It’s almost 2022 and there’s a whole new year full of opportunities coming up. But you still have a whole month and a half left of this year to knock your current goals out of the park before you embark on next year’s.

So how do you do that?

You’ll have heard the phrase, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Well, with our small business marketing software, you can easily measure the effectiveness of your marketing and see how you’re making sales and where your best leads are coming from. Our all-in-one platform really can be the game-changer you’re looking for. So read on and we’ll talk you through how to set your goals, track where you’re up to, and make sure you achieve your marketing goals, signing off 2021 on a high note.

Setting your goals

Why set goals at all?

Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” Of course, that’s true, but you’ll also miss most, if not all of them if you don’t know what you’re aiming at. And that’s where goal setting comes in.

If you take the time to decide what you want to achieve in your business this month, you’ll be more focused, you’ll know what to do every day to get where you want to be, and you’ll definitely know what you’re aiming at.

You stand a far greater chance of success with clear goals written down, than without them.

How to set goals you’ll keep

Where are you now with your business? Be honest.

Now for the fun bit. Dream a little (or a lot) and think about where you want to be. Do you want to win a specific award, make enough to buy your dream house with cash, pay for your child to go to college, or perhaps be able to afford to open another location? Get excited and really let yourself feel how you’ll feel when you get there.

We’re sure you’ve heard about SMART goals before, but they get mentioned a lot because they work. For an in-depth look at SMART goals and how to set them, check out our article.

Next, work back from the endpoint of each goal and break it down into smaller steps, so you can create tasks for that nice dopamine rush when you get to tick things off as you complete them.

Speaking of finishing things, celebrate every last success, even the tiny ones. It helps you keep moving forward and stay motivated.

Keep in mind that these are your goals. No one else gets a say in what you want to achieve and how fast, so don’t compare yourself to anyone else. Comparison-itis is a distraction you don’t need and a motivation killer. Just focus on your business and what you want, then go for it!

Measure the effectiveness of your marketing

We’ve looked at how to set your overall goals, but when it comes to marketing, you also need to set specific goals to achieve with your marketing, like the number of leads you want to get in one month, how many new Google My Business reviews you’d like to get, and what post per lead you’d like to see. You’ll also want to break down your goals per type of marketing, including social media platforms, email marketing, paid ads, and content marketing.

It’s not easy to track everything as your potential customers use multiple platforms and devices to browse and buy. They engage via your website, or social media and its many different channels, they use voice search, text, and photos, and they expect to find information NOW, whatever time it is, and not just when you’re open.

Not only do you have to build and consistently maintain a complete digital footprint, including digital marketing, referrals, earned media, social media, and digital advertising, but you also have to be able to track all of it too and know that each part of it is effective.

This involves tracking which keywords generate traffic, your lead sources for traffic, bounce rates, conversion rates, talking to customers and asking where they found you, analyzing your social platform analytics, your website analytics, email statistics, and more.

You’ll also need to look at your ROI, both your current ROI and your ROI after the month is over, to see if you’ve made any improvements and cut the cost of acquiring new leads. With digital marketing, this is a little more complicated than the simple formula: (Return – Investment) / Investment.

Instead, you may use any, or all, of the following formulae:

Sales growth – Marketing spend
Time spent vs. Money generated
(Ad spend / New customers) × Customer lifetime value (LTV)
[((Number of leads × Lead to customer rate × Average sale price) – Cost for marketing) / Cost for marketing] × 100

If you don’t know your goals and current figures before you start marketing, you have nothing to use to measure the outcome of your marketing campaign, so take the time to go through and set specific and realistic goals for the next month.

Why do all of this work? If you don’t know what is and isn’t working, you could be wasting good money on bad campaigns. You might find that Instagram is far and away your best lead generator, and that posting on Facebook isn’t moving the needle at all. But you won’t know that if you don’t measure it and you won’t know where to focus your time and money to get the best bang for your buck.

Other reasons to track your digital marketing ROI:

Get a complete picture of your customers’ journey
Be confident that what you’re doing is working and why
Ensure you’re using your resources wisely
Ensure you’re making a profit and keeping it
Optimize your business and gain valuable insights

Now that we’ve given you an overview of measuring your marketing effectiveness, let’s get into a real plan for making it work for your business:

How to track and improve your ROI

1. Determine Your KPIs (core metrics)

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator and you choose these based on the goals you want to achieve and what you need to track to make sure you achieve them.

If you want more money coming into your business and to improve cash flow (don’t we all?), then you’ll need to look at the following:

New sales
More leads
Increased traffic
Higher customer retention
Higher profit margins

Set targets of how many new sales you want to get, how many more leads you want this month than last month, what volume of traffic you want to achieve, what your customer retention rate should be at the end of the month compared to where it is now and, of course, how much more money you’ve made that’s pure profit, compared to last month.

Be very specific here, but also realistic about what you can achieve with a new marketing campaign and perhaps new things you haven’t tried before. You don’t want to be discouraged by setting too high goals and then failing to achieve them. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t aim high, though, and have ambitious goals overall. Just temper how fast you might achieve them with realism.

2. Focus on multiple marketing channels

Your customers won’t just come from visiting your website. As we said earlier, they’ll come from multiple channels using multiple devices, and you need to make sure you’re prepared for that. Don’t just stick with one aspect of marketing, cover as many as you can, including a well-designed website, directory listings, customer reviews, paid advertising, email campaigns, and social media.

