How to Create the Go-To-Market Strategy for Your Product

By David Ronald

First, the bad news. 

Around 95% of new products launched every year fail, according to Harvard Business School. 

What does failure mean in this context? Well, in simple terms, it means that the revenues derived from the new product failed to have any positive impact on a company’s revenues.

Now, the good news.  

Proactively defining your go-to-market strategy ahead of the introduction of a new product significantly increases the probability of its success once launched. 

Why You Need A GTM Strategy

A go-to-market strategy (GTM) anticipate the challenges of a competitive market by thoroughly identifying the target audiences, articulating the product’s value proposition, describing a marketing plan, and providing a strategy for its sales channels. 

 

Some of the most common benefits of compiling an effective GTM strategy include:

• Gaining a comprehensive understanding of the marketplace, the target market, and your product’s place in it.
• Defining and rroubleshooting product positioning and messaging before going to market. 
• Keeping marketing costs down by identifying promotional channels with the highest return on investment.
• Concretely defining the logistics of distribution and sales channels before launch to ensure maximum market impact.

In addition to helping you launch a product successfully, compiling an effective GTM strategy can benefit your business in several ways, including:

• Understanding the market—compiling a GTM strategy involves gaining a comprehensive understanding of the marketplace, the target market, your competitors, your competitors, and your proposed product’s place in it. With more insight into customers and the market conditions, your organization will have more tools to thrive in all areas of business, from product launches to introducing a new brand identity to the world.
• Reducing costs—with a solid GTM strategy, you can keep marketing costs down by identifying promotional channels with the highest return on investment (ROI) and developing marketing messaging and content that will resonate with your target market.
• Reducing time to market—GTM strategies also help you launch products more quickly in the following ways:
• Prioritizing tasks that are essential for a product to enter the market.
• Troubleshooting product positioning and messaging before going to market.
• Concretely defining the logistics of distribution and sales channels before launch to ensure maximum market impact.

Depending on the kind of product you are launching, you might consider the minimum viable product approach: making sure the product has enough features to attract early adopters, validating the product, and learning what product updates or improvements could improve customer experience.

Your GTM strategy, when skillfully executed, can increase your organization’s growth potential. With access to new niche markets, organized market data, and an efficient process for launching products, you can seize growth opportunities more easily than without a predefined and clearly-articulated strategy.

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan vs. GTM Strategy

People sometimes use the terms marketing strategy, marketing plan, and go-to-market strategy interchangeably and, although there is overlap and similarity, they are not the same thing.

• Marketing Strategy—a long-term strategy (often many years in the future) that outlines a business’s overall marketing objectives.
• Marketing Plan—an action plan outlining the concrete steps required to undertake a marketing campaign.
• Go-to-market Strategy—a strategic outline of the considerations and steps required to bring a new product to the marketplace successfully.

While GTM strategy can include a marketing plan and be directed by a marketing strategy, neither a marketing plan nor a marketing strategy includes a concrete GTM strategy!

Creating Your GTM strategy

A go-to-market strategy compiles several other strategies and marketing methods to ensure a product enters the market with the best possible chance of success. To help you better understand what goes into compiling a GTM strategy, the following guide includes key elements you should develop throughout the process.

1. Identify Your Target Market

The customer is the centerpiece of any marketing strategy.  

As a result, whether you are bringing a new product to market or refreshing an existing one, it is imperative that you first research and identify the target market that will be most interested in purchasing it. 

A target market is a group of individuals who have a shared set of features, such as demographic or psychographic similarities. The process of identifying the shared similarities between groups is called segmentation and involves researching the kinds of individuals or organizations that would be most likely to purchase your product. 

As you identify your target market, answer these questions:

• Is your product being sold to everyday consumers (B2C) or to other businesses (B2B)?
• Will you use demographic, psychographic, or other types of segmentation to define your target market?
• What are the pain points of your target market? What problem are you solving with your product?
  

