Common pitfall: not tracking anything.
What gets measured, gets achieved — I learned this early on. It doesn’t have to be complex if you don’t have the capacity to keep up with it, but there needs to be some tracking to make sure you have aim and focus. Measuring and tracking the right metrics and goals is crucial for business growth. No business has grown by accident without setting these targets. That doesn’t mean that these have to be the targets you stick to forever, there are pivot points that take place, but at least let them live for a quarter at a time. Which outside of yearly and big 5-year vision, is what we usually suggest and help our clients measure at Infinite Growth.
Benefits of Tracking Metrics:
- Predictable growth
- Helps identify and understand marketing strategy shortcomings
- Focus and clarity of efforts
In order to create predictable growth, you need to track certain KPIs or Key Performance Indicators, over time to understand what you need to optimize and what you need to double down on. One of the principles of Infinite Growth is “what gets measured gets achieved”. With some KPIs tracked over time you can then understand what a realistic growth rate is and project some goals to achieve in the future. Without these, it’s hard to set anything realistic and logical. Goal setting is imperative to driving growth.
If you track metrics, what you should do is have a regularly scheduled time to review them with your team, or just yourself if you’re solo. With these being tracked regularly you get a constant pulse of your performance. You can understand what’s working well, what’s not working, and what needs your attention.
If you set quarterly focuses, projects, or goals then you can identify the most affected metrics and keep those front and center throughout the quarter, reviewing them first and foremost in your meetings and making that the sail that guides your efforts.
What Happens If you Don’t Track?
This is a common occurrence in businesses and one of the biggest pitfalls I see. This is commonly associated with shiny object syndrome. If you do not track what matters consistently over time, you most likely don’t have any clear quarterly or yearly goals that you progressively work towards. It’s easy to think up or hear a good idea, put it to action in the business for a certain amount of time, and then ultimately forget about it. It’s also common to move on to the next idea passively because you don’t have the right things tracked to maintain front and center focus over time.
Deciding What to Track
First identify your goal: What do you want to achieve? For example, revenue growth, a larger amount of customers, increased reach, followers, subscribers, etc. This can change through different phases of your business or even quarter to quarter. Then identify the key indicators to those goals? What moves those goals forward?
A Few Different Types of Metrics
- Quarterly
- Marketing metrics
- Yearly goals
You can set business goals quarterly, yearly, focus on marketing metrics, sales-driven goals, or goals focused around a specific project/them. Whatever they are, make sure that they tie into your long term vision or annual goals.
Yearly goals are more about long-term strategy, whereas monthly goals can be about the project you set your focus on and can be reviewed weekly.
Another idea is to identify what metrics are associated with your client experience, this comes in various forms. At Digital Marketer, they teach the Client Value Journey. To use this as an example, you can use a growth scorecard to then track how many times your content or business engages with the prospect in the awareness stage, how many engage with you, how many subscribe, etc. All goals need to be quantifiable and binary.
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