Entrepreneur
Money can often be the barrier between being stuck where you are or breaking through to the next level. This includes having or not having a budget, using it properly, hidden revenue or even misaligned goals — all of which influence your growth trajectory. These four common secrets have helped my company elevate our clients to the next level.
1. Financial transparency for ROI
The first blindspot we often notice with new clients is not having a clear reporting connection between your tools, like ads and a CRM like HubSpot, to see which channels drive the most significant return on investment (ROI). Do you know your best-performing channels? Or your best-performing piece of sales copy? What is the most opened document that leads to a closed deal?
And we’re not just talking about marketing and sales; this applies to many connected platforms — for example, the closed-loop revenue or your ERP systems. When things are not connected, they are disjointed and siloed. You end up flying blind. Without connecting your marketing tools with your revenue tools, and with that being CRMs, finance platforms, or ERPs, to name a few, there is a disconnect, and the arms and legs end up moving in different directions.
Here’s a simple example we see all the time: If you knew that one channel drove more deals by a 75% faster conversion rate, wouldn’t you invest more time and energy in that channel than one that only had a conversion rate of 10%? Many people don’t want to share the revenue numbers within the company, but all of that information informs the other departments; without sharing these revenue numbers, your money secret is keeping it in hidden silos.
Related: I Hit $100 Million in Annual Revenue by Being More Transparent — Here Are the 3 Strategies That Helped Me Succeed
2. Strategic investment for avoiding blind spots
Another financial blindspot is not investing in marketing. We have had prospects come in with no budget and no internal marketing team, but we want to grow by 150% and spend a total of $1,000. I wish achieving growth like this was possible, but unfortunately, it’s not. The old adage that you get what you pay for, or it takes money to make money, speaks the truth. Your investment goals should match your growth goals. The amount of money invested should be measured not just by short-term, quick wins but also by looking at long-term investment to growth.
You would never measure an HR department strictly on the number of hires. However, looking at the whole picture of longevity amongst many other important KPIs, You would not use an HR department for a few months. It is something that is constant and needs care and attention. Marketing is no different — if you strictly only measure marketing by the number of leads, you are missing out on the full picture. Marketing helps push leads through nurture campaigns, creates automation, leads scoring, builds new campaigns and tests, supports sales enablement activities and many other components. A buying cycle is rarely a straight line to click and buy unless we’re discussing Amazon.
That said, everyone has budgets, margins and bumper lanes they need to stay in. I am by no means saying throw your budget to the wind, but your goal should match your budget. If you have modest growth goals, be realistic about the budget needed to get there. Set incremental micro goals but stay the course for long-term growth.
Related: You Won’t Have a Strong Budget Until You Follow These 5 Tips
3. Data-driven decisions to save money
Another money secret that costs companies is spending without the data to back it. We had a company inquire about a new website, a full blow-up, new navigation, new content, new page layouts, migration onto a new CMS, a new theme and the works. They said they had a $75,000 budget for the whole project. In theory, it sounds great, right? Willing to invest? Check. Has a budget? Check. Know what they want the end result to be? Check. But when we asked them the next question, they looked at us like we were crazy, “Do you have data that backs the changes you are looking to make?” Are you running a tool like Hotjar to see real user data behind how these proposed changes will impact your existing inquiries and the only source the sales team was currently using for leads?
The answer was no. When the heat map was overlaid, do you know what happened? Well, they were looking to build that new navigation out and replace the old one — nearly 90% of the traffic was going to two pages of their site directly from the navigation, both of which they had originally wanted to remove. In this case, it wasn’t just about having the money but also about making sure the decisions you make with the budget are informed by real data: user data, sales data, marketing data and more. The more informed you can be by closing the loop on your data, the better your end result will be.
Related: Want to Be Better at Decision Making? Here are 5 Steps to Better Data-Driven Business Decisions
4. Modern marketing channels to drive growth
What is likely costing you the most is using old-school channels without the ability to measure. Companies have spent the last decade on traditional marketing channels and are switching to digital. The company’s historical growth has relied on things like trade shows, print, postcards and online magazines. We ask what the ROI you have seen by each channel is, and rarely can they share a specific revenue number and say it is for brand awareness. Some of the budgets can be over 50 to 100 thousand dollars spent on these traditional methods, but there is no ROI attached, yet they continue them.
When the pandemic happened, we saw a massive influx in businesses shifting from once only boots on the ground to digital. The lockdown changed everything; there were no more trade shows, no more door knocking and no one picking up their mail or faxes daily. It made traditional selling channels challenging and obsolete and forced a new level of openness to try new ways to get the job done. In the example of running online magazine ads there are lots of ways to capture them, we can use UTM tracking, referral analysis or create a custom landing page for the offer and capture the leads directly. Without running them to a landing page or form, you rely only on the online publication for leads and analytics. We’ve had people show a list of just names, no emails to follow up with, or only show a random number of visitors to the page, not a single name. It’s important to know what they will provide for reporting and tracking when you publish or use traditional channels. The rule of thumb is to use connections and tools that leverage old-school methods into technology and not blindly spend on channels that cannot be measured.
Stop wasting time, energy and revenue on these blind spots. They have easy solutions, so you can avoid them and focus on growing your business!
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