Repeat this exercise if you are addressing more than one target market. 

2. Describe Your Value Proposition

A product’s value proposition is the benefit it provides customers and the problems it solves. In other words, your product’s value proposition articulates why the target market should purchase the product. 

The value proposition that you identify should be as much about the target market you are selling to as the product itself. For example, while some products position themselves as a cheaper alternative to another product, others position themselves as the solution to a particular problem that currently has no market solution. 

The exact value proposition that your product or service will provide is dependent on what it is and who its target market is. To define your product's value proposition, answer the following:

• What pain points does your product remedy?
• How does your product stand out from your competitors?
• What unique features or experience does your product or service provide potential customers? 

Ideally, your value proposition delivers a significant (ideally 10x) improvement compared to the solution your customers are using at present. If not, it may be challenging for your sales team to persuade your prospects to switch from your competitor to you.

3. Define Your Pricing Strategy

Price is an important factor for any product. You don’t want to sell a product for too much or too little. If you do, you’ll risk either not moving enough product or eating too much into your profit margin. 

Now that you have an understanding of your target market and the value that your product offers, you have a better understanding of what price a consumer might be willing to pay for your product. 

As you consider your pricing strategy, some questions you might ask yourself include:

• How much does it cost to manufacture your product?
• What price do you need to meet in order to make a profit?
• How much do your competitors charge for a similar product or service?
• What is your target marketing willing to pay for your product?
• Will you use a subscription or transactional model?

A good price is one that fits your business objectives, matches your customer profile, and makes you competitive in the marketplace. (Keep an eye open for a future blog post on pricing strategy.)

4. Craft Your Promotion Strategy

Your promotion strategy is your action plan to promote your product to your target customers. Here, you should craft a marketing plan that outlines the exact steps you will take to reach your customer base. 

The techniques you use to promote your product will depend entirely on the product or service you are selling. For instance, while one business might use a sales team to pitch their product to other businesses, another might instead focus on social media marketing to raise brand awareness and draw in potential customers organically. 

As you craft your promotion strategy, some questions to consider include:

• What is the best channel to reach your target audience? Online or offline?
• Does your customer respond better to outbound marketing methods, such as phone calls or radio advertisements, or inbound marketing efforts like SEO?
• Where does your target audience spend most of their time? What marketing channels penetrate that space?
• What marketing methods can you realistically implement now considering your current budget?

This is your opportunity to be stand out from your competition by being bold and innovative!  I’ve heard this described as a “Broadway Show” It’s an apt metaphor.

5. Build Your Sales and Distribution Ecosystem

Sales channels are where buyers can purchase your product, while distribution channels are the ways that your product actually gets to your customer. 

Often, sales channels and distribution channels can be the same, such as when a consumer buys directly from a manufacturer. In other instances, distribution channels can be much more complex, such as when a producer sells to a wholesaler, who in turn sells to a retailer who then finally sells their product to a consumer. 

Some points to consider when choosing sales and distribution channels include:

• What is the nature of your product and does it have any specific sales and distribution requirements?
• What are the manufacturing needs of your product and how does that impact its sale and distribution?
• Where does your target market shop or buy products?
• How can you make the sale of your product as seamless as possible? 

Whether you decide to sell your product in-person or online, directly to a consumer or to a wholesaler, or some other variation, depends on the unique needs of your product. Whatever you pick, the buyer’s journey should be as seamless as possible to reduce friction and increase sales.

6. Identify Metrics and Track Performance

The success of your go-to-market strategy is completely dependent on the goals that you set. In setting these goals, you are also identifying the metrics you will use to measure your success.

For example, if it turns out that you are paying more to acquire customers than they are paying for your product, then you will need to adjust your strategy to reach a better customer acquisition cost. 

Some common metrics for measuring the success of a go-to-market strategy include:

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC).
• Cost per dollar of sales expense.
• Closing/ conversion rate.
• Length of the sales cycle.

