How to Measure Your Small Business’s Marketing Success

Consider your daily routine and how often advertisements play a part in it. You likely see marketing messages in your email inbox, on the news websites you read before work, and on the billboards you see on your commute.

Now, consider which messages are most effective at cutting through the noise—is your small business implementing similar strategies? Could you accurately pinpoint your most effective messages?

While each industry and audience responds differently to marketing strategies, knowing what resonates with your target audience is vital for managing your finite resources, excelling with limited marketing experience, and improving future campaigns. This is why it’s so important to track, analyze, and replicate your marketing success.

Here are four methods for measuring your small business’s marketing success, whether you run a dog daycare, dance studio, or flower shop.

1. Set Clear Goals

Goal-setting is an important practice for measuring marketing success, as it provides a clear roadmap to achieving desired outcomes. First, you should understand the difference between goals and objectives. Goals are broad, overarching statements that define what you want to achieve with the campaign in more general, qualitative terms. Objectives are the specific actions you need to take to achieve those goals.

To set clear goals that will guide your marketing efforts, follow these steps:

• Define overarching business goals. Revisit your mission statement and values to determine your larger business goals, and evaluate your finances and customer engagement data to identify immediate needs. Ensure your marketing goal and corresponding objectives will support these broad business goals.
• Make sure your goals are measurable. Attach a quantifiable metric and timeline to each marketing objective so you can measure the performance and progress of your campaigns. For instance, your small business may wish to increase email lead generation by 25% in a month.
• Review and course correct. You shouldn’t completely change your overarching goal mid-way through a campaign, but you may need to adjust smaller objectives and strategies. Pay attention to how the audience responds and adapt accordingly—your strategy doesn’t have to be set in stone, especially if small tweaks will push you closer to the finish line.

While it is important to set measurable goals, this doesn’t mean you should shy away from qualitative goals altogether. For example, let’s say you want to reinforce your brand on social media to boost brand awareness and recognition. To measure progress, track engagement metrics, reach, follower growth, and the number of brand mentions on social media before and after the campaign.

2. Track Omnichannel Marketing Metrics

Omnichannel marketing involves using multiple communication channels to create a seamless experience for your customers. These channels may include your website, social media platforms, email, and even your physical stores. Omnichannel marketing focuses on guiding customers from one communication channel to the next—ideally down the marketing funnel toward a conversion.

Because this strategy involves multiple channels and layered interactions with customers, it can be difficult to track your success. Here are some tips to help your business accurately attribute leads to measure omnichannel marketing success:

• Leverage Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters in key URLs. Also called UTM codes or tracking tags, these customizable text snippets are designed to help marketers track digital campaign performance and where customers come from. UTM codes can track five key sources of information, including the:
  • • Campaign a lead was sourced from, such as a link offering a discount
    • Source of the traffic, such as Facebook or Google Ads
    • Medium used to drive the lead to your site, such as social media or email
    • Specific content that lead to the conversion, like a link included in a blog post
    • Search term that ranked on a search engine and guided the viewer to the page
• Use a CRM. A customer relationship management (CRM) system will help you organize and understand the massive influx of data you receive from omnichannel campaigns. Rather than data being fragmented across multiple marketing solutions, it’s centralized in one neat location. This makes it easier to identify which marketing channels drive the most conversions.
• Develop a multi-touch attribution model. This model takes all of the touchpoints in the consumers’ journey into consideration, rather than just the first or last touches. There are many different types of multi-touch models, as noted by Nielsen, and you’ll need to choose among them based on individual campaign objectives.

If your small business is working with particularly limited resources or these options sound too technically advanced for you, consider simply asking customers how they found out about your business. Include a question like “How did you find our business?” on all of your lead capture forms. While this won’t depict the entire nuanced journey that omnichannel campaigns entail, it can still help you understand which channels are most effective.

3. Invest in Marketing Software

Your small business likely already uses software to complete transactions, manage finances, and store customer data. Add marketing software to your tech stack to consolidate data, track key performance indicators (KPIs) in real time, analyze the campaign effectiveness, and convert leads into sales—all in one place.

As you look for the right solution, keep these tips in mind:

• Prioritize ease of use. Choose a platform that doesn’t require extensive technical knowledge. This will save you time and resources so you can focus on creative tasks like drafting high-quality content and executing your marketing strategy.
• Look for automation features. Automation features will save your team time and allow you to scale personalized marketing efforts. Look for features like automated email campaigns, social media scheduling, and lead scoring.
• Consider your budget. Marketing solutions can range from free to thousands of dollars per month. Choose a reliable platform that offers the features you need at a price your business can afford.

For the best results, invest in a solution that specifically caters to your industry. This is particularly important for niche businesses with very specific needs and target audiences. For instance, a dog groomer might benefit from investing in software as it specializes in supporting online bookings for grooming sessions, dog-related marketing efforts, sales, and staff management.

4. Collect Customer Feedback

Encouraging constructive criticism is a great way to measure your small business’s marketing success, build relationships with customers, and improve your brand’s reputation.

Here are some of the best ways to aggregate customer feedback:

• Surveys: Ask customers how they heard about your business, what motivated them to take action, whether they’re likely to recommend the business to others, and how they’d like to be informed about future promotions.
• Engagement with marketing channels: Channels like social media and blog posts offer a unique opportunity for two-way communication between you and your customers. Analyze comments on these channels for feedback. For example, if you run a coffee shop, you might learn from social media comments that customers enjoy behind-the-scenes videos of staff making their favorite drinks.
• One-on-one interviews: Interviews allow you to gather in-depth feedback about customers’ experiences with your marketing campaigns. Potential interview questions include, “How often would you prefer to receive marketing communications from our business?” and “What about our messaging stands out to you?”
• Reviews: Encourage customers to leave reviews on your website and other public platforms like Yelp or Google. After considering what customers like about your products or services and what areas of improvement they suggest, you can optimize your marketing efforts accordingly.

Once you have this valuable information, work to implement it whenever possible, and let customers know when you’ve executed a customer’s suggestion. For example, you might get requests to bring back a limited-time item at your bakery, advertising it as being “Back by popular demand!” Or, perhaps customers let you know that it’s difficult to find your hair salon’s booking form, so you post links to the form and feature it more prominently on your website.

In an increasingly crowded marketplace, it’s crucial to measure the outcomes of your marketing efforts and make informed decisions about how to improve. Test and experiment with different marketing tactics to see what works best for your business. This will help you stand out from the competition and identify new opportunities for growth.