The Revenue Growth Habit: The Simple Art of Growing Your Business by 15% in 15 Minutes Per Day

8The Only Meaningful Measure of Marketing

One of my clients is a wonderful, kind man who is the owner of a very successful firm in the tough print distribution business. When he came to me he was what I call a hypermeasurer. If he couldn't measure it, he wouldn't do it. So in a well-intentioned but misguided effort to measure his marketing, he was focused on tracking the following items:

• Facebook friends
• Twitter followers
• Search engine positioning for various search terms
• Hits, clicks, and page views on his website

Here's the thing about this kind of measuring: For business-to-business companies, which is where I specialize, not one of the statistics just mentioned has any correlation whatsoever with generating additional revenue. More Facebook friends does not equal more revenue. Higher search engine positioning does not equal more revenue. Why? Because your serious prospects are not looking for you on social media or search engines. They will, more likely, find you through a referral. Or they will have heard about you. Or you already know them, because you've called on them, but they have not yet purchased from you. Or, they're already customers, and the goal is to generate more business with them. In all of the examples just listed, the social media-search engine-website statistics have no effect on creating business. And these examples likely account for the vast majority of your current new business efforts.

Can you cite me exceptions? I'm sure you can.

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