Happy New Year everyone! It’s the beginning of a new year. It also means that your internet business should be celebrating a new year. Why? Because we know that more people will be using the internet to buy products and services than ever before. This should be exciting to you. I know I am excited! As we approach the New Year, I have one question. How did you do last year? Do you know? If I was to come over to your office right now could you show me exactly what your internet business did? Can you show me every lead you received? Can you tell me where those leads came from specifically? Can you tell me what happened to those leads? Who is your best converter of leads? How do you know? How did you define a lead? How do you know that your Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign actually worked? How did you evaluate it? Did your PPC just drive more traffic to your website, or did it actually produce business? How did you measure that? What is your follow up system?
If you cannot produce numbers that can clearly show me the answers to any one of these questions, then I would say you are not really running a business; you are just spending money and assuming you are doing business. The key here is to track your business by the numbers. One of my clients tracks every lead, she makes sure her sales staff is accountable for every internet lead, and she can produce a spreadsheet with actually numbers of where the leads came from and what happened to them. She is running a business, not feeding one with money. She has a budget; she knows her conversion rates for each of her forms on her websites.
In this New Year, your first goal is not to set a goal for how much business you should do, your first task is to put systems in place so that you can track every lead, from every location, how much money it cost you, and what eventually happened to those leads. How do you know if your business is going, if you don’t know where your business has been? How do you know that your internet marketing is really working? How do you know you are really profitable? Is it because you can still write a check without it bouncing, or there is still money on the credit cards? Ridiculous! You need to know your business by the numbers; as a matter of fact it’s a must.
I know this sounds like it’s crazy, to some business people, but what I have found is that people have no idea when I start asking them questions where their business is really coming from, they just a assume the do, and we all know what ass-u-me translates to.
Okay so here are some handy tips for you this year to get your numbers off to a good start.
- Operationally define what you are going to consider a lead
- Determine whether the lead is an A, B, C, or dead and operationally define it
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Determine how many sources from the internet you are getting leads from
- Create an alphanumeric system from each source that can identify each lead
- If you have purchased leads from another company determine how those leads will be identified, and how they will be tracked
- Purchase a program or create a spreadsheet where every lead is going to be listed
- Hold each person who is responsible for handling leads to be able to access the software or spreadsheet and require them to make an entry every time they have a lead
- Create a follow up system by which your you or your team will follow up on each lead until it leads to a sale or is dead
- Make sure you have talked to your SEO about conversion rates and how you will define them
- Have a quarterly review with your SEO and your conversion team to review how leads are handled and whether or not more expenditure is necessary
Clearly this is not an exhaustive list. However, if you will start with just these things your business will already be ahead of 90% of your competition. With all that said stop the resolutions, and get to know your numbers. If nothing else you really will know where your internet business is headed. This is an exciting New Year. Fill it with numbers and it will be your best one ever. Happy New Year!
Sincerely,
Your Internet Doctor – Dr. Jay
P.S. If you want help with your Internet Business, contact me DrJay@InternetDr.com
Ciao