How do you make sure that your marketing is working?

Many small businesses spend time and money on lots of marketing activity without really knowing which parts of it are working.

Here are some simple tips that you might like to try:

1. Set up a simple Excel spreadsheet. Use the rows in column A to list any marketing you do such as LinkedIn, networking, email campaign etc. In column B show how many enquiries each activity generates for you (make sure you ask everyone who enquires how they found you. It’s an art not a science at this level!). Use column C to show income from those enquiries and column D to show the cost of each activity.
2. In column D include time spent as well as any actual cost incurred. For example, if you value your time at £50 an hour, and in a month, you pay £100 to go to network meetings which take 10 hours, then networking has effectively cost you £600 for that month.
3. Don’t do any other marketing activity for 3 months. That way you’ll be able to establish your baseline figures per month including your typical costs, the number of enquiries and the income generated.
4. Then increase the cost (actual or time) on one activity only. This will help to track what impact change has made to that one activity only.
5. Continue to log and track everything for 3 more months.
6. Then assess if the change had a positive impact. If yes, do more of it. If not, stop and try something else.
7. And that is it, just keep repeating this cycle!

You can find more advice like this on BuBul – an innovative software platform that asks the questions a good business adviser would to deliver the advice you need from over 50 carefully selected subject matter experts. It’s just £9.99 a month and is available at www.bubulexpert.com.