Are you like most businesses – working extra hard this time of year to generate attention for their products or services? Are you struggling to see the payoff or looking for new ideas?

Perhaps you already reviewed our holiday marketing tips blog and you have an awesome campaign running that you’re sure will get you the business you desire. Can you really be sure, though, unless you measure the results? In this blog post, we’re talking about what to do AFTER your holiday marketing, so you can be sure it’ll work even better next year.

The first indication of whether your marketing worked is to listen to what your customers are telling you, whether it be in person or online. Listening can be in the form of sales – how’d you do – or in the form of actual feedback. If you set a goal (and you should have) for what sales numbers you wanted to reach, see if you surpassed it, barely made it, or were far off. Ask your team what feedback or remarks they received or overheard when dealing with the customers firsthand. Check comments on your social media posts or ads promoting the campaign and take a look at what reviews you received in the time period that the campaign was running in.

Did everyone respond well to your visually appealing graphics and/or video posts? Were you able to reach your target audience or did you connect with others? If the response was overall positive, how can you replicate it? If it was negative, how is it best resolved? These are all questions to ask yourself and get answers to, so you can adjust and prepare.

Then, it’s time to review the data. Social media channels and email marketing services often provide free analytics for business accounts. It’s easy to find out what days and times are getting the most engagement and what content is getting the most reactions, comments and shares. Take a look at the number of successful deliveries, bounces, opens, click-throughs, and unsubscribes for your emails. If your email had a high open rate, but it was only sent to half of your list due to bounces, it’s not as impressive and adjustments need to be made.

Pay attention to which links individuals are clicking on, and take a deeper look in your Google Analytics to see if they took the desired action on your website – purchase, lead submission, signed up, contacted you, requested a quote, etc. Understanding your audience’s habits and what they’re attracted to helps you reach them when and where they’ll be the most receptive. You’re also able to pull leads from this information and do more targeted marketing.

When you plan ahead, be sure to plan to measure so you can set yourself up for success. If you need a little help with getting there, we’d be happy to assist.