The beginning of any new year is an exciting time for MSPs, especially when it comes to your sales and marketing efforts. You have a blank slate and, hopefully, another full year of data from which to learn and move forward with more effective strategies.
Before launching into heavy planning, though, you’ll want to figure out as precisely as possible what worked, so you can do more of whatever that is.
What exactly should you analyze in preparation of creating your 2018 marketing plan? Here are seven KPIs every MSP should track.
1. Closed sales sources
Take a look at the deals that came in and where they came from. Are they from referrals, upsells, trade shows, or email campaigns? While it’s difficult to pin sales to one activity, doing a postmortem of your biggest deals can give you great insight into what’s working.
2. Reasons for deals lost
Do you know why you’re losing out on sales? There is gold waiting for you in the answers. Knowing exactly where sales fall out of your funnel and, more importantly, why they’re falling out can help you address the underlying issues that exist.
3. Lead sources
Similar to the tip above, look at where your leads are coming from. (If you aren’t tracking that today, your homework is to start doing so ASAP.) Hopefully, your CRM can generate reports for you on this fairly quickly so you have a sense of what went well. Remember, not all leads are created equal, so make sure to segment your list into qualified versus unqualified leads and review from there.
4. Top web pages
Analyzing your website’s traffic can give you insight into your most popular services, as well as pages that may need work. All of this info is available in your Google Analytics account.
5. Top blog posts
If you’re a regular blogger (and you should be), review 2017 to see what your most popular topics were. Again, this info is available in Google Analytics. You may be surprised to see what readers are consuming, and this can help you plan for 2018. You may also want to go back and update your top posts of 2017 to make them even better or more current.
6. Time on site
If visitors are spending a long time on your website, chances are they’re very interested in what you have to say. A short time spent on the site could indicate your visitors aren’t finding what they need, getting frustrated, and leaving.
7. Top-performing emails
If you’re using an email tool like Constant Contact, MailChimp, or Hubspot, information on email performance will be readily available. Pay attention to open rates and click-through rates, and look at your highest and lowest of each. What did your list respond to or ignore? Email is still the preferred mode of communication for most B2B buyers, so make sure you understand where you’re doing well and where you can improve.
Ideally, these marketing KPIs are things you’re tracking on a regular basis. At a minimum, it’s smart to review these metrics annually in preparation to adjust your marketing plan. To learn what should go into an MSP marketing plan, join me for a webinar on Thursday, Jan. 25 at 2 p.m. Eastern as we review Your 2018 MSP Marketing Plan Checklist.
Photo: Brian A Jackson/Shutterstock.com
