You may realize that “something” needs to change with your marketing, but you’re not sure what it is or even where to start?
There are infinite options for evaluating your marketing, but perhaps the simplest and easiest to relate to is by looking at your business as a whole and the touches you have with customers and prospects. Let’s start from the top:
How are people finding me?
Do the majority of your leads come from your website? Referrals? Phone books? TV ads? Walk-in location? This is easiest to track with digital, but if you’re not tracking already, start asking your current customers how they first found out about you to give you a general idea. (DISCLAIMER: THE HUMAN MEMORY IS AN UNRELIABLE SOURCE.)
How are people looking for me?
Chronologically, this falls before how people are finding you, but we intentionally placed it here to get you thinking about the contrast – and possible massive gap – between how prospects look for you and how they find you. Put yourself in the shoes of your prospect. Where would you look first? If the first place your prospects look isn’t where people are finding you the most (from question 1), there’s a disconnect, and you’re missing out on leads.
What are people learning about me?
When prospects do find you, what are they learning? Are they looking at an outdated website and getting the impression that your entire business is outdated or wondering if you’re even still around? What are referral sources saying about you? How much control do you have over what people are learning?
What's my funnel?
Do I have a set process that takes place after a person finds me, or am I giving a dead-end and relying on them to take some kind of action? What are the steps in my process, and are each of those steps well-timed and relevant? Am I effectively moving a prospect toward becoming a customer? Am I educating them to make the sales process easier? Am I qualifying them to make sure they need and want my help? How and when does the sales team get involved with this process?
There’s much more to cover, and we’ll visit more of this process in Part Two, but it’s best to move one question at a time – write (type) out your response – and evaluate after each. You may be golden with solid solutions to each step so far, or you may already be realizing that there’s a lot of work to be done.
