5 Ways to Track and Improve Your Marketing Efforts
How do you know how much of an impact you're making every quarter? There are two ways to look at answering this question. I consider them both important as they consider our internal satisfaction and feedback from the people we set out to help.
These two measures are: 1) feelings and 2) objective data.
The first comes down to the internal level of joy you feel when you make a difference in someone's life. The second is having data that allows you to objectively asses how many lives you're actually reaching through your marketing efforts.
In addition to making sure we have the financial resources to pay our bills and to sustainably keep touching more lives, I know many of us are in business because we feel deep fulfillment from the knowing we've brought joy, relief, or peace to another human being.
For you, that might be a moment when someone shares how their mindfulness practice helped them be less reactive with their kids or spouse that day. Or how it's opened them up to greater feelings of self-compassion and reduced the noise of their inner critic.
For me, that moment often happens when I see a mindfulness teacher's eyes light up as they feel empowered and confident in sharing their message with more people. Or when I finish writing a blog, an ebook, or website copy for another mindfulness teacher and feel that those words will inspire their audience, helping them get more students and clients.
This post is about helping you take a strategic look at the second factor in the impact equation: objective data. Here's how you can use it to get the information you need to have a greater impact in less time.
The importance of objective data in driving a greater impact
Every quarter, I like to reflect back on the previous quarter and assess both as I do my impact retreat. In addition to getting in touch with what's showing up within me, I also want to know what my audience (you, dear mindfulness teacher :-)) did and didn't like, how they found me, and what they want to see more of.
Now, here's how YOU can do the same so you can touch more lives without wasting your time on marketing strategies that don't work for your audience.
Now, here's how YOU can do the same so you can touch more lives without wasting your time on marketing strategies that don't work for your audience.
As a mindfulness teacher wanting to grow your impact, tracking these metrics can help you:
Save time by focusing your efforts on what's proven to work for your audience
Grow your business, reach, and impact by adjusting your strategy as needed
Bring more value to your audience by understanding their needs and preferences better
You can consider using the questions below as a checklist to review your marketing efforts on a quarterly basis. Your answers will give you valuable insight into the people you're most wanting to help. If you don't know who specifically you should be directing your marketing efforts at, start by picking the right mindfulness niche for your business.
Mindful marketing is client-centric. It’s all about listening to their needs and providing value even before they start working with you. Knowing these marketing metrics will allow you to serve your people better because you will understand the more.
✅ 1) Review your website traffic data
The more you understand how people use your website, the better you can optimize it so they actually click that "Sign up" or "Register" button.
Most website providers offer some version of a traffic or website analytics report where you can view these metrics. Browse around the back-end of your website to find this or ask your website developer for guidance.
Explore the numbers. Have fun seeing what you can find about your website visitors to serve them on a higher level.
Gather all the data in one place and take a moment to study it. Here are some items you may want to review:
Which page of your website received the most views?
Which page of your website do people spend the most time on?
Where did most of your website visitors come from (Google, social media, email link, direct)?
What is your bounce rate (the percentage of people who leave your page quickly without taking any action)?
What keywords did people search for that brought them to your website?
For the last question (to find the right keywords/SEO terms), I highly recommend registering your website on Google Search Console so you have the most up to date data about which keywords and phrases are driving traffic to your site.
You can then use these keywords as inspiration for what to write about in your blogs, social media, and emails. These are the topics people are curious to know more about so give them more of what they're asking for and you'll be rewarded with more sign-ups for your classes or services.
✅ 2) Assess your blogs' readership and SEO
Blogs and articles on your website not only offer great value and information to your potential clients - they also help you get found by the people who are most curious about the wisdom you're sharing.
SEO refers to how easily people can find your website on Google. The higher you rank on Google, the more traffic you get to your website without having to spend money on ads. You can learn more about SEO here: What is SEO and how does it help with marketing mindfulness services?
But here's the bottom line: the more you talk about a certain topic like mindfulness, the more Google (and people) see you as an expert or credible authority in the mindfulness field.
This boosts your SEO and helps you establish trust with your audience.
Where did the traffic come from to your three most popular blogs? (email, social media, organic search)
Do all of your blogs contain up-to-date information?
Which blog was viewed the most this year?
This lets you know what your audience is interested in. Can you write more about the topic? Can you expand on this blog? Do you have a clear call to action at the bottom of it for people to work with your directly?
There are several ways you can improve your website SEO. This includes copywriting that integrates SEO keywords that are most likely to get you found by your target audience.
