How to Tell If Your Marketing Plan is Working

Hey guys, Lynn here. And I'm hanging out with my friend Pepsi but I was having this chat with a groomer last night and I wanted to come on and share my thoughts about this with you guys, because I was talking to a groomer last night about their marketing plan and they really didn't have a plan, like any real information.

[00:00:34] They really didn't have any plan as a marketing plan. Right? Like they were doing a couple of things. They had a Facebook page, they had a website, they were you know, they were begging for referrals. 

[00:00:49] And it made me think about how would you be able to tell if your marketing is in fact working? Right? Because we want to be making, you know, a plan. Okay. Hopefully if you guys, Oh, I see some people joining me. Hey, make sure to say hi in the comments.

[00:01:18]But anyway, so I was talking to this other groomer. So we were talking about her marketing plan and like I realized she didn't have one.

[00:01:40] She had things that she was doing that could be considered marketing, but she didn't actually have a plan. So I thought to myself, well, if you don't have a plan, how do you know. That this is working or that what you're doing is working. Right. So I came up with a couple of things. So the first thing is you obviously have to have a plan for your marketing because you were businesses, right.

[00:02:03] We need to have a plan for our marketing. And so the first part of that plan is knowing what clients you want to attract. Wait, right? What exact clients do you want to work with? And not just looking at the benefit for you. Hi Ingrid. Thanks for popping on not just looking at the benefit for you, but who these people are.

[00:02:25] So we need to figure out who it is that you're trying to reach. Right. That's kind of the first step in that. 

[00:02:56] Okay. So first thing - have a plan. We need to know exactly who it is that you're going to reach. Okay. Because we have to have a clear goal for this plan. And part of the plan is to know what kind of clients you want.

[00:03:21] Cause we don't just want everybody. We don't just want everybody who owns the pet that you grow, whether it's dog grooming or in my case, cat grooming. I don't want just any cat groomer, I'm sorry. Cat owner. So I need to know who it is. So that's the first step. The second step is to do your research.

[00:03:36] So you have to research that person that you want, your ideal client figures out what it is that they want, which means talking to them on the phone, you know, reading articles that they read. Going to other stores that they shop at to see what type of advertising attracts them. So like what platforms they're on, what messages, what images, things like that.

[00:04:01] And finally, in order for you to have a plan, you also have to have a budget. So whether it is free advertising or not, you have to have a budget for those things. So even if. Someone says, Oh, like, you know, I'm not going to spend any money on ads, which is fine. That means you're spending time. So you have to budget your time so you don't get overwhelmed.

[00:04:22] And so you're keeping track of those things because if you're saying, okay, well, you know, I'm going to use word of mouth. Well, what does that mean? Does that mean that your. Utilizing networking relationships with other pet businesses in your area. And so if that's the case, how much time are you dedicating to maintaining those relationships?

[00:04:41] Are you purchasing things for them? So like, are you giving like baked goods, you know, treats that kind of stuff. Are you visiting them on a regular basis? Are you reaching out to them on, you know, some sort of basis? Those are all things that are time. And obviously if you're buying things well, that needs to go into the budget.

[00:04:57] So. You need to be able to figure out how much time you're spending in addition to any money. Okay. That all has to go into the plan. It can't just be like, Oh, I've got a slow day. So I'm going to go do this because that time could be utilized elsewhere and which we'll get to at the end. Is this a good use of your time is also the question.

[00:05:18] So that's something about having a plan. We need to know who it's for. We need to research what it is that we're going to be utilizing for this marketing, and we need to have a budget. Okay. The next thing is you have to track. How it all works. So that means you have to have a very simple way to track it, whether it's keeping track on a pen and paper, whether it's something you can utilize in your booking program.

[00:05:42] So for example, if you want to track where you got new clients from, so you're at your marketing plan in this case, there are new clients coming in the door. So a way to track that is to have a section of your intake form, where they say where they heard about you, right. Where they came to you from an appointment.

