"Is My Marketing Working?" What to Look For to Improve Your Marketing

Have you ever asked yourself, "is my marketing working?" Or have you wondered what part of your marketing works best (that should be optimized) vs. your opportunities to improve? 

In this post, you'll learn what to look for to know whether your marketing is working and the steps you can take if it's not.

How to Tell if Your Marketing Is Working

One of the best ways to evaluate whether your marketing is working is by knowing what you are looking for and being very specific about your goals.

The key? Focus. Don't expect a marketing silver bullet—an idea or viral concept that will take off and bring in endless new clients and sales. Instead, expect to hone your marketing over time. 

Marketing requires persistence, practice, and optimization. The more focus you have, the quicker you can learn and adjust. 

By trying to do too much at once, you won't be able to review why specific marketing channels and tactics are working better than others. You'll spend all your time implementing a complicated plan and no time analyzing it.

The best marketers know that marketing is all about testing and learning. It's an experiment. It doesn't matter what industry you're in or how long you've been in business. A clear strategy, supported by relevant tactics, creates a tangible plan you can continue refining.

Outline and Assess Your Marketing Process

Use the following steps to assess your current marketing. When you know what's worked to get clients, do more of it.

Step 1: Identify where you get your customers.

For someone to hire you, they need to know about your business. Take stock of where your customers find your business. Is it through a YouTube video? From a certain social media page? Focus on optimizing the channel where your favorite clients discover you. How can you get more clients in a similar way to what's worked? 

Step 2: Document how your potential customer can learn more about your services.

Once you know how someone finds out about you (from step 1), map what happens next. Do potential clients find your business on social media and binge your marketing content? Or, do they hear about you from past clients and then visit your website? Try objectively auditing the channel where your customers learn more about your services. Next, ask yourself how you can make it better.

For example, add testimonials to communicate what you can do for clients. That way, when someone is interested in learning more, they can further see how your business could benefit them. 

Step 3: Audit your sales process.

Once someone hears about your business and explores your offerings, they may decide to learn more or purchase. Review your current sales process. How simple is it for your clients to purchase? How can you reduce any friction or confusion? A seamless sales experience gives new and potential clients a good impression of what it'll be like to work with you.

Without clarity on the above, you don't have a working marketing process. Defining these critical marketing elements will help you determine more precise goals. 

Why Specificity Is Key When Determining Marketing Goals

The more limited your resources (money, time, etc.), the simpler your marketing plan and goals should be. 

Get incredibly specific. 

Many business owners say their marketing goal is to get new customers. Here's why that's not a worthwhile defined "goal," especially if you don’t know what to look for to improve your marketing results.  

You could try a thousand marketing tactics and not get any new clients. Where do you go from there? The problem is that there's no clarity around what to do next. It's not actionable.

For example, say you spend a few hundred dollars on paid ads. But you don't get any new customers. What was the problem? What's next?

• Was it your written copy? 

• The product or service itself? 

• The audience? 

• The landing page imagery? 

• The budget?

• The timing?

There are too many variables to determine the problem and why you didn't make sales. 

Broad, sweeping desires (like getting more customers) don't tell you enough to be helpful, except that you don't have enough customers, which needs to change. 

Break down your marketing so that it's not "why is nothing working" but instead, it's "how can I make slight adjustments to see stronger results?"

How? Become a lot more particular about what you're trying to do.

• Do you need more eyeballs (aka more reach)? 

• Do you need more opportunities to nurture potential clients with strategic content like videos and blogs?

• Do you need a higher conversion rate? Perhaps you have significant website traffic or thousands of followers on social media, but no one is buying.

• Are your current customers or clients deciding to purchase again and stick around? Or, do they rarely come back to repurchase? 

The above questions relate directly to how your target customer interacts with your business. Each one is distinct and targeted. Now that we know why we need to define our goals, here's how to track them. 

Simplify Your Marketing Goals To Track Success

By focusing on different customer interactions, you can start to figure out areas for improvement. Data can make this easier (What's your sales conversion rate? How many email opt-ins did you get last month?), but robust numbers aren't required. 

Breaking down your customer journey (from hearing about you to learning more to purchasing) will help you optimize.

Based on what you decide for your marketing process, create appropriate goals. 

Ideas for actionable goals might be:

• Increase the size of your referral network.

  • If referrals typically lead to new clients, this is probably a good use of your time and energy. How can you meet more potential referral partners?

• Improve your sales conversion rate by 10%.

  • Perhaps you've had 20 sales calls within the last month and haven't signed on any new clients. You know you're getting people on the phone willing to speak with you, but how can you increase the number of people who decide to move forward?

• Decrease your website bounce rate by 20%.

  • The bounce rate is a percentage of the number of people who visit your site vs. those who click on it and immediately leave. A bounce happens when the content doesn't align with the visitor's expectations. So, if a large portion of your website traffic bounces, it may be a messaging or copy problem.

• Increase your landing page conversions by 5%.

  • If people are finding your landing and sales pages, and you see decent traffic, then focus on converting more of those visitors. Converting means compelling your visitors to take the desired action. Examples are getting more people to opt-in to your email list or complete a purchase.

When you set a goal for a marketing campaign or are launching a new strategy, be sure you know how you'll measure success. If the marketing doesn't get you the desired result, 1) how will you know? and 2) what can you learn from it?

Bringing It All Together: Your Marketing Process and Making It Better

When nothing about your marketing seems successful, you may want to scrap everything you've tried. 

That's probably not the answer. 

Starting from square one doesn’t take into consideration what was previously effective vs. what was broken. 

Rather than create an entirely new marketing strategy, ask yourself what seems to be working well and what data you have to support it.

If you get business via referrals, here are some data points that may be helpful:

• # of networking events you attended

• # of meetings with new potential referral partners

• # of new leads (aka people interested in your services)

• # of sales calls

• # of new clients

By attending networking events and setting up meetings, you're getting your business in front of new people. They didn't know about you before you showed up. 

After the networking event, are you booking follow-up meetings? Perhaps you met someone interested in your services, or they'd like to know more to introduce you to a potential client. Based on this, you've likely been getting in front of the right people.

Say you have multiple sales calls as a result of the networking event. Your new referral contacts are sending potential clients your way. However, you don't sign any new clients. 

Ah ha! That's where to focus. 

You've met new people, they've agreed to speak with you to learn more about your business, and then they opt not to move forward.

Why?

• It could be your messaging.

• It could be your service/product market fit.

• It could be how you run your sales calls.

• It could be your confidence in your product or service. 

It may not be immediately clear what needs to be updated. But you've narrowed it down to a single point in your process that's broken.

Use that same thinking for the rest of your marketing.

If you're not getting in front of any new people - that's a worthwhile place to focus.

If no one is opting into sales calls - that's a different issue.

Trying to assess marketing as a whole can get daunting very quickly. Break it down into smaller parts to diagnose more definitive, addressable issues. 

It’s Time To Stop Aimlessly Wondering Why Your Marketing Is Not Working

The more specific you are with your goal and the clearer you are in your focus, the easier it'll be to take away meaningful insights.

Any respectable marketer should set the expectation that marketing requires optimization. 

Even if you're not a professional marketer, hopefully, this post helps you evaluate your marketing like one.

If you'd like to chat with a marketing professional about why your marketing isn't working how you’d like, schedule a complimentary call here.