Track What Works
Knowledge is power. Information is liberating.
Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.
~ Kofi Annan
You need to have a system to track how people are finding you, and the first step to creating this system is…drumroll please…
Ask people how they heard about you!
You may do this in your initial screening, you can do this on your intake form, you can do this in a first session. It doesn’t matter how you go about finding out this information, but you need to know where your clients are locating you. Over time, this will help you determine what marketing efforts you should continue and which you should abandon.
For example, if you use seven different online directories but only three of them get you clients, you can quite wasting your money on the other four and focus your energy on the three that are working for you. If you find that you have colleagues that are actively referring clients to you, make sure that you are following up with them and nurturing those relationships. Find out if there are ways you can help them in their businesses so you can create a win-win for both of you.
If you find that writing articles on certain platforms (blog posts, magazines, social media) are followed by an influx of clients – write more for those platforms! In the beginning its a bit of a guessing game about how to connect with your clients, but over time you can get some actual numbers to help guide you to make smart marketing decisions.
The goal is this – Work Smarter, Not Harder.
Once you know what marketing strategies connect to your ideal client and which ones don’t, focus your efforts on what works and see your business explode!
Google Analytics
In order to track what works on the actual pages of your website, you will absolutely want to sign yourself up for Google Analytics.
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Google Analytics is a free tool you (or your developer) can connect to your site that tracks and reports back to you the traffic to your website. It will let you know where people find you online and what pages they spend the most time on, and more importantly, from which pages prospective clients lose interest on and decide to leave your site. Knowing this information can help you improve your website to funnel people to the pages you want them to find.