4 Ways to Check the Pulse of Your Business

It’s not easy to know where you stand with your business. Are you winning? Are you losing? If so, by how much?

The real question is: How do you know?

Are you looking at how many weddings you have on the books? That’s old news! Why? It’s what economists call a “lagging indicator,” which means it measures the effect of what’s already happened.

When you book a wedding it’s a result of the work you’ve done before they sign the contract and send in the deposit. 

Instead, look at the activities and performance that took place prior to the new booking. That data will point to what’s really in store for your revenue.

Website Visitors = Foot Traffic

All marketing efforts should lead people to your website. Instagram, client referrals, vendor lists, FB ads…everything leads to your website. 

Check the number of new users to see how all your marketing tactics are paying off.

Most wedding pros don’t even know if they’ve got analytics on their site, let alone check them on a regular basis. Stand out from the crowd and pay attention to the results!

3 Conversion Rates to Track

Event pros tend to focus on the # of inquiries they receive or the # of events they have on the books. They rarely talk about how well they turn an inquiry into an actual client. When you know this you’ll have a window into forecasting how much money you’ll make in the future. (Simply take the number of leads you get and multiply by the conversion rate.)

Dig a little deeper and you’ll see there’s actually three conversion rates to pay attention to. 

1.    Website visitors to contact page visitors – Tracks how well you’re doing at moving visitors through your site to do what it’s supposed to do: generate leads to your inbox.

2.    Inquiries to phone calls – Shows how skilled you are at getting leads into a position for you to do the most good to show value, learn their needs and identify how they’re making decisions.

3.    Proposals to bookings – The proposal is your pitch and the booking meeting is where you close the deal. Do both well and this number will be high. Don’t do it well and you’ll be back to corporate 9-5.

Do this next: Most business owners don’t have a clue how well (or not) things are going for business. Then they make it worse by throwing spaghetti at the wall to make changes.

Instead, take small steps to increase each of these four specific numbers. Focus on one thing at a time in each distinct category and pay attention to the results of your efforts.

When you get better at getting micro-commitments then you’ll book more business overall.