Monitoring your marketing

You've sweated bullets strategizing, making your marketing plan and getting it off the ground. "Phew, that is done," you say.

Well no. There's not much point in starting a marketing effort if you don�t track it to see how it works. Of course the easiest measure is the "direct" way: did a specific piece of marketing lead directly to a sale. But you�re doing a lot of marketing that is not so directly measurable. Remember my Rule of Two? Many jobs come to you because the buyer has heard the right things about you from two separate sources or channels. So how to add these? Of course you should ask people where they heard of you and what they heard. You can look at your electronic newsletter stats and see who clicked through on which links. You can track your website traffic and associate its spikes with your mailshot or a press mention or a party you threw.

You don't just care about sales, of course. You also care very much about the kind of work and quality of clients you are getting. You can do surveys of people's attitudes to your company over time and see what effect your marketing has. There are even simple and inexpensive ways to see what is working and what is not. If you are using word of mouth techniques for example, you can send out your talking points and see when they get back to you. Attune your team to be keeping their ears to the ground all the time.

If you track all these things you should see some patterns emerge. You should be able to connect your efforts with your sales and the quality of your clients over time.

But it is no good knowing what works and what doesn't unless you are ready to make the necessary adjustments. If something isn't working don�t be afraid to change it and make it better; this will demonstrate how smart and adaptable you are.