All too often, we hear marketers talk about “measuring” and “analytics” and in many cases, these numbers get fuzzy and confusing pretty quickly.
I think there are a few reasons for this:
- The marketers have been trained to think in terms of data being best, no matter if it is relevant or not.
- The things that are being measured aren’t necessarily the meaningful.
An example that I have come to fall back on pretty regularly is how I measure my own business success and which I learned from Alan Weiss when I was first starting my own consulting practice.
It goes a little like this:
If I meet with 2 people a week, that’s 100 a year.
If of the 100 a year, half of them become serious conversations…that’s 50 real prospects a year.
Of the 50, if half of those become proposals, that’s 25.
If my closing percentage is 50%, that’s 13 pieces of new business a year.
If my average project is $25,000 that means that I have $325,000 in new business a year.
What all of this means is that you and me, we all need to spend more time focusing on what is meaningful and what are the outcomes you are looking for.
If you aren’t certain of your numbers, that’s where things can go sideways.
You can get wronged by the buzzwords like “engagement,” “likes,” or “followers.”
You have to realize that these buzzwords may be effective for a mass market product, but if you aren’t in a mass market…they are likely meaningless.
That’s why you have to ensure your numbers are meaningful and specific to your situation, anything else is just a waste of time, money, and effort.