Why Test & Measure? 

If you don’t know where your customers come from, you’re really stabbing around in the dark. You have no real idea which marketing campaigns are working, how well your salespeople are doing or even how much each sale is ‘costing you’. 

Once you know these things, you have the power to make better decisions. You know which marketing campaigns to drop, or improve, and which to spend more money and time on. You’ll also know where your ‘key leverage point is’ – that is, the thing that you most need to improve. 

Perhaps your conversion rate is high but your leads are few – maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe you’re doing well in both lead generation and conversion, but you’re not selling enough high-priced or high profit margin items. Once you know which area needs work, you can start to make some new, well-informed marketing, training and management decisions. Your time energy and efforts will be targeting the right areas and you will enjoy a much great return on your investment. 

The 3 Most Important Things About Testing & Measuring 

1. Testing and measuring is nothing new. You’ve probably been doing it all your business life. Remember the social media campaign you tried that ‘didn’t work’, the magazine ad and the radio spots that ‘did OK’. That’s all testing is. It’s about finding out what produces results and what doesn’t, then making decisions based on that. 

2. You MUST start asking people where they found out about you and tracking where your digital leads come from. If you don’t, you’ll be in the dark forever. You may keep running an ad that never brings a sale, and accidentally stop running a good one. Customers usually come from so many sources, it’s impossible to judge how an ad or campaign is working on sales alone. Perhaps you got more referrals that week, or there was a festival in town. Every time someone buys, ask them this question – ‘By the way, can I just ask where you heard about us’. No-one will have any problem telling you. 

3. Be vigiliant and disciplined. You can’t test & measure half the time – you must do it every hour of every day. It’s not difficult – just remember to record every prospect & customer interaction. And make sure any employees do the same – stress the importance of it and absolutely DEMAND that they do. You may already have database, CRM or automated analytics that will help you do this. 

What To Do With Your Results 

The first thing to do is see what’s not working. If an ad/post is getting a very low response (which means the profit margin from the sales is not at least giving you a return of its investment), drop it. Of course, you need consider the lifetime value of the customer as well. If, after taking all factors taken into account, you’re not getting results, bite the bullet and stop running it. Every time you run this sort of ad, you’re literally giving away money. Now you have two options – channel your marketing funds elsewhere (like back into your pocket) or improve the ad/choose a different publication or platform. If you choose option two, there’s a couple of things you can do to make the task simpler. First, go back over what you have done in the past and think about how well each strategy has worked. Pull out the best couple and see if you can pick what gave them their edge. Next, upskill on your marketing (if you haven’t done so already), read books/blogs watch videos, do courses. Do market research to see what is working well currently in your marketplace. With digital marketing being so prevalent now, it’s imperative to stay abreast of trends and to know which platforms your target market engages with most.  Don’t be afraid to hire or outsource to experts in this area. But remember you can’t abdicate this role. You will need to know enough yourself to manage them and get the return you need.