[00:06:02] Now in my booking program, I can actually generate reports based on that information. So I can see how many people in a certain timeframe it came from certain types of, you know, Marketing, whatever it is. So that is one way, another way is obviously if you're going to be promoting a certain type of service, well, you need to also keep track of if you're going to be promoting it.

[00:06:28] How many times was it actually successful? So let's say you're promoting a new spa package. 

[00:06:44] Okay. So she wanted to add spa packages to her menu of items. And her primary way of promoting is going to be speaking to the clients about it. Right. She's going to have a sign in her lobby and she's gonna be speaking about it to the client. So that means she needs to, to keep track of how many clients she asked.

[00:07:06] Do you want the spa package and then whether or not they said yes or no. Okay. And then obviously if you have a sign up, that's a separate column because. You know, if you didn't ask then technically they also saw it. So if you had someone come in and you didn't ask them, if they wanted a spa package and they said, Oh, I'd like this, ask them where they heard about it.

[00:07:26] Like, Oh, you know, did you see the sign? Did you see it on our Facebook page? Like exactly where, and to make that easier on you, instead of having the same message delivered in multiple ways, choose very carefully where you want that. Done. So let's say if you're going to have some sort of package that you're promoting on Facebook, then you shouldn't also be having it be promoted on Facebook, having a sign in your lobby and talking about it, because then you're not gonna be able to track where exactly someone got that message from.

[00:08:02]I have to show you he's I told you he was like in my spare bedroom, high Pepsi. I can't with him. I just can't. So we need to figure out, you know, we need to find a good way to track it because we can't just be throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that something sticks, right. That's not a marketing plan.

[00:08:19] That's a hope and a prayer. We can't, we can't do that because we're business people. Right groomers. We need to be beyond just groomers. We need to be business people too. So we need to have a way to track it a simple way so that you can actually do it and make sure to give yourself a bit of time. Don't just say, okay, I'm only going to track it for like this week because that probably isn't giving you enough time to really attract results.

[00:08:44] I would say at least four weeks. Preferably not, I tend to do things on a quarterly basis and say, okay, like here's the quarter. I was worried about doing this video in here because he's usually very, very chatty and I was worried he was going to like pop up, up, up, up, up, up, but he seems to be relaxed now that I'm hanging out with him.

[00:09:06] So you got to give a little bit of time, and that's also where the budget comes in. Is that making sure that your budget can, you know, be appropriate for that period of time so that you can track, right. So you can figure out what's going on. Finally, the last step is to analyze what it is that you just did.

[00:09:31] You have to analyze your marketing plan. Like there isn't Oh gosh, that just looked crazy. You have to, like, there, isn't a way around it. Let me snack. I know. Because if you don't analyze your efforts, then how will you know where your time and money went?

[00:09:52] Right. It's just like having a budget where you're keeping track of your money. You also need to keep track of your time. So. Taking that method of how we tracked something and going back over it. Analyzing it, you have to set aside time to really get down and look at the numbers. Look at the progress, you know, was this a worthwhile venture?

[00:10:15] How much money did you spend? How much time did you spend? And then what were the results? And you can even take it further. Cause once you get into the habit of tracking, you can even start. Tracking even kind of deeper, right? You can start tracking certain breeds. Did you get certain breeds a certain way?

[00:10:34] Did you get clients who want a regular schedule a certain way? Did you get mad at cats? Sinister? You know what? I'm in cap groomers, obviously. And that's what we'll talk about, but that's the thing is like, you need to be able to track the numbers on this because one, you want to know if you got a return on your investment.

[00:10:51] So let's say that you spent $200 in three months. Doing a certain type of promotion or working on getting new clients in a certain way. And you only got two clients. So that means that each client costs you a hundred dollars. Plus whatever time it took. Now, if that is a matted once a year, cat, for me, technically it's worth it because they're at least covering that cost because my matted cats start at $150, but is that really the kind of cat that I want?

[00:11:27] Probably not. So instead if I say, okay, I netted one cat, one client for a hundred dollars, you know, it was like a hundred dollars per client. Then what I would also say is that, is that the client I really want, so if it's a client who says I'm going to come, you know, I'm coming in every four to six weeks for a bath, a nail caps.

