The most important thing for your business to do is monitor its growth. If you can’t quantify, how will you know when you’ve reached a milestone?
When you start from scratch, it’s easy enough to keep track of where you are and how much your business has grown. Monitoring the growth of an established company that already has customers, revenue and employees becomes more challenging.
How to better monitor the growth of your company?
Here are 12 ways you can analyze the current state of your business and track its growth.
1) Graphs and diagrams
There is nothing better than making dense information easy to understand by presenting it visually with graphs and diagrams. Go through all the numbers in your accounts, sales reports, marketing campaigns, etc., break them down into simple graphs that show the cost per click or cost versus revenue per quarter and place them in a place where you can always refer to them .
2) Metrics
Do you remember the reasons for your business? It is important to have a clear answer as to why you are doing what you are doing. Dig deeper into your data to see how things are progressing and which direction you should take if a decision becomes harder to take due to conflicting goals or metrics. That way, when situations change or something new comes up, you’ll know if it makes sense for your business or not when you consult with RemoteDBA.com experts.
3) Customer Feedback Surveys
Ask people who bought from you how they found out about your company, what they think about your products / services and if there is anything else they would like from you. This way, you will be able to track whether you are meeting your customers’ needs and in which areas they want to improve. Don’t be too commercial when asking for feedback – focus on their needs, not yours.
4) Social media analysis
Use tools like Hootsuite or Facebook Insights to see how much interaction you get on your different social media channels. How is the response rate? How many new followers do you have this month compared to last? Which posts perform best and generate the most traffic? This information can help increase your social presence by working with what works best and quantify where it makes sense to allocate more time / budget resources when it comes to social media marketing.
5) Tracking the competition
Keeping an eye on your competitors won’t just help you stay on top of what’s happening in the market. It will also give you ideas for new products / services or let you know if there is a gap in the market that needs to be filled. See who is using their social media channels well, how often they post content related to their industry, which posts get the most interactions, and if they are investing more time in paid advertising than organic growth.
6) Networking events
Attending networking meetings can be a great source of information for your business and help you build connections that could lead to valuable partnerships or increased sales. How many people participate? What percentage of them have already bought from your company? How many new connections are you making? How much revenue do these sales represent?
7) Sector publications
What do the blogs and magazines of the sector say about your company and its market? Which articles get the most views and which authors seem to be the most popular? If you give awards, what arguments are they based on? What do your industry peers think of new entrants who could pose a threat to your business or companies with complementary offerings to yours?
8) Competitors’ websites
Take a look at what content and services your competitors offer. Are there any holes in the market that someone needs to fill? Do you have an opportunity to expand by adding something like this? There’s no point trying to guess your competitors’ moves second, but it can’t hurt to keep an eye on them, if only as a way to stay informed about industry trends.
9) Website tracking tools
The same goes for your website analytics tool – which channels are sending traffic to your site? Which pages get the most attention? Are there external sources driving a lot of traffic (if so, you might want to try and get mentioned about them)? If you run an ecommerce store, how many people have started but haven’t completed their purchase journey? This information is vital when trying to figure out where to invest in time / budget to improve your website.
10) Site search conversion rate
To get the most out of your website’s search feature, you need to understand what visitors are converting into, then find out which phrases or keywords are getting people through the door and which aren’t. Is there a model under which queries work? Do some pages get more searches than others? What about “not provided” data: have you activated Google Analytics advanced filters to fill this gap? Knowledge like this can be invaluable when writing content that resonates with your audience and helps improve your overall conversion rate.
11) Sources of reference traffic
Where does the referral traffic come from? See how many inbound links you are getting on the web and where they come from. Even better, find out which sites are driving the most traffic and see if you can increase reach on these channels by blogging guests or finding other ways to get in front of their audience. There is no point in focusing only on Google search if your customers come through referrals from social media, forums or websites – remember that referrals are one of the best sources of quality leads, so maximizing here can make a huge difference as to how many enter each guide channel.
12) Monitoring of events
How many people attended your events? Was it worth going on with them, given the results you got? If you already run events, it makes sense to monitor their ROI too: what did attendees think and how likely are they to buy something they saw there? If you run events purely for networking purposes, be sure to keep track of how many people visit your booth and what they do after they leave.
One last piece of advice
The thing n. 1 you need to do is take care of your customers and build relationships with them. If you want more or better insight into how your business is doing, start by sitting down at the end of each day and asking yourself these 3 questions: What worked? What did he not do? What could I have done differently? While many factors contribute to the growth of a successful business, if all else fails, focus on taking care of your people first!