Creating the campaigns and new programs, helping your clients succeed and get massive results, launching your latest project -- all super sexy, fun and exciting things, right? That’s what we all love doing in this business - creating and seeing our clients get success… BUT for all the exciting things, there’s a handful of stuff behind the scenes, the unsexy things that we must do to drive our business forward. Because the truth is that without the unsexy stuff, we can no longer do the fun, exciting stuff well.
One of the unsexy things you should be doing consistently in your business is ANALYZING it. For every launch, new campaign, social media or marketing initiative, you need to be reviewing the data to see how it performed. Use this 5 step process to help you analyze your business to see quicker results.
Go back to your goals
The first step in analyzing your results - whether it be from a launch, social media strategy or just overall biz growth - is to go back to your goals. What were you trying to achieve? A certain level of awareness? A specific number of people signed up for your new program? Hitting a certain income goal? A number of new followers? Etc. Every specific strategy and tactic in your business should be connected with an overarching goal and a specific way to measure that goal’s progress. Otherwise, you won’t know what’s working and what’s not.
2. Pull the Data
So many platforms these days have built-in analytics tools to help you gather and pull the data needed to analyze your business. Google, Squarespace, Wordpress, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, ActiveCampaign, etc. all have built-in analytics tools that will break down your data in whatever time period you’d like. A lot of tools actually allow you to compare to another period of time too so you can see how you’re doing month-over-month, or from one campaign to the next.
3. Determine what went well and what didn’t
Pulling the data is the easy part. It’s figuring out what the data means that can be the hard part. Impressions, referrals, open rates, exit rate, engagement, traffic -- these all can be really confusing terms. A general rule of thumb is that the higher the number, or percentage, the more successful it was. But, if you started from scratch, then all of your numbers will likely be up. So, what you truly want to look at is the little details. What posts were the most popular? What time of day did you get the most email opens? Which subject line performed best? What price point or package was the most popular for people who signed up for your course? Where did people drop off on your website? What ads drove the most traffic back to your website? Look for patterns. See what tactic may have worked the best, and what didn’t perform very well.
4. Make necessary tweaks or adjustments
Once you figure out what worked and what didn’t, it’s time to make notes and adjustments. If you’re analyzing a campaign, maybe you needed more time to promote, or maybe the places you did promote didn’t convert. Think about what you could do differently next time, or what you could amplify that went well and take notes. If you launched a new marketing strategy you’ll analyze and tweak in the same way.
For example, over the last three months or so I launched a new Instagram strategy in my own business to gain more followers. I’ve done this completely organically because relationships and authentic followers matter to me. So far I’ve been focusing on liking, commenting and following people that are in my target audience based on hashtags. This has helped me to grow my following, but my engagement hasn’t gone up as quickly. Therefore, I had to tweak my current strategy to make sure I was also equally engaging with my current followers as I am with new potential followers. This will hopefully, in return, drive up my engagement on my posts.
5. Set New Goals
When you set goals they’re usually (if you’re setting SMART goals) measurable and applicable to a specific time period, event or campaign. Once you analyze the results of that campaign you’ll likely need to set new goals. Maybe they’re similar to the first goals you set, or maybe you crushed those and you realize you need to set even BIGGER goals. By consistently analyzing and goal setting, you’ll make sure you’re not staying complacent in your business and instead of growing and seeing consistent results.
Results aren’t always QUICK. But as long as you’re seeing consistent progress from the set goals, analyzing and refining model, you’ll see greater success over time. This is something I like to do on a monthly basis just to understand at a baseline level where I’m at. I usually recommend a 3-6 month “trial” period to determine if an overall marketing strategy is working… but I like to keep tabs on things on a monthly basis to start to notice trends along the way. Are you analyzing your business consistently?
Katelyn Hamilton is an Online Business Manager and Get Your Sh!t Together Strategist. She helps busy entrepreneurs organize, strategize and prioritize their business to go from overwhelmed to out-in-front.
After spending 6 years in the corporate world working with multimillion dollar companies, top-rated chefs and celebrities, she launched her own business to find more flexibility and freedom. She matched her corporate salary in just one year of starting her business.
Katelyn is also a soon-to-be wife, stepmom, dog mama of two furry friends, fitness lover, sports fanatic (Go Dawgs) and dreams of living at the beach.
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