In business you should be tracking certain indicators so you know you are effectively using your time towards strategies and efforts that help grow your business. Here are a few areas you should be tracking when it comes to your business.
Let’s start with the money
Revenues
You should know how much you are bringing in and where this revenue is coming from. If you have multiple revenue streams it’s important to know what items/services are bringing in that money. It’s NOT just about knowing the total in the bank.
Expenses
When it comes to expenses of course it’s important to look at what you are spending versus what is coming in…your profit. But for tracking purposes it’s also important to know what those expenses are in relation to your revenues. For example, if you are doing Facebook ads you want to know if those ads are actually bringing in paying clients or the right audience that turn into paying clients. It’s important to evaluate that you are spending money in places that actually help bring in revenues.
Check out these resources for getting your financials in order.
Use of Google Analytics
Google analytics can tell you a lot about your marketing strategy, content strategy, and audience. Understanding your audience’s behavior should help to drive and shape your social media and marketing strategies. Here are a few questions to answer using your Google analytics:
What social media channels or other channels are driving traffic to your website?
Find this under “Acquisition”
What pages are being visited?
Find this under “Behavior”
Which blog posts are the most popular?
Find under “Behavior” / “Acquisition” for what your social media posts are bringing visitors
If you have multiple products/services, are certain product/service pages getting higher traffic than others?
Find under “Behavior”
Google analytics can seem overwhelming at first and has a ton of different reports you can utilize. You don’t need to figure it ALL out to get started using this data to your benefit. If you are just starting, focus on the above questions first.
Here are some resources to get you started in using google analytics:
The Blogger’s Guide to Google Analytics
5 Google Analytic Questions Every Blogger Asks {and the Answers}
Social Media Stats
You want to track your social media growth. This can show you where your effort/time is paying off and where your audience is hanging out (ie where people are responding to what you are sharing). The easily tracked metric for this is growth of followers each month.
New followers indicate:
a.) that people in that social media pool are interested in what you are sharing (your audience is hanging there)
b.) a reflection of efforts you are putting towards that channel and a reflection of your content strategy (what you are sharing).
However social media goes beyond new followers. Engagement is important and most important, is engagement that brings them to your website and/or as a client. The measure of this engagement piece goes back to your Google analytics and knowing what social media channels are driving people to your website and to what pages on your website.
Not as trackable but relevant is how do you perceive the engagement on your channels. We all have those channels we feel that we get more comments from and just feel more connected to. This is important too, even if it less measurable. 🙂 Keep in mind some social media channels will give you insight into how many comments you get, etc., so make sure to check what is being tracked within the social media app itself. Additionally there are tons of other programs designed to give you even more insight. Again don’t make yourself crazy about digging deep when starting out.
Want to do a more in-depth review of your social media strategy? Grab this quick social media audit checklist!
Clients and Email List
This one is intertwined with all of the above, as all of your efforts ultimately lead towards clients. However, I do personally like to have separate tracking of how many clients come in a month and how many inquiries come in a month. While this comes out in your revenues, I like to have this as a separate item I reflect on each month.
It’s important to recognize when this number goes up and how it correlate to your marketing strategies.
- Were you more active on certain social media channels?
- Did you offer a special or discount?
- Did you collaborate with someone to promote your service/product?
- What did you do differently?
Along the same lines as above, it’s important to recognize when you see an increase in email subscribers that you note what you did differently that month.
- Did you have a particular new opt-in that seemed to drive the increase?
- Did a pin go viral?
- Did you promote your list more?
- Did someone else help you promote your list or your service? What happened?
You want to notice when your clients and subscribers are increasing so you examine what you did differently and how can you take advantage of that.
Tracking key metrics is important to making sure your efforts align with your overall business goals. The above are basic indicators you can track, but as you set goals, you should have certain outcomes you track to give you feedback on your efforts towards those goals.
Evaluating in your business is an important part of learning, refining, and growing. See some of the items I review as part of my quarterly planning process in this post!