As your GTM strategy goes from idea to reality, it is important to keep track of your metrics and to make any necessary adjustments as you go along.  

Get Market Ready

An effective GTM strategy is at the core of every successful business. 

Your target audience likely has tens or even hundreds of competing offerings to choose from, and by planning your GTM strategy and tracking each relevant program through an analytics dashboard, you can keep a constant pulse on your strategy's effectiveness and pivot towards more effective programs. 

This can make the difference between being one of the 95% of new products that fail every year and the 5% that succeed. 

Thanks for reading - get in touch with me at david@alphabetworks.com if you enjoyed this post. Plus, if you found this article helpful be sure to read our blog post on product launch planning.

 

 

Empower your Sales Team with Training, Tools, and Insights

By David Ronald

Always Be Closing was the mantra repeated menacingly by Alex Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross. And, although real life sales environments require much more sophistication, every company needs its reps to be closing deals.

The success of your business maps directly to the proficiency of your sales team. In this blog post I will explain how sales enablement can increase the performance of your reps by providing them with the training, tools and metrics they need to win.

• First, training. Many companies fail to invest the time, energy and expertise needed to acclimate new hires adequately, resulting in missed quotas and high turnover. Don’t fall into this trap. A formal on boarding plan minimizes the time before a new hire begins contributing to the bottom line and enhances the long-term productivity of sales reps. It can also increase the probability of sales staff staying longer with your company.
• Next, marketing tools. Since large companies may have a dozen people or more involved in a buying decision, create content that will resonate with your audience. Avoid the mistake, for example, of talking “speeds and feeds” to someone in finance, or profit and loss to someone in engineering. Identify your key buying personas, understand their business issues and create content relevant to each one.
• Last, but not least, insights. Data help you understand what’s working, and what’s not working. Ask your sales and marketing teams a series of questions and use this information to make adjustments. Repeat these questions at least twice a year, and act on insights they yield.

(Click here to read our white paper on sales enablement: http://bit.ly/1Lbl1z7.)

Every selling opportunity counts, especially for a new business, and, although it is incumbent on your sales team to be “tip of the spear”, everyone in your organization should be able to articulate your value proposition. After all, potentially anyone could find themselves in the seat on an aircraft next to the gatekeeper at your biggest target account. Open up your new hire product training (described above) to everyone in your company, and encourage all your staff to participate in it.

Selling is a challenging role and requires a special type of personality, one who thrives in competitive situations. One of the marketing’s responsibilities is to empower reps with the training, tool and metrics they need to win. I have witnessed first-hand the power of sales and marketing teams working together synergistically and, in those circumstances, the closers were fully entitled to their coffee!

Thanks for reading. Feel free to email me at david@alphabetworks.com if you are ready to empower your sales team.

What Types of Branding Are Best For Your Business?

By Sharon Lee 

A strong brand gives you an edge over your competitors. 

Branding is not only about getting your prospects to select you over your competition, it’s also about getting your prospects to see you as the best provider of a solution to their problem. 

A strong brand is invaluable when you battle for customers every day. It's important to spend time investing in researching, defining, and building your brand. After all, your brand is the source of a promise to your buyers.

Branding includes a name, logo, a strong theme that affects the website, ads, social media, signage, label, packaging, or the brand identity program of a seller and the services or products. 

The objectives that good branding will achieve include:

• Building your credibility.
• Emotionally connecting your target buyers with your product or service.
• Motivating your prospects to buy.
• Establishing user loyalty.

Your brand is the sum total of many aspects of your business.

Building Brand Equity

The effectiveness of branding doesn't just happen before the purchase, it's about the life of the brand and the long-term experience it provides to buyers.

• Did the product or service perform as expected?
• Was the quality as good as promised or better?
• How was the customer service experience?

You can go a long way to creating a loyal customer if you can get positive answers to these questions.

