you understand if you are generating quality, sales-ready leads or not. If you improve this metric, you can increase customer acquisition without needing additional leads. Also look at what you are doing to ask for the sale. Don’t be afraid to make the ask.

This is the big picture view as to how is your funnel functioning as a whole. If you know your visit-to-conversion rate, you can calculate how much traffic you need to generate to achieve a certain number of new customers.

Increasing your conversion rate by even 1% can have a significant impact on your revenue. Use the last tab in the Marketing Metrics Google Sheet — Marketing ROI Calculator – to play with the numbers and see the financial impact created by increasing your conversion rate by 1%, traffic by 30%, or BOTH.

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Email Marketing & Marketing Automation

Email marketing has the highest ROI of all marketing channels with an average return of $38 for every $1 spent. It is also the most personal. We all get too much email, I know… However, it works.

Review the current state of your email marketing practices for things such as:

• List growth month-over-month (12% is a good target, factoring for unsubscribes as well)
• Revenue Generated — tools like ActiveCampaign (and even Mailchimp) will show you revenue generated from broadcast email campaigns and automations.
• Open rate and click rate (engagement).
  • Consider that even if someone stays on your list but doesn’t open most of your emails — you are still showing up on their radar with each email sent. They do see your name right there in their inbox. When the time is right for them to refer or to reach out, or to click and even to buy, they are more likely to think of you.
• Do you email on a consistent and predictable schedule?
• Are your emails personalized? (beyond Hi Fname…)
  • Do you use conditional content based on pages visited, or other interest or product tags?
  • Do you have specific content relevant to their stage of their customer journey?
• Are you providing value in your emails? Are you addressing their needs?
• Do you ask for the sale?
• Watch your rate of unsubscribes. If it seems high, it could be your audience is not interested in what you are sharing, or your audience is not targeted enough for what you offer.
• Are your lists segmented in ways that are useful to you? (buyers by product, influencers, interest tagging, geography, etc.)
• Do you have email content for each stage of your funnel?

Website

I could write an entire book about website best practices, but for our purposes here, we’ll just focus on some basics.

Review your website and consider:

• Is your content current?
• Does it look current (visually)?
• Is it clear what you do, who you do it for and why they should care?
• Is it easy to buy from you?
  • Is there a clear path what they should do next?
• Is it easy to contact you?
• Have you included social proof and other authority signals?
• Do you have landing pages for your lead magnets and core products/services to which you drive traffic?
• Does your site perform well for both mobile and desktop?
• Is your site speedy enough?

Something I’d like to point out here is that often, we get tired of our own things… saying the same things, looking at the same things, etc. But that doesn’t mean it is time for a refresh. Most people need to see and hear things 7-11+ times before it really sticks. Many are seeing/reading/hearing you and your stuff for the first time. So just because you are tired of it, does not mean it is time for a refresh. Put your time and effort into the most essential things.

Content Audit

Quality content is one of our greatest assets as a marketer. Most of us focus our energy on creating new content, which is a good thing, but we must also review what we already have from time to time.

Customer Experience

Seth Godin says we should be remarkable — worth remarking about, like a purple cow. Are you?

If you are not providing an exceptional experience from start to finish, you have work to do. We all do.

• Review your customer on-boarding practices. Do you have a documented process? Can it be improved/refreshed?
• What is delivery like? Do you have documented workflows and scheduled communications with clients throughout the engagement? Is it consistent? Can it be improved?
• Are clients/customers raving fans in the end?
• Customer off-boarding: What does this look like? Is it documented and consistent?
• Do clients/customers refer others to you? Do they provide testimonials and reviews?
• Have you surveyed your customers to see where you can do better? And if they have needs you might be unaware of?
• What about customer support?
• How do you handle it when things go wrong?

Social media

In order to review your social media in terms of your marketing, you need to consider your goals and then look at things like:

• Which channels you are on and why (is your audience there?)
  • Should you add or abandon any channels?
• How much time are you spending on these channels? Is it fruitful?
• Is your audience (reach) growing?
• Do you have good engagement?
• Do you get a decent amount of traffic from social to your website content?
• Do you convert followers to leads? Do these leads convert to customers?
• Do you convert any social traffic directly to sales?

There is some value to vanity metrics like number of followers in that it is a form of social proof. But if there are no engagement and no leads being generated, does it really matter? There is also value in positioning yourself as a trusted authority by being visible and active.

That being said, all marketing activities should be focused around your goals and your sales funnel.

Think strategically here so that you can use social media for the Know-Like-Trust-Try stages of your funnel. You can also engage existing customers and get reviews and referrals here as well.

And of course, you can use paid social traffic to lead magnets, content and even directly to product sales pages.