By Linda Williams, of The Brand Counselors, Featured Guest Contributor

How Do You Define Success For Your Pet Business –Part 2
Key Performance Indicators ( KPIs) –Marketing
In conversations with pet entrepreneurs, I always ask if their marketing activities are successful. The answer I hear most often is I don’t know. Sound familiar?
 
In Part 1 we explored the concept of general business Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs). Now we are going to explore establishing KPIs specifically related to your pet business marketing efforts. If you are not a marketing professional, it can be difficult to determine if your marketing spend is successful, and worth your. The term ROI or return on investment is a way to calculate the worth of the effort.


I Need More….
What do you need more of? Customers? New customers or existing customer to buy more?? More new customers buying your newest product? Maybe you’re just launching your business, and you need to get your name out in the community. YOU decide what the goal is but you have to set a goal to measure the success (or failure) of your marketing efforts.
 
How will I let the world know?
There are countless ways to promote your business, and we’ll focus on four:
 

• Social Media: Facebook, Yelp, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter to name a few.

• Events: Sponsorship of the event, or participation as a vendor.

• Paid Advertising: Online (Google Adwords or paid ads on other sites, social media paid ads like Facebook) or offline (print, radio, tv, outdoor).

• Direct Marketing: Online, using online tools to market to leads and customers like newsletters or offline printed mailers or newsletters.

 
What do you want them to do?
Figure out what you want the audience to do as a result of seeing your promotion. Do you want them to click a link, call a phone number, fill out a form, follow you on social, come to your store?
 
 
In exchange what can you give them?
You need to give an offer of value. Yes, you should give something. It can be free information, great pics on social, a discount, invitation to an event or to see something before others, but you should give them something. Remember, your customers and potential customers have a LOT of competition for their attention.
 
Tracking Results
So, did it work? Did sales go up, did you grow your lead list? You won’t know unless you put in a simple mechanism to track your efforts. For retailers and other businesses with many transactions a CRM (customer relationship management) built into your point of purchase (POS) system is best. Service businesses may use an off the shelf, and customizable CRM like Salesforce.com or they may use Microsoft Excel to keep track. Although some of you may like the old school ways of paper, it’s not effective or efficient as you cannot easily update information and extract data into reports that you can review and act upon but it is an acceptable place to start.
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