Metrics have always been an important part of marketing. Measuring what works, what doesn’t, and figuring out how to best spend our marketing dollars will always be important to small business marketers.
Metrics can help us in many ways, but I believe one of the one of biggest, and often overlooked, benefits of using metrics in your marketing system is that metrics help you get things done faster.
Actually, I think you there are two habits that affect how quickly you can get marketing done – the habit of collecting (and using) feedback and the habit perfectionism. Most of us need to work on building up the first habit and decreasing the latter one.
Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach gives a wonderful explanation of the relationship of perfectionism and procrastination. He teaches that:
“Perfectionism is an obsession with the ideal. Procrastination is a refusal to take action because an “ideal result” isn’t guaranteed.”
As a business owner, chances are this perfection- procrastination circle rings true. I’ve found that for myself and many of my customers, it is easier to break through this paralysis when we know we have a system in place for collecting feedback and making continuous improvements. We can easily create this system by defining some key metrics and establishing a planning rhythm for reviewing and taking action on those metrics.
So the next time you start a marketing project, begin by defining and capturing your key metrics.
P.S. – don’t let implementing your feedback system be delayed by the perfection-procrastination trap.
