How Do You Know If Your Marketing Is Actually Working?
More website visitors. Better Google rankings. More followers. More clicks.
They can all be signs that your marketing is moving in the right direction, but on their own, they don't necessarily tell you whether it's actually working.
A website attracting 200 visitors a month could be doing a much better job for a business than one attracting 2,000. Five good enquiries could be more valuable than fifty poor ones. And a social media post that gets very little engagement could still put your business in front of exactly the right person.
So, how do you know if your marketing is working? It starts with understanding what you're actually trying to achieve.
Start with the goal, not the metric
If you want to measure your marketing success, it's very easy to start with whatever numbers are readily available.
You open Instagram and see how many people liked your latest post. You look at your website traffic in Google Analytics. You check where you're ranking on Google. Or you look at how many clicks your latest Google Ads campaign generated.
Those numbers aren't meaningless. They can help you understand what's happening and identify where something might need improving, but they need context.
If the goal of your marketing is to generate enquiries, for example, increasing website traffic from 500 visitors to 1,000 sounds great, but if those additional 500 visitors don't enquire, book, buy or take another meaningful action, was doubling your traffic actually a good result?
Maybe. There could be other benefits, particularly if you're building awareness or reaching people earlier in their decision making process, but more isn't automatically better.
That's why the question shouldn't simply be “Did the number go up?”
It should be: “Did this help us get closer to what the business is trying to achieve?”
Think about what a customer is worth to your business
This doesn't need to involve complicated spreadsheets or customer lifetime values, but having a rough understanding of what gaining a new customer means to your business can completely change how you look at your marketing, and it's important to look beyond their first purchase.
Someone might spend £40 with a business initially but return every six weeks for several years. Another customer might spend £2,000 once and never need the service again. Neither is automatically more valuable.
Repeat bookings, additional purchases, ongoing contracts and referrals can all contribute to what acquiring a new customer is ultimately worth. Once you have a rough idea of that value, you can start putting your marketing results into context.
Imagine two businesses each generate ten enquiries from their website. For one, those enquiries result in one £50 sale. For the other, three become customers worth £500 each. Both websites generated exactly ten enquiries. The commercial result was completely different.
That's why comparing your traffic, enquiries or marketing budget with another business isn't always particularly useful.
Different businesses need different things from marketing
There's another reason there isn't one perfect marketing metric; people don't buy every product or service in the same way.
If somebody suddenly needs an emergency plumber, they're unlikely to spend three months following plumbing companies on Instagram before deciding who to call.
They're probably going to search and enquire there and then.
For a wedding photographer, the journey could look completely different. Someone might discover them on Instagram, visit their website, follow them for months, read reviews and eventually enquire.
An ecommerce customer might discover a product through social media, leave, see an advert several days later and then search for the brand on Google before buying.
In each case, marketing is doing a job, but expecting every channel to deliver the same result, or judging all of them using the same metric, doesn't make much sense. The important thing is understanding how different touchpoints contribute to the end result.
Which marketing numbers should you pay attention to?
There's no single answer, because it depends on what you're trying to achieve:
Website traffic can tell you whether people are finding your website
Search impressions and rankings can show whether your visibility on Google is improving
Clicks can tell you whether your search result or advert is encouraging people to visit
Social reach and engagement can help you understand whether people are seeing and interacting with your content
Enquiries tell you whether people are taking that next step
Sales and revenue tell you whether those enquiries are ultimately turning into business
The mistake isn't tracking the numbers at the top of that list; it's stopping there.
If website traffic has increased, ask what those visitors did
If enquiries have increased, look at whether they're the right enquiries
If Google Ads generated more conversions, look at how many became customers
If your Instagram reach has fallen, look at whether social media is still contributing to enquiries, bookings, website visits or awareness amongst the people you actually want to reach
The individual numbers help you diagnose what's happening, while the bigger picture tells you whether it's working.
So, is your marketing working?
Start with the business rather than the marketing channel.
What are you trying to achieve?
What does gaining a new customer mean to your business?
How do your customers normally find and choose businesses like yours?
What role is each part of your marketing playing in that journey?
Once you understand those things, the numbers become much easier to interpret.
There's no universal number of website visitors, followers, clicks or enquiries that means your marketing is performing well.
Good marketing isn't about getting the biggest numbers. It's about getting the right results for your business.
Not sure what your marketing numbers are actually telling you?
I can help you understand what's working, where there might be opportunities to improve and which areas of your marketing are worth focusing on. Get in touch for an informal chat today.