This 5 Step Process will Help you Analyze Your Business and Drive Consistent Results

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.

1. 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?

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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.

Click here to book a free call to talk more about your business goals and to see if hiring an OBM is the right fit for you.

What actually is the backend of your business?

Launching a business is overwhelming, scary and filled with lots of unknowns. In the same breath, it’s exciting and fun to focus your attention on something you’re truly passionate about. A lot of the time, we are the person that does it ALL. We are the creator, the manager, the finance team, the assistant, the marketing person, etc. because we have to be scrappy to start, right?

At least that’s fairly common at the start of any small business. We really just fly by the seat of our pants, take action every single day and look up to others for advice, support and examples of what to do next. But then we get to a point where we really are DOING IT ALL and we truly don’t have time for that. You now have clients/customers and revenue coming in and more of your time is taking up serving your clients and doing the thing you were so passionate to do to begin with that the other stuff takes a backseat, or eats away at the valuable time you could be using to maximize your influence and grow your brand. It happens to us all.

It’s at this point you look to start outsourcing. Maybe your social media, or your design work, but really you’re still managing those people and even that can be a lot. This is where I come in as an online business manager (OBM). Not only do I manage all the things that are taking up all your time, but I create efficiencies and set up processes that help your business run more smoothly. In short, I help you get your shit together, because let’s be real, it’s all over the place as you’re trying to get everything done.

But what exactly IS the backend of your business? What does that mean?

The backend of your business is essentially what is done “behind-the-scenes”. It’s what makes your business function. This would be your admin work, accounting, communications -- think COO (Chief Operations Officer) level in this corporate world.

So, yes, you have a backend to your business, but what you don’t realize is there’s likely a much quicker, more effective way to organize your backend, and you actually don’t have to be the one to manage them either.

Some examples of these include:

Setting up automations for things like contacts, scheduling appointments, invoicing, onboarding clients, etc. This saves you so much time because you literally set things up once and you don’t have to do the back and forth through emails with people for all of these things.

Create and manage project timelines for upcoming launches, events, new programs, or overall business planning for the year. Timelines usually include all the details around what’s needed for email marketing, social media marketing, logistics of what needs to be set up, created, purchased, etc.

Content creation and execution. Content can seem super overwhelming. I broke down how to make content creation easier in a blog post here. But that being said, this is a part of your backend business in terms of creating this content.

Project management and organization. There are so many different tools out there to organize your to-do’s, but I always recommend Asana. Asana simplifies and organizes your to-do list to where you can even set weekly recurring tasks. Project management is so important once you are out of that “entry” entrepreneur phase and are doing #allthethings.

Other backend business things include:

• Client onboarding

• Email marketing

• Budget/finance management

• Inbox management

• Facebook/Community group management

• Managing your team or vendors

There’s so much work that is done behind the scenes and can either be automated, optimized or managed by someone other that you, the business owner.

Now that you have a better idea as to what the “back-end” of your business includes, would an OBM be the right fit for helping you to manage some of these things and create efficiencies in your business?

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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.

Click here to book a free call to talk more about your business goals and to see if hiring an OBM is the right fit for you.

5 Ways to Analyze and Refine Your Business Metrics To Hit Your Goals

Do you play sports? Or did you play sports growing up? Or really any sort of activity where maybe you weren’t very good at first, or maybe you were good, but you wanted to get better. I played basketball growing up. I was never the best, but I would consider myself pretty good. As everyone does, I had my strengths and weaknesses. I was a much better defender because I was quick on my feet and anticipated the ball movements well. But I wasn’t always the best ball handler, and I was definitely not the girl putting up double digit baskets each game.

Why do you care about my high school basketball days? Because the point is, I got better. I worked my ass off every single day in practice. I practiced 6-7 days a week (even in the off season). I shot more free throws then you can count, I did so much agility and strength training and over time, I improved. How did I know I improved? Well, I made my baskets, I got more playing time, I ran faster miles, I lifted heavier weights, etc. I had specific metrics that were measurable that I could compare to what I had done a few weeks prior, to the season prior. If I hadn’t tracked, or had anything to compare it to, how would I have known what I was doing wrong, or not well, and what I was excelling at? How could I rate my improvement over time? The same way you analyze your progress in sports, school, work, life, etc. you have to do the same in your business.

So let me ask you this, are you analyzing your business? Social content, website analytics, email marketing metrics, customer feedback, etc? And secondly, do you know what these metrics mean?

Here are 5 ways to implement analysis into your business to help you hit your goals,  consistently:

1. Review your social analytics regularly.

   Most social platforms have this integrated into their backend now, making it so easy for you to review. If you don't have a business Instagram account, get one! The insights tab alone will help you understand the best times to post, what posts perform well, who your audience is, where your audience is located,  etc. So much great data from reviewing your social content - this goes for looking at your likes/comments/engagement on your posts as well to see what people want to see more of. I use the poll and question features on my Instagram story a lot to gain additional insights from my audience.

2. Look at your Email Marketing Reports.

   Every time you send out an email campaign review the report. Don’t just look at your open rate. See what links people clicked on the most and then tweak and resend the campaign a week later (maybe with a new subject line) or send a follow up to those who didn't open it. Understanding your email marketing analytics is SO helpful to tailoring future campaigns. The best lessons I’ve learned about email marketing have come from Jenna Kutcher and her podcast, Goal Digger. I dig her freebie/downloadable on email subject lines. It was probably one of the best freebies I’ve ever downloaded, but seriously.

3. Ask for Reviews.

   Do you get reviews from your clients/customers regularly? Feedback is SO important to help you understand what you're doing right and what you could improve on. These are the people you TRUST too to give you honest feedback. You can also use these reviews/testimonials for your website, social content and more to reinforce or build that know, like and trust factor for your audience.

4. Install all things Google.

   Whenever I start with a new client I make sure they have Google Analytics + Google Search Console set up. If you want to be able to track search keywords through Google to your website, you must have these set up. Google Analytics gives you SO much insight to your page traffic and demographics. You can specifically look through a user journey once on your website to determine where they fall off (exit rates), what led them to a purchase or to book a call with you, and what directed them to your website to begin with (social, direct link, specific search term, etc).

5. Analyze the “other” category.

   Outside of just the online marketing piece, what else are you investing in your business and what’s the ROI? Are you spending money on platforms that are supposed to either speed up processes for you, make your life easier, or take work off your plate completely? Are they doing the things and getting the results you initially wanted them to do? You don’t have to use the sexiest platforms that everyone else is using. Find what works for you, what you need in your business now, and what no longer is serving you. Look at all your expenses - do you have a graphic designer, writer, social media manager, assistant, etc.? How are you measuring their return on your investment? Are these people, platforms, systems, things, etc. all benefiting your business?

What steps are you taking to make sure you’re analyzing your business? Are you improving over time? Are you making the right investments? How are you measuring your ROI? Is this something you do regularly? Think on these questions and determine when and how you’re going to review your business -- on a consistent basis -- to ensure you’re improving and growing.

Like what you just read? I hope this was helpful for you! If you want even more great content delivered right to your inbox, sign up for my email list here.

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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.

Click here to book a free call to talk more about your business goals and to see if hiring an OBM is the right fit for you.