Each tool you employ as part of your marketing strategy should have a job – something to DO. Otherwise it will just sit and “be” and that is not good.

Here are example “jobs” you could give each marketing tool. Try to limit each tool to one or two primary purposes:

• Encourage people to sign up for your newsletter
• Drive people to your website
• Sell your service
• Drive people to download your audio recording

Each job has an intended result, and that’s how you know whether or not it’s working.

• Job: Encourage people to sign up for the newsletter –> Result: Increased signups AS A RESULT of that specific tool
• Job: Drive people to the website –> Result: Increased hits to your website AS A RESULT of that specific tool
• Job: Sell your service –> Result: Increased sales AS A RESULT of that specific tool
• Job: Drive people to download audio recording –> Result: Increased downloads of the recording AS A RESULT of that specific tool

Metrics

So now that your tools have a job, you need a way to determine if they’re doing that job, and that means you need to use marketing metrics. Metrics are the measurements you use to determine what results you’re really getting.

If you currently have no way of tracking hits to your website, then you are starting at ground zero. You can’t even begin to determine whether or not your website copy, action words, tone of voice, functionality, is effective becuase you dont’ even know if people are coming to your site at all!

You could say, “My site gets no action” (meaning, no leads) but does your site even get any traffic? If so, what are your ratio expectations? Set this upfront: how many visitors to your website do you expect to actually contact you? If you say 100% then you and I need to talk! (And you need to do some market research)

Utilize Metrics to determine how well your tools are working. Here are some suggestions:

• Analytics can determine how much traffic your website is getting
• ASK people how they came to know about you
• Track clickthroughs of your email marketing campaigns
• For each marketing tool, use a different sales page with a unique URL to determine where sales are coming from

© 2008 – 2009, Tia Peterson. All rights reserved. This text may be reproduced with permission. Please contact tia@tiadpeterson.com to request permission to reuse this content. Thank you!

Yet the business isn’t coming in. Your thoughts: my marketing isn’t working!

Is it not?

Have you ever employed someone? Or, have you ever worked for someone? You were given a task – or a set of tasks – and you called that…your job.

What are your marketing method’s jobs? What’s Facebook supposed to be doing for you?

The universal answer is “make me more money” or “bring in clients” or “spread awareness,” but unfortunately, it’s just simply not specific enough.

It’s no surprise that the number of clients I have has increased dramatically – people looking to really maximize their presence on the web. But the trend with many of them is the same – they’re frustrated because “nothing is working,” when in fact, they can’t know if it’s working because they never gave it a job.

Here’s an exercise:

1. Ask yourself, “What’s my overall goal for my marketing methods?”
2. Ask yourself, “How will I know that I’ve reached that goal?”

Your ability to really answer those questions will directly impact your marketing’s ability to work for you. You can’t employ vague marketing techniques and then expect specific results. If you want a bigger list, determine how much bigger is big. Does one additional name count? Does five? What about five hundred?

Example: Heidi’s overall goal is to make more money (problem A). Her marketing methods are a newsletter, a blog and some social networking – she can hardly remember which ones she has (problem B). She also wants to increase hits to her website (problem C) and build her list (problem D).

Over the past year, Heidi’s business has stagnated. She doesn’t ever go on her social networking sites because she doesn’t have time. She gets little to no leads from her website. She posts a blog once or twice per month.

“My marketing isn’t working!” she said.

“Isn’t it, though?” I ask calmly.

“What do you mean? I am getting no business!” Heidi exclaimed.

“Oh. I think it’s because your marketing methods didn’t know that was the point.”

Do you see where I’m going with this? Her marketing methods have no focus. They don’t have a job to do. People without jobs are considered unemployed. Marketing tools without jobs are considered unfocused. They don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing.

Part of focused marketing is deciding what you want your marketing to do and then specifically determining how it should go about doing that.

In Part 2, I’ll talk about how to give your marketing a job along with how to give it a performance evaluation, so you can know whether or not it is really working for you.

© 2008 – 2009, Tia Peterson. All rights reserved. This text may be reproduced with permission. Please contact tia@tiadpeterson.com to request permission to reuse this content. Thank you!