At the end of every year, I look back at my business stats and compare how my business did this year versus the previous year. This allows me to identify if my business is growing and meeting my goals or if I need to shift the plan for next year.
I encourage you to step back and review your business stats.
What stats to monitor and how?
The easiest way to monitor your stats is to set up a spreadsheet…I actually encourage you to do this monthly or quarterly, but for the example here we’ll just cover annual.
All right, I’ve opened up my tracking spreadsheet so I can share with you exactly what it is I monitor and you can use this as an example to identify what you should be monitoring.
Website visitors
I use google analytics to monitor how much traffic my website receives. The number I monitor are the unique “users” and not overall visits which could be repeat individuals….or myself.
List size
I use Ontraport for list management, so I collect the total number of subscribers on my list and compare to the number last year. I’ve kept stats since 2008, so I actually compare data over the past seven years and can also look at list growth rate. Is my list size increasing at a faster rate than previous years or about the same…or slower…not what I’d want to see.
Unsubscribes
I also look at total unsubscribe numbers from year to year. I don’t get too wrapped up in people unsubscribing. If you are doing adequate promotion of your services (you have to promote if you want to make any sales) you will have people unsubscribe. That being said, I like to have an idea if unsubscribe numbers are outside the norm and if there might be a particular reason why.
Twitter
How many followers do I have this year compared to where I was last year?
Facebook
How many likes does my Facebook business page have this year compared to last year?
Articles published
Did I utilize article directories for article marketing this year? If so, how many articles did I publish?
Blog posts
Did I regularly publish new content to my blog? If so, how many new posts for the year.
Interviews/classes
Did I teach any classes or complete any interviews? If so, how many?
YouTube
I monitor a few different pieces here: 1. Did I publish any new videos for the year? 2. How many subscribers do I have on YouTube? 3. How many video views did I have for the year?
I collect data on these pieces, such as articles, blog posts, interviews, to help me evaluate my overall marketing for the year and identify what might have influenced website visitors or list growth to be higher or lower than previous years.
Visitor Acquisition
I then go back into Google Analytics and look at where the majority of my website traffic came from. I do this to know if my marketing efforts are effective or not. For example, if you did a big joint venture with a colleague that promoted your services, but you received little to no traffic from their website/URL that might be a sign it was not a good partnership for you and you’d keep this in mind when planning your marketing calendar for next year.
Goal Funnels
This might be a little advanced, but since I do this, I’ll share. I have goal funnels set up in Google Analytics so I can monitor how well opt in pages convert. I periodically tweak opt in pages to see if adjustments to copy, color changes, or layout shifts can improve conversion rates. I use the goal funnels to monitor the conversion rates.
Sales
I also compare sales year to year for every product/service I sell. If I’m doing things right, every year the number of items I sell should be increasing. You could very well get to a place where the goal is to maintain, so you are actually monitoring to make sure nothing is slipping that you need to be aware of and take action on.
For those of you who utilize our Content Marketing Package, a reminder that we do provide quarterly analytics as an add on option.
All the best,
Lisa Nelson RD