I get several calls a day from people who want to know my secret formula for online marketing. These are business acquaintances who look at how we are doing at TeamSnap and want to replicate our growth at their company. So far this month we have added five times as many customers as last June, and last June was a great month in terms of customer acquisition.
We have a great product that people find easy to use and incredibly handy. In addition, our customer service is excellent. As a result, the service is extremely viral. Having said that, we definitely have greatly increased our usage through online marketing.
When I tell these acquaintances our online marketing "secret" they blink and say, "Really? That is it?" My answer is so, well, pedestrian that they are always surprised. They are expecting some super secret Google Ad Words trick or a SEO tool that no one knows about. I have a few of those too, but I require a good bribe before giving those out. (Hint, I love sweets.) At the same time, when I ask these acquaintances if they are following my "secret," they almost always say no.
So what is this "secret"? It is analytics, analytics, analytics. As simple as it sounds, you need to figure out what action you want to increase and find an easy way to measure it. Are you trying to increase trial sign-ups? Then measure what the sources are of trial sign-ups. Are you trying to increase leads? Then measure what sites, ads, emails, keywords, geographies, devices, etc. send you the most leads. While I am partial to e-commerce tracking in Google Analytics (even for companies that are not in e-commerce), there are many ways to measure these things.
The key is to set up a regular process for reviewing the sources that drive this action that you are trying to increase. On my marketing team we religiously review trials by source at our weekly marketing meeting. It is the core report that determines where we focus our time. If a source delivers a lot of trials, we put more time and effort into it. If it doesn't deliver many new trials, we cut back or turn the program off. It is that simple. It is a simple but highly effective time management exercise.
Once you have this process down, it is critical that you run lots of experiments. When I am evaluating a new marketing source (e.g., a new advertising venue or even a business development partner) I try to start with the smallest commitment that will allow me to effectively test that channel. If it is a test of a new advertising channel, I often find that spending $10,000 or even far less is plenty to prove whether that vehicle works or not.
Don't overthink it - test, measure, tweak, and repeat.