Focus on how your customers find you from these different channels and how your ideal customer uses these channels.

Then be consistent. There’s no point in writing a couple of blog posts and then abandoning blogging, so the last time you posted was several months ago. You’re going to look like you’re not active and engaged if you do that. Decide how often you’re going to post on each channel (again, be realistic) and then stick to it.

3. Test everything

Really. We mean everything. You’d be amazed at what can make a difference to your marketing results, from just tweaking your copy slightly on your website to changing the color of your CTA buttons.

Test your ad copy, split test your headings, and swap out different visuals. Look at the language you use and make sure it matches how your customers speak and the words they use, try different content topics and see what works best, then focus more on that. Look at your messaging and how you present yourself to your customers. Even something as simple as changing your font could be the thing that shoots your conversion rates through the roof.

Don’t be afraid to try different platforms too and see what happens. Local businesses ranging from chiropractors to roofing contractors are finding great success on TikTok right now, and you might too.

You’ll make mistakes, but that’s okay. You’ll also find things you never thought would work and learn a ton!

4. Measure everything

We’ve talked about some of the metrics that you’ll probably want to measure earlier on, but you should also measure particular metrics per platform. For example, with email marketing, you’ll want to look at delivery rates, open rates, and click-through rates to measure success. With social media, you should track the number of leads and inquiries you’re getting via each platform, reposts and shares, your follower count, and comments.

And with every platform, your conversion rate is a priority. If people are clicking but not calling or booking appointments, you need to find out why. And fast.

Focus more on ‘bottom of the funnel’ conversions, where people have already made their way through your sales funnel and are ready to buy, or not. Look at your channels, campaigns, and content and find which ones were the reason why someone converted from a lead to a customer.

With this information in hand, you can then adjust your marketing campaign and focus more on the channels that are bringing in the most new customers.

5. Commit to your strategy

You’ve set your goals, chosen your metrics and you’re ready to go with your marketing for the final month of the year, so make a final decision and stick to your plan. While it’s okay to test and tweak as you go, give things time to work before you change them up. You can’t get accurate and meaningful data if you change tactics every other week.

There’s always something new to learn when it comes to marketing, even if you’ve been doing it for years, and even if your business is marketing.

No marketing plan is ever final and no strategy is ever complete. There’s always something else you can tweak and improve, something else that just might make all the difference to your conversion rates.

So, test away, refine and tweak, but don’t abandon your marketing plan. Stick with it, be consistent, test and measure, and you should find success.

After the month is over and you have your results and new insights into your business, use what you’ve learned!

Look at your performance over the past 30 days and compare it to each month before. Look at 60 days, 90 days, and a full year, once you have the data. Look at your total results (leads, reviews, conversion rates, content, traffic, etc.,) and use the data to make better decisions on your marketing each time.

Sharpen your message and brand value, assess each platform to see if you need to focus on it more or use it less. Move your attention to the things that are really successful for you right now and do more of those.

Rinse and repeat and in another month’s time and another year’s, you should see a big difference in your conversion rates and your ROI.

You can see how many moving parts there are to running a good marketing campaign and measuring the effectiveness of your marketing. But don’t get discouraged. There is an easier way to keep track of everything and work out where you should really be focusing your time, attention, and budget. Read on to see what an all-in-one small business marketing platform can do for you.

Digital marketing ROI made simple

That was a lot, wasn’t it? By now you might well be wondering how you’ll ever do anything else but marketing and tracking the results, never mind being able to actually run your business.

But, with our all-in-one small business marketing software, it’s a lot easier than you might think.

With Surefire Local, you can track all of your marketing metrics in one place, in real-time. There’s no need to visit individual social platforms or email providers. Just plug everything into our software and let it work its magic, while you focus on what you do best.

What can you track?

The source of every lead that comes your way, from ads and your website.
Reviews, including posting responses as they get posted.
Your online visibility.
Find how accessible your business is in Google Search and Google Maps, see where your customers come from and what they do next.
Keep up with your Google Ads and Facebook Ads in one place and easily keep on top of the ads that are working well.
Measure the ROI from your digital ads easily and find out how much you’ve spent on generating a new customer.
Get insights from Google Analytics on your website traffic.
Measure your reputation against your competitors.
Quickly update Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn all in one place.
View metrics like open rates, clicks, and view a list of all engaged contacts.

You can instantly see how many leads you’ve generated over a particular period and compare that figure with previous months, so you can see whether your marketing efforts are working and if your business is growing. These are highly valuable, critical insights to make sure every dollar in your budget counts and is spent in the right places.

And all you have to do is use a simple, easy-to-learn marketing platform to shortcut all that measuring and tracking and have the insights you need on hand immediately in real-time.

Can you imagine trying to keep track of all those different metrics by hand, with just a spreadsheet and your memory to rely on? No. Neither can we.

The good news is that you don’t have to. With our all-in-one small business marketing tools and advanced analytics, you can keep track of every aspect of your marketing goals and ROI easily. You can also post straight from our platform onto Google My Business, send and keep track of review requests, do every aspect of your content creation, send emails, and so much more.

Take charge of your marketing and smash your business goals with a platform that is specifically designed to help you and make life easier. Why not book a free demo and see what our marketing platform can do for you?