This week’s question comes from Denard N., a talent agency executive from New York.

He asks:

How Can I Tell If the Marketing I Do Online Is Working Well?

Just how well is your online marketing doing? It can be hard to tell, even if you are a professional at it. The fact is, online marketing is hard to track. You may not know how much time you are putting into any one marketing method. You may be unsure of how much money you are spending on that marketing venture either. However, chances are good you know if you are seeing more leads or traffic coming in. Unless you are not seeing new leads, though, it can be hard actually to see how effective marketing is working for you.

Analyzing Your Success

As anyone can tell you about online marketing, the goal is to connect with people. You can often gauge your success by how well you are connecting with those who you want to connect with – your potential customer, business partner or investor. The second thing you need to do is to track your marketing and to analyze its effectiveness.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Most businesses need to use more than one marketing method to draw in enough customers. You may have a hard time knowing where your traffic boost is coming from if you are using more than one method, though.

• It can take time to go from one site and tool to the next and trying to calculate where your leads are coming from and how well each type of marketing message you send out is working. Did that promotion of your latest blog post draw people in or was it the comment you made about a service you offered that brought someone to your site off your Twitter account? Tracking all of this down is time consuming.

• Knowing which customers reacted to which types of marketing on various social medial platforms is simply complex. The best way to avoid having to do all of this work by hand (if that is even possible) is to use tracking software. These programs can help you to learn what is happening.

Sometimes, it is best to hire third party professional web marketers to manage your marketing. That party can then submit reports to you about the marketing efforts they took and the results they got from those methods. This could be a solution for some.

In order to know how well your marketing methods are working for your business, you need to measure the right metrics and know what you are looking at. You can learn how to do this but it is complicated because of all the directions information is coming in. Software can help, but you have to use it properly to have success. Also, keep in mind there are many free applications that can help keep track of the metrics you wish to measure for your online marketing efforts.

While it is complex, it is still critical to employ these methods into your marketing campaign. You need to know if it is working, what is working and what may not be. That is the only way for you to know where to put your money and your time in the marketing days ahead. If you do not have this information, you could spend hours doing the wrong thing and not getting the results you need to have to keep your business profitable. Learn how to calculate the right metrics or hire someone that can help you with the process (including the use of software tools.)

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Dotcomweavers are a team of professional web designers located in Paramus, New Jersey. We are committed to helping small and medium businesses find growth online. ASK DCW is your chance to ask questions, seek advice and get the knowledge you need to make your business successful in the online marketplace. Connect with us on Twitter (@dotcomweavers) or Facebook.