And it’s important to realize that good branding not only creates loyal customers, but also loyal employees. It helps employees understand the purpose of the organization or the business—a strong brand gives your team something to believe in, something to stand behind.

If you are effective in creating a good brand, it will live within the hearts and minds of your customers and employees.

Good Design is Good Business

To build a successful brand you must understand the needs and wants of your prospects and customers.

This can be achieved by integrating your brand strategy through your company at every point of public contact—think of branding as the expression of who you are as a company or organization and what you offer. 

Start by answering the following statements:

• What is my brand’s intention?
• Does my brand reflect the company's objective?
• How does my brand (look and feel and content) engage with my customers?
• Does my brand create a need that it needs to be shared by others?
• Does my brand bring likability to my customers?

Good design is an essential component of effective branding. Good design creates freshness, attraction, monetization and it compels action. Without good design your brand will lack cohesion, power and sustainability.

Your color palette, imagery/iconography, typography, brand consistency, brand tonality, messaging, are some of the key design considerations that span all buyer touchpoints.

Specific design considerations include:

Your brand is the sum total of your buyers’ experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot.

Types of Branding

When creating your brand it is important to think about what type of branding you plan on utilizing. Online branding and offline branding refer to different strategies and channels used to build and promote a brand's identity and reputation.

Let’s look at the differences between them so that you know how best to use each one effectively for your company.

1. Online branding

• Online branding refers to the activities and efforts carried out on the internet to establish and promote a brand's image.
• It involves creating and maintaining a strong online presence through various digital platforms such as websites, social media, online advertisements, email marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO).
• Online branding allows for direct interaction with the target audience through online platforms, enabling real-time engagement and feedback.
• It provides the opportunity to reach a wider audience globally and target specific demographics through targeted online advertising.
• Online branding focuses on building brand awareness, enhancing brand loyalty, and driving online sales and conversions.

2. Offline branding

• Offline branding refers to the traditional marketing activities conducted outside of the online space to establish and promote a brand's image.
• It includes offline advertising methods such as print ads, billboards, television and radio commercials, brochures, flyers, packaging, and direct mail campaigns.
• Offline branding often relies on physical presence and traditional marketing channels to reach and engage with the target audience.
• Offline branding strategies are typically location-specific and can be effective in reaching local communities.
• Offline branding aims to build brand recognition and credibility through traditional marketing channels and in-person experiences.

Online branding, in essence, focuses on leveraging digital platforms and strategies to build and promote a brand's identity, while offline branding relies on traditional marketing channels and physical presence to establish and promote a brand's image.

Both online and offline branding strategies can complement each other and contribute to a comprehensive brand-building approach. Most established companies thrive to maintain the two types in equilibrium because they understand the importance of reaching different target audiences.

Conclusion

A brand can be viewed as both strategic and tactical.

Your brand serves as a guide to understanding the purpose of business objectives—it enables you to align a marketing plan with those objectives and fulfill the overarching strategy.

Defining and developing a brand takes expertise, care, and effort…but it will provide abundant benefits when done correctly.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end.

Let us know what you think about this blog post by emailing me at shamikodesign@gmail.com.

Good Content Marketing Will Boost Your Revenues

By David Ronald

By some estimates each of us is exposed to 5,000 ads each day. It’s not surprising, therefore, that your buyers are becoming increasing immune to traditional marketing techniques. In this post I will explain why content marketing should be a key component of your promotional strategy.

(Click here to read our white paper on content marketing: http://bit.ly/1GHDSxB.)

Consider this: 57% of B2B purchase decisions, and 72% of B2C ones, are made before a buyer contacts a vendor, according to McKinsey & Company.

Content marketing alters the way you sell—it shifts your focus from hyping your products to adding value to prospects’ decision making. Content marketing is about creating relevant, informative and unbiased content that attracts buyers and converts them to loyal customers. 

The objective of content marketing is a “light bulb moment” when a buyer understands how you can help them, and reaches out to you for more information about your product or service.

