Marketing might be the last thing you want to do every day, but let’s face it, it is one of the most important aspects of your small business. Because marketing is how you build your brand. It’s how you connect with new customers. And it’s definitely how you convince people to buy your sh*t. (Which we know is the best sh*t!). The thing is, much as it can be hard to keep consistent with your marketing, it’s even harder for most people to have confidence in what they’re doing. You know—to know whether or not the time, money, and resources you are pouring into your marketing are even moving the needle. So today, we wanted to have an important and candid conversation to help you know if your small business strategy is working.
Because you can’t afford to not know.
Here are the things you need to have and do in order to know which parts of your marketing strategy are working—and what might needs some work.
You need to set marketing goals and objectives first
Whenever you are trying to judge whether or not something is working in your small business, you need to have something to judge—which is exactly where marketing goals and objectives come in. Honestly? Without them you’re just a sailor on a ship with no direction. So when it comes to your quest of finding out whether or not your small business strategy is working, you can think of your goals and objectives as the mile markers you need to pass in order to get to your destination.
In plain English? You can’t know if your marketing is working if you don’t have goals and objectives.
That’s because your goals define the ultimate thing you are working towards. You know, the entire reason you’re putting effort into your marketing and running your small business? So think about and set business goals first. Do you want to build your brand to become super recognizable in your market and industry? Do you want to do a better job with SEO to increase the number of people who are learning about your small business through search? Whatever your goals are, get those written down and somewhere you can see them.
The next thing you want to do is set objectives for each of your goals. And if we’re going back to our “mile marker” analogy, these are the more incremental things you need to accomplish while on the road to (read: making progress towards) your marketing goals. These tend to be more measurable in a traditional sense, so if you’re trying to grow your brand, your objective might be to grow your email list. If you’re trying to do a better job with SEO, you probably want to increase website traffic. Write these down too.
And come back to them as you do your evaluating.
Ask yourself: How good are my leads and customers?
If you’re looking for a quick and dirty gut check on whether or not your marketing strategy is working, ask yourself this question: How good are my leads and customers? Like how good are they right now, have they been for the past month, and for the however-many-months-before during the time you’re evaluating. Because (long story short), if your marketing has been attracting high-quality leads or great customers, it’s working. If your marketing has been attracting leads who ghost you or customer who are spending below your average transaction value, it needs some work.
But if we take a step back, you’ve gotta know and define what a “high-quality” lead is or a “great customer” first. If you don’t, you’re back to that wondering sailor phase of things.
When it comes to defining these folks (in our effort to make sure you’re really getting to the bottom of whether or not your small business marketing strategy is working), you’ll want to create customer personas. And here’s where you can learn how to create customer personas.
How to really know if your small business marketing strategy is working—track KPIs
Your marketing metrics and KPIs are the best way to really evaluate your marketing—the problem is, you’re probably not tracking them. (Too many small businesses aren’t. So, excuse us while we get on our soapbox about this.)
KPIs are key performance indicators and tracking them does 2 things for you. The first is it helps you understand the health of your business (which is often centered around how much money is the business bringing in and spending). This is important because we have to run a healthy business—no ifs, ands, or buts. The second thing KPIs do is help you understand the impact of your marketing (winner winner chicken dinner right here—this is the answer to your question!). From what marketing channels are most effective to how much in marketing dollars it costs you to find and win a customer, these KPIs can confirm you’re doing the right things or kick you square in the face when you’re not.
Tracking KPIs for your small business is one of the smartest things you can do because you’ll be able to back up your gut with numbers—which means you can be really confident in the decisions you’re making. And if you want to go deeper into this, here is where you can learn more about key performance indicators.
Enji can help you build a small business marketing strategy that works
Taking an educated guess here, but we’re thinking you’ve made it this far because you really need to make sure the precious (read: very limited) time you have to work on marketing is actually doing something. And if you’re thinking, “Yes. Yup. Yeah,” we’ve got just the marketing tools to help!
Enji is marketing software for small business owners who have to do their own marketing but aren’t marketing experts. And whether you think of it as a marketing platform or marketing system, Enji is definitely a place for you to plan, organize, and do your marketing. Seriously, you can create a marketing strategy for your small business (that includes goals and objectives), get recommendations on the marketing tasks you need to do, get your blog writing and social media scheduling done way faster (thanks AI), and track your KPIs all in one place.
It might sound too good to be true, but it’s true!
Start your14-day free trial today! And if you want to watch our marketing tools inaction before you do, check out this demo first.
