How is your business doing? Do you have the data to support that answer? A lot of business owners and managers have a feel of how their company is doing, but data can prevent an erroneous hunch and support what is really going on in a company.

When setting up the marketing foundation and marketing campaigns for a client, we build in as many measurement tools as possible to create data points. Each quarter, we not only deliver the raw data, but communicate what it means. And how we should react to what is occurring in our marketing initiatives. Clients have expressed how helpful these tools have been.

The largest set of data points is in the client’s website and to catch these data points, we install an analytics program. The analytics program tracks a lot of information, probably the most helpful is how many individuals came to the website, how many times they visited, how long they stayed on the site, and how many pages they viewed while they were there. The analytics program can also track what the top entry and exit pages are telling you where people are entering the website and on page they are leaving.

In marketing campaigns like direct mail, email marketing, and social media, we like to integrate specific URLs. That is to say, if we are conducting a campaign for a client that is sending out a postcard, rather than putting www.clientwebsitehere.com, we ask respondents to visit www.clientwebsitehere.com/postcard or www.variationofwebsiteaddress.com. This combined with the analytics program helps to measure the success of the campaign.

Other measurement tools can include a separate phone number for a prominent campaign or the use of a Keyword tag on certain materials that can be entered into the website or mentioned when calling in. Other data points that we include for clients are search engine positions and the most representative data point, sales figures (online and/or offline).

How is your business doing? Review your business and sales process to determine the best data points for your organization. Set up a good, and cost effective, manner to collect data. And review your data each quarter, if not more frequently. Then you will know for certain the state of your company.

______ Brockwell Bone is the founder of Bone Marketing, a full service marketing firm based in the City of Central, Louisiana. Since 2000, Bone Marketing has provided clients across the nation with quality yet affordable marketing solutions.

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