Tips to Evaluating Your Small Business Marketing Plan

Most small businesses they are under more pressure than normal to stay along with their marketing strategy. This is also true with regards to digital efforts in a post-COVID world that created a major transfer of the world of marketing overnight. Staying on your marketing strategy ensures that you have a proactive method of business growth as opposed to a reactive one. If you’re working with limited resources and trying to grow your business, then here are some tips for evaluating your marketing plan:

Calculate Return on Investment (ROI)

The next thing in the process would be to calculate your Return on Investment (ROI) for every marketing channel. ROI is best described as a measure of methods much profit you are making from each dollar invested in a specific channel, which will help guide your future business decisions. One way of monitoring ROI would be to produce a simple spreadsheet. You are able to calculate it yourself using a sheets application like the traditional Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, or Google Sheets. To get this done, record how much money you spend on each platform and just what kind of results you get from it (i.e., clicks, leads or sales). Then use basic math to look for the ROI for each one by dividing the total revenue gained from a given channel by its total price. For example, should you spent $100 on Facebook ads that generated $200 in revenue (a 200% return), your calculation would look like this: ($200/$100 = 2). If there have been multiple causes of revenue or expense associated with an ad campaign-for example, cost per click plus cost per impression-it’s important to include all of them when calculating ROIs since they all contribute towards profitability. Furthermore, it is suggested exploring third-party tools such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, AdWords, and a robust CRM to provide you with much more insight into your visitors and getting habits.

Gather Customer Feedback

Asking your customers for feedback is an important part of building a marketing plan. With every major interaction within the pipeline, you should be asking your audience questions regarding their experience with your company and what they think of the products and services you are offering. The easiest method to discover what they're thinking is to apply customer surveys, which may be sent via email or through a survey tool like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey. You can also use social media questionnaires to inquire about your followers questions like “What would you like most about our small business?” or “What could we enhance?” The responses is going to be helpful in making future decisions concerning how to advertise your company. Another great method of getting feedback from customers is thru telephone calls and emails which are sent regularly with open-ended questions like “What was your experience at our event last week?” or “How will we compare against other local business owners?” These kinds of communications can help you see where there may be room for improvement inside the organization in addition to any places that there may already be strong ties between consumers and brands (or the other way around).

Review Sales Growth Consistently

It’s essential to take a look at sales growth consistently. You need to be capable of seeing if your marketing efforts are working by looking at the trend of your sales numbers and whether you’re gaining share of the market. This means tracking both top-line revenue and bottom-line profit with time so that you can identify places that improvements may be required (just like a lack of prospecting) or successes (such as the effectiveness of the marketing campaign).

Don’t Hesitate to Pivot

You will not be afraid to change your business design based on data and metrics. You should always be going where the numbers take you, and adjusting accordingly. So in short, go in which the numbers take you. If you see an increase in sales having a specific campaign or marketing channel, it makes sense to take a position more in that channel. Conversely, if a channel doesn't produce desired results; shut it down. There's nothing tolerant of throwing good money after bad. Staying on your marketing plan ensures that you yield the greatest return on your business while ensuring your business's long-term success. If your current efforts aren't paying down, try something new rather than sticking with what isn't working-and keep in mind that patience is essential!