Measuring the impact and performance of your marketing strategy: my advice for emerging brands and independent entrepreneurs
Independent entrepreneurs and new brands often lack the hindsight to determine the effectiveness of their marketing and communications actions. And yet.., measuring performance for a more effective marketing strategy is possible and essential.
Well-established brands and major groups benefit from a reliable structure based on substantial staff and financial resources. However, freelancers and independent brands can borrow a successful habit from them: choosing and monitoring performance indicators!
Discover my tips for identifying your objectives, choosing your marketing indicators and using them to make the right decisions.
No time to read this article ? Download directly a checklist of your key KPIs.
Why identify key performance indicators?
My experience as a training director in the luxury goods industry has left me with one motto: what can be measured can also be improved!
To make sure you don't sail blind in your market, rely on key performance indicators (KPIs). Key Performance Indicators). They will help you to manage your business efficiently, sustainably and with peace of mind. Without benchmarks, you run the risk of directing your efforts towards useless or unprofitable actions. I've often seen entrepreneurs invest in sponsored posts on Instagram without evaluating the return on these marketing and communication campaigns. A free content strategy optimized for your website's natural search engine optimization (SEO), using product sheets or blog postsis sometimes more effective and sustainable.
You may have already heard of SMART method for setting goals and improving productivity. SMART goals are :
- Specific i.e. precise and anchored in a spatio-temporal context
- Measurable : based on concrete indicators, which we'll look at here
- Achievable Be realistic, or you'll be discouraged. Consider the time, budget and skills you can mobilize to achieve your goal.
- Relevant (relevant): make sure that the objective you set serves your marketing strategy. There's no point in being No. 1 abroad if your activity is definitely limited to France.
- Temporally defined Set a deadline to keep your goals in sight.
Which KPIs and measurement tools should an entrepreneur choose?
Indicators only serve to track your progress. It is therefore essential to start by defining your SMART objectives. Secondly, quantify these objectives and identify how you can achieve them in a measurable way. For each one, you'll probably find several appropriate KPIs. Choose relevant indicators that are aligned with your objectives.
There's nothing to limit the objectives and indicators associated with the financial aspect. You can take a more qualitative view of your business and your customer satisfaction. At the end of each assignment, I send out a satisfaction form to share ideas for improving my customer process.
I've put together a checklist of the essential KPIs for the main objectives identified with my customers.
Download it free for a more effective marketing strategy!
How can you concretely improve your performance thanks to KPIs? - Case studies
Let's take an example: you want to make a living as a yoga teacher. It's a coherent goal, but neither SMART nor precise enough to estimate how far you still have to go. Be more specific: achieve a monthly income by the end of your 2e year of activity, the net monthly income you need for your comfort (say €2,000).
To achieve this income, you can :
- Increase the price of your yoga classes
- Offer more courses
- Welcoming more practitioners (the option chosen here)
- Develop a source of passive income
- And many more...
These strategies all have different benefits and risks. To get more subscribers, you can offer a first studio class, but without analyzing the effectiveness of this offer, your business and sales are unlikely to take off.
A good indicator here would be the conversion rate The number of participants taking out a subscription or booking a new yoga class after a trial class. If this rate looks good, keep up this effective marketing strategy. If your yogis disappear, permanently after a 1er course ask yourself the right questions (Is the subscription price prohibitive? Is the course level in line with their expectations?)
You could then set up an email campaign within 2 weeks of the trial class to invite your yogis to subscribe or book a new class.
Analyze your company's results to make the right decisions
For many indicators, it will be necessary to wait for collect enough data to be able to see the evolution.
There are many free analysis tools to track, measure and monitor your marketing & communication performance. Here are my favorites:
- For your website and its SEO: Google Search Console and Google Analytics, Jetpack (wordpress extension), Semrush, Hotjar (map visitor activity on your pages)
- On your social networks: professional dashboard Instagram (business accounts), Facebook Insights, LinkedIn Analytics
- For your emailings and newsletters: the analysis tool Mailchimp or your CRM solution
Some software packages automatically format your reports, but you can customize them from an Excel workbook or Canva template and share them with your colleagues.
Analyze this data regularly (e.g. monthly) to identify trends, successes and opportunities for improvement.. Your intentions will be clearer, your results more concrete and your decisions made more quickly.. Thanks to KPIs you'll become more reactive and inventive! Don't forget to celebrate every little victory, because seeing your progress is also a way of gaining confidence!
Efficiently adapt your marketing and communications strategy
Once you've analyzed your results, it's time toadapt your marketing strategy and plan future communications operations. While it's obviously a good idea to devote time (and budget) to your most effective actions, you'll benefit from repackaging your least effective marketing campaigns by showing resilience. Be curious, dive into your data and be creative to achieve your goals!
If you sell products or services online, one indicator that is too often overlooked is your abandoned cart rate. If it's high, perhaps your delivery costs or delivery times are too high, your payment system not reassuring enough, your returns policy confusing or your product sheets not relevant enough. Dig deeper into your indicators to identify where the problem lies. Even if on average 70% of e-commerce shopping baskets are abandoned, sending an e-mail can help you win back many customers. The click-through rate for this email is estimated at 11% for 44% of opens, with 1/3 of clicks resulting in a purchase (source: Growth Angel analysis).
Thanks to their flexibility, freelancers, independent contractors and small businesses have a competitive advantage and can easily and quickly turn their strategy around.. These indicators will be all the more useful. By choosing the right KPIs, regularly monitoring and analyzing your results, and adapting your strategy, you'll maximize your success in your market. Use my examples and tips to guide your actions and achieve your professional or personal goals!
So what are your next goals?
Let's talk about it together message or on social networks !