If you don’t know where your customers come from, you’re really stabbing around in the dark. You have no real idea which marketing campaigns are working, how well your salespeople are doing or even how much each sale is ‘costing you.’

Once you know these things, you have the power to make decisions, and good ones. You know which marketing campaigns to kill, or improve, and which to spend more money on.

You’ll also know where your ‘key leverage point is.’ That is, the thing that you most need to improve. Perhaps your conversion rate is high but your leads are few. Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe you’re doing well in both lead generation and conversion, but you’re not selling enough high priced items.

Once you know which area needs work, you can start to make some new, well-informed marketing decisions.

The 3 Most Important Things About Testing & Measuring

1. Testing and measuring is nothing new. You’ve probably been doing it all your business life. Remember the magazine ad you tried that ‘didn’t work,’ and the direct marketing campaign that ‘did OK?’

That’s all testing is. It’s about finding out what produces results and what doesn’t, then making decisions based on that.

2. You MUST start asking people where they heard about you. If you don’t, you’ll be in the dark forever. You may keep running an ad that never brings a sale, and accidentally kills a  good one. Customers usually come from so many sources, it’s impossible to judge how an ad is working based on sales alone. Perhaps you received more referrals that week, or there was an event in town.

Every time someone buys, ask them this question… ‘By the way, can I just ask where you heard about my business?’ No-one, and I mean no-one will have any problem telling you.

3. Be vigilant and disciplined. You can’t test & measure half the time. You must do it every hour of every day. It’s not difficult… just remember to create a record after every customer interaction. And make sure your employees do the same. Stress the importance of it and absolutely DEMAND that they do. Also, tell them it’s essential that they’re honest.