In most cases, marketing is a long term game, much like generational wealth. You can’t just start something and magically make money, you have to plan! So, you need to create a marketing plan. You need to write down and know the following:

When talking to clients, we like to refer to this as the LTV of a customer. LTV stands for Life Time Value. So, we want to know what is the Life Time Value of a customer or how much we will make from that one customer, over time. Let’s say I own a gym. At my gym I am running ads on google and Facebook. I don’t know how to do this myself, so I am paying this amazing ad agency I heard about called GreenFox Marketing. I’m paying them $2500/ mo which is quite a lot for my small business. However, I know the numbers to look at because I know what the LTV of a customer is. At my gym, on average people pay $100/mo for a membership, plus they get sports drinks a few times a month and they add on additional classes once or twice a month so their total per month averages out to about $150/mo. On average we have seen people cycle in and out about every 2 years due to moving or just being tired of working out. So we take 24 months times $150/ mo and we get $3,600. So, this month at my gym, because of GreenFox, we brought in 10 new clients. Now, this month I’m only going to make $1500 ($150 X 10 new clients) but we spent $2500 on marketing. So really, we lost $1,000 right? Well, yes, but no. If I look at it that way, then yes, I have lost money that month and I’m upset about it. But because I understand that marketing is about consistency and the long term game I am able to take my $3600 that I will make off of each of those 10 people over a 24 month period and see that the $2500 investment just made me $36,000. Had I done zero marketing and just been doing my normal thing, then those 10 people would have never walked in the door. So, I would not have spent $2500 on marketing but I also would have brought in $0. So this results in the following: No marketing = Saved $2500 this month, made $0 over 24 months Marketing = Lost $1,000 this month, made $36,000 over 24months Just remember this, most of the largest and most successful businesses you know didn’t make much if anything when they kicked off their marketing approaches but look at them now. (Fedex, Amazon, Tesla, ESPN etc.)

You HAVE to know how your marketing efforts are going. Marketing is not a set it and forget it system. There is no way you can be effective in your marketing if you don’t review the data. At the end of the day if you can understand data and adjust, then you will be ahead of the ones that don’t review their data. Imagine going 6 months without looking at your income and expenses. Imagine going 6 months and not looking into how much money is in your bank. You would never do that, but unfortunately people in marketing and small business owners do this day in and day out. It’s all part of consistency. There is nothing super exciting about reviewing data. However, if consistency is the key to long term success, then simple tasks like reviewing data should not be an option, but a requirement in order to grow! You’ve got this! Consistency is no easy task, but that’s the whole point. Good things and positive steps in business rarely come without consistency! If you need help in this process, don’t hesitate to reach out!