[00:11:49] And it's a really nice cat. Well then obviously that a hundred dollars was a hundred percent worth it because over the course of a year, I'm going to way make my money back. Plus now I have a long term invested client, sorry, cat here. I have a long term invested client, which is what I want. Now. It might be something much smaller you might say, okay, I'm going to do, you know, $200.

[00:12:13] And you get 50 clients. So obviously see that would be a great return on investment, but again, is this the kind of client that you want? One, what is the initial return on investment two? What is the long-term return on investment? So you have to be analyzing those things also. So we go back into that say three months, period, how much money did I spend?

[00:12:33] How much time did I spend and what were the results for me? I guess here's the thing. That a lot of people don't consider. So what have you gotten through all of this? Right. We made a plan. We're going to track it. We're going to analyze it. You know, what comes next, repeating it. So once, you know, when something works, you know, you can invest more time or more money into that Avenue.

[00:13:00] And you know, it's going to work now. That's why I kind of said, give us some time, right? Give it like three months. So you can really get a good idea of if this is a successful or at least are you getting any leads from it? Are you getting any clients from it? Is that the type of thing that you ask every client?

[00:13:15] You know, if they're going to do the spot package, like we're going back to the spot package. So are we going to ask every single client that comes in the door? And if we ask every single client that comes in and in the three months, 10% did the upgraded package, is it worth it to keep doing it? Well, you have to go back and look at the numbers because you also have to look at how much money and time did that upgrade as Bob package cost.

[00:13:43] You. Right. Because for that type of promotion, we would need money. We would need products and it's taking us longer to do them. So that's where it all comes down to. You have to be doing these three things, plan, track, and analyze so that you can find out if what you're doing works and. How it's going to work in the future, because if you've given yourself a good bit of time, then you should be able to tell if it's going to be repeatable.

[00:14:12] Now, sometimes marketing platform changes. The audience changes what you offer changes. So just because it works for a little while, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get the exact same results over and over and over again. But in theory, it should, unless something has changed. So if you utilize something specific.

[00:14:34] Once you have the numbers broken down, you can also think and look at it as, okay. Now I know how much it costs me to get a certain number of clients using this method. Let's say you want to add another employee? You want to add another grimmer? Okay. So for that groomer, I need 50 clients. Let's just, I'm just throwing up.

[00:14:56] Let's say I need 50 more clients for that groomer in order for it to be worth it. So how am I going to. Grow 50 clients. Now you have a plan because you know that spending X amount of money in this platform or doing this, you know, whatever, I'm trying to talk in very broad terms, because there's so many different things that you can do that are marketing, but that's the thing.

[00:15:24] Once you find something that works for your business, you can use it to your advantage and have it make your growth plan. Come to fruition. So just saying, okay, I want to add another groomer, but you have no real repeatable trackable plan. You're kind of just going to be holding the buck, right. You're just going to be like, Oh, well hopefully more people call, but you haven't done anything to increase those phone calls.

[00:15:52] At least now you have a way that, you know, works. And so then you can use it the opposite. Isn't it fun. And I'm not even really a spreadsheets person to be totally fair. But I think this kind of thing is really neat. Like this is the kind of math I really like. So anyway, that was my tip for you today on this topic.

[00:16:13] And if you're watching, I actually am going to be launching a marketing program. Soon. And I have already been in touch with a few people about it, but I'm really excited about it. And we're going to go super deep into topics like this so that you can really be a marketing master, right. Because that's what we need to be when we work by ourselves.

[00:16:36] Or when we're the head honcho, you have to wear a lot of hats. And if you want to have a successful business, unless someone is out there just handing you clients. Well, guess what? You need to be better at marketing. So that's what I want to help you with. And yeah, so Pepsi and I are going to go snuggle on the bed.

[00:16:53] See you guys later, and if you have any questions, feel free to pop them in the comments and I will talk to you all soon. Bye.