Is your marketing working? Part 1

These days, there are thousands of ways to market your firm. So how do you know which tactics will work? Determining the efficacy of your marketing campaigns has always been difficult—until now.

Part of the beauty of web marketing is that you can track and measure what works and what doesn’t. For example, Google Analytics can reveal many details about who is visiting your site and the actions they are taking online.

Here’s an important metric to help you determine whether your web marketing efforts are paying off:

Web traffic. A great website is useless if no one visits it. It happens a lot—a great-looking, user-friendly site attracts almost no traffic because nobody knows it exists. The more qualified visitors your website has, the more likely you will be to convert them to clients. After about a month of data, you can begin to see patterns which will tell you what is working and what isn’t.

Action step: Record the number of visitors to your site. Create a simple spreadsheet and input the numbers on a monthly basis. This will help you determine whether your website is doing its job.

3 ways to increase traffic:

Above all, provide value. People are savvier that ever and won’t waste their time browsing your site unless you give them something in return (such as a white paper).

Include your web address in all marketing material (i.e., newsletters, business cards).