All too often, people spend money on marketing without thinking about what return on investment they could get or would like to get. Or they just don’t spend money on marketing at all because they see it as a cost, rather than an investment.

This usually happens because they haven’t actually worked out what they need their marketing to “do” for them.

You might be thinking it’s fairly obvious: marketing needs to generate clients. And to an extent, that’s correct. But if we don’t know how many clients we need or how many enquiries we need to generate to get those clients, then it’s hard to know whether our marketing is actually working.

There’s a lot to consider when it comes to marketing, but as a minimum, you should understand your conversion rates.

How many leads/enquiries/call bookings do you need in order to generate a new customer?

For example, let’s say out of the last ten enquiries you’ve had, four booked discovery calls, but only one turned into a paying client. You now know you need to generate an average of ten enquiries to get one client, so your conversion rate is one in ten (or 10%).

This is only based on the last ten enquiries, so you might need to go a bit further back if you can. But 10% gives us a starting point.

Now let’s say you need four clients per month to meet your financial target. So now we know you need your marketing to generate 40 new enquiries per month, and you need to convert 16 of those 40 enquiries into discovery calls to get your four clients.

Is that feasible?

Is your current marketing activity likely to generate 40 enquiries per month? If not, then how can you fix this? Do you have the time or budget required to fix this?

Do you have time to deal with 40 enquiries per month (on top of marketing, calls and client work)? If not, how can you improve your conversion rate so that eight out of ten enquiries turn into discovery calls instead of four? This would mean you only need 20 enquiries per month.

Do you have capacity for 16 discovery calls each month? If not, how could you improve your conversion rate so that two, three or even four out of four turn into paying clients rather than one? Or is there a way you can convert enquiries into paying customers without having to do free calls? Or could you start charging for discovery calls?

Is four new clients per month manageable? Or could you increase your prices so that you only need two clients per month?

Knowing your numbers will really help you understand where the gaps are in your marketing and sales process so you can start fixing them.

And let’s be honest, 10 enquiries, 4 calls and 2 new clients per month is going to be far more manageable than 40 enquiries, 16 calls and 4 new clients per month.

Don’t just do a load of marketing activities and hope for the best. Understand what you need in terms of new clients in order to hit your financial targets.

If your turnover target is £200,000 per year and you sell a thing that costs £1000, you need 200 sales per year. But you might have clients who buy from you every year or every month, so that doesn’t necessarily mean you need 200 new clients every year.

Figure out how much of your target turnover is already accounted for by retained clients or subscriptions or long-term contracts. The rest will need to be covered by new clients.

How many enquiries do you need to generate so you can hit those numbers?

Track your enquiries. How many are you getting (on average) each week or month? How are they finding you (via social media, online search, word of mouth)? Are they the right type of enquiry?

Decide what works and what doesn’t. Do more of what works and don’t keep investing time and money into stuff that doesn’t deliver any return.

Track your conversion rates at each stage of your marketing and sales process.

How many visitors do you get to your website each month? How many of these visitors submit an enquiry or book a call? How many of these convert into paying customers?

Or how many people download your lead magnet each month? How many of these go on to make a purchase from you?

Or how many direct messages do you send each month? How many respond? How many turn into calls or meetings? How many become clients?

Figure out where the gaps are and where the biggest improvements can be made. There’s no point trying to attract double the number of enquiries if the problem is with your conversion rates.

And if you need help understanding how to put together a more effective marketing and sales process, book one of my 90-minute strategy calls and we’ll do it together.

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If you’re a small business owner, you do your own marketing and you don’t have an email list, this book is for you.

It’s a short, concise guide that will show you why having an email list is so valuable, how you can build one without huge investments of time or money, and how to turn subscribers into paying clients.

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