In the mindfulness field, this could often mean ranking for the term “mindfulness” plus something that identifies your niche (workplace, parents, teacher, teens etc.) and their pain point (such as reducing stress, improving productivity etc.).
To see how your website ranks in terms of SEO, use this free website SEO analyzer by Neil Patel. This is a great tool that will give you insights into your website’s performance plus tips for how to fix certain issues (like title descriptions or meta tags) easily.
✅ 3) Get familiar with your email marketing stats
Email marketing drives 40x more engagement and returns than social media. This is because once you get people on your email list, it shows that they truly have interest in what you're offering.
If you do a good job of staying close to them by sending emails more than once a month, they'll be a lot more likely to sign up for your mindfulness offerings in the future.
If you're using an email marketing software like MailChimp, ConvertKit or others, it should offer these and other detailed statistics to assess the effectiveness of your emails and campaigns.
Here are some questions to consider asking as you dig into the data:
How much did your email list grow in the past quarter?
Where did most of the growth come from and when?
Which lead magnets/freebies caused more people to subscribe than others?
What's your average open rate (the percentage of people who open your emails)?
Which emails had the highest open rate? The lowest?
What is your average click-through rate (the percentage of people who click on your links)?
These numbers help you gauge the health of your email list. If you have subscribers but haven’t sent an email out to them in months, these numbers are probably lower than average. The good news is that you can always boost the health of your email list by re-engaging with your subscribers and providing valuable content.
When it comes to email marketing, it really is all about quality. So don’t fret about occasional unsubscribes. These are people who likely wouldn’t have signed up for your services to begin with so instead choose to be grateful for the wonderful souls who are excited to hear from you. :-)
Focus on delivering authentic, mindful content to your subscribers and you will be cultivating meaningful relationships with them over time. This will help you get these numbers up faster!
✅ 4) Review the effectiveness of your social media strategy
Social media is a great way to increase the brand awareness of your mindfulness business. (Although you can still market yourself without social media if you choose to).
Social media starts the conversation with your audience. It helps them get to know you and your brand better...but social media alone rarely ever leads to conversions (i.e. people signing up).
Social media is a way to drive traffic to a freebie/lead magnet which helps you cultivate a deeper relationship with your audience as you provide value upfront.
This in turn gets them onto your email list where you can continue the conversation so they're always up to date on all your wonderful mindfulness programs, classes, or offerings.
Which posts were most popular in terms of engagement and comments?
Did you host any live events on social media? If so, which ones were most popular?
Is there a certain trend in when people contacted you most (after posting a certain kind of post)?
Are you posting on a platform where your target audience actually hangs out?
Do you have your target audience as your connections on LinkedIn or as followers on Instagram or Facebook? Or is it mainly colleagues or people already in your field?
To improve the effectiveness of your social media strategy, it's important to understand what your audience enjoys first.
Then have a plan for showing up consistently with short snippets that perhaps lead to a longer piece (blog/article/ebook). Lastly, don't leave them hanging - be clear with a Call to Action that invites them to take the next step if they want to learn more.
✅ 5) Review your public relations efforts
The most important component of marketing is making yourself visible. There are many different ways to do this but often the most organic way to reach a larger number of people (without spending $ on ads) is through public relations.
So whether you haven't tried any PR efforts yet or aren't sure how effective they've been, use these questions to dig deeper:
Did you appear in any podcasts, summits or conferences? If so, which ones landed you the most new subscribers or clients?
Did you have any of your content published on other sites as a guest post? If so, which ones landed you the most new subscribers or clients?
How many clients did you get by word of mouth or referrals? Are you actively asking for referrals?
Appearing on summits, podcasts, other people's websites, or conferences helps you build trust and credibility with your audience. Consider the networks you're most connected to and how you might be able to show up in a way that provides value and establishes you as the mindfulness expert in that field.
Adjust as needed to grow your impact
With the data and insights from this review, you can adjust your strategy to connect with your audience on a deeper level. More than likely, there will be several items on this list that you haven't considered before - and that's absolutely normal. Don't let this overwhelm you, simply use it as guidance for new ideas.
Feeling stuck with any of these aspects of your business or not sure how to use them to get more mindfulness students or clients? Learn how to reach more people with mindful online marketing. Sign up for the next enrollment of my Online Marketing for Mindfulness Teachers course here.
Would you rather save time and have the marketing work done for you? View my mindfulness copywriting and marketing services here and schedule a call to see if we'd be a good fit to work together. :-)