Metrics – How to Use It to Really Grow Your Business

Metrics provide a wide variety of information. Alone, many metrics can give your insight into your audience and their needs, goals, and behaviors. For example, a simple time analytic tells you how long each visitor spends on your website. Great, now you can use that information as a metric to keep people on your site longer. However, sometimes the power of metrics comes from a combination of information. This is how you can really leverage the information and grow your business. Let’s explore a few of those metrics now.

CoA or Cost of Acquisition Metrics

Your CoA tells you how much money it costs you to obtain a new customer. Obviously, the lower your cost of acquisition, the better. You can calculate your cost of acquisition with the following equation:

Total sales and marketing cost divided by the number of new customers added equals your cost of acquisition.

You can calculate this data on a monthly basis to stay on top of the marketing tactics that are generating the most results. What is important here is to also track your budget so that you know the cost of each marketing tactic.

Your analytics will tell you the number of conversions you generate. If you set it up accordingly, it can also tell you which marketing efforts are generating those conversions. It’s a tremendous source of information to help you grow your business. You can drill down to identify the most cost effective marketing tactic.

Your High Value Customers Metrics

Your high value customers are those people that:

• • Spend a lot of money with your business on a regular basis
  • Talk about your business to others and send referrals (word of mouth marketing)
  • Might be readily leveraged into repeat purchasing customers

Sales metrics and your analytics can help you identify the customers that spend the most with you. You may be aware of these customers already. However, as you grow it’s useful to have access to the data. You can also review your sales and business interactions with customers to identify those prospects or customers who may become long-term customers.

They may be the ones that connect and communicate with you often, or those who made a few small purchases in a small expanse of time.

Finally, you can use email marketing metrics to identify those movers and shakers. Leverage email segmentation to show those subscribers some special attention and to appreciate their efforts.

From sales to expenses, from referral sources to the point at which someone enters your sales funnel, business and marketing analytics are a powerful source of information. To maximize this information it’s important to set goals and prioritize. You can spend months reviewing your data. Instead, identify specific goals and leverage the data to help you achieve those goals. Do so and you can systematically grow your business.