Although typically associated with B2C selling, content marketing is ready to have an impact in B2B environments.

Your long-term goal should be to create a sustainable content marketing engine that helps build your business. In order to accomplish this, consider mapping content to the different stages in the buying process of your prospects. The key stages in the typical buying journey are shown in the following diagram:

You could, for example, target the awareness stage of the buying process by creating a brief video that describes the most popular applications of your product. You could, for instance, target the comparison stage of the funnel by commissioning a third-party research agency to write about you and the competitors in your market space.

By assigning content to the most appropriate buying stage, you ensure that your content will resonate with your prospects. You will discover gaps that need to be filled, and make the best use of existing content.

Keep in mind that if you fail to embrace the content marketing paradigm you are creating a gap that your competitors will be happy to fill.

I hope you found this information to be helpful.

Email me at david@alphabetworks.com if you'd like to explore how good content marketing can boost the revenues of your business.

Too Many Product Launches are Unsuccessful

By David Ronald

About 95% of new products launched every year fail, according to Professor Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School. 

This is an astounding statistic.

What does failure look like? Well, in simple terms, it means that the revenues attained from a new product failed to have any positive impact on a company’s income.

The number one reason why products fail, according to the Harvard Business Review is that companies become too engrossed in product development. Consequently, they don't adequately prepare to go to market.

Let’s look a little deeper. 

Here are five types of failed launches and the reasons behind them:

• Product in "sales limbo"—the product lacked a compelling value proposition and failed to sway buyers.
  
• Product is revolutionary, but there’s no market for it—insufficient attention was paid to ensuring product-market fit.
• Product defines a new category—there was a lack of planning and execution around buyer education.
• Product falls short of claims and gets bashed—the product was over-hyped and the marketing claims could not be substantiated.
• Company can’t support fast growth—there was inadequate forecasting of intense customer demand.

I’m willing to bet that you’ve experienced at least one of these in your career. They’ve happened multiple times in the past and will, undoubtedly, occur many times in the future.

In this post we'll look at ways to increase the probability of a successful product launch and examine metrics that can be can use to improve product launch planning.

Planning is Priceless

There are around 300,000 product launches every year, according to Harvard Business School.

Unfortunately, it’s all too common for businesses to sleepwalk through product launches. There are two major reasons why: 

• In some instances the product marketing team has too little advance notice about a product release and simply does what it can to launch the product on time.
• In other instances the marketing team is too overwhelmed with multiple other activities to agree to more than a few checklist items.

A successful product launch requires planning in coordination with multiple stakeholders. The launch plan should describe the goals of the launch and list key activities, owners, and deadlines.  

The launch plan should also provide key performance indicators. One obvious benefit of including metrics is that they can be used to evaluate the efficacy of the launch—another, more significant benefit, is that they may identify opportunities for improvement when the need launch rolls around.

Obviously a product launch has a start date, but it should have an end date also. Why does this matter? It's crucial to have an end date because the efficacy of the process can only be measured once the launch has concluded.  

The Customer Journey

One of the primary goals of a product launch is to take a prospect on a journey that ends with them becoming a customer. Ideally, however, a launch goes further and converts that customer into a raving fan who brings additional business through word-of-mouth referrals. 

We’re all familiar with the concept of the buyer journey, especially since we’ve all been buyers at one stage or another.  

From a company’s perspective, the mirror image of the buyer’s journey looks like this:

• Unknown—a prospect is unknown to the vendor.
• Known—a prospect becomes known to the vendor, perhaps as a result of visiting the company’s website and providing their name and email address in exchange for a lead magnet such as an eBook.
• Engaged—a prospect signals a greater degree of interest in the vendor’s product or service by, say, signing up for a webinar or a free trial, or even better, a demo.
• Converted—the prospect becomes a customer by exchanging money for vendor’s product or service.

Key Product Launch Metrics

At this stage it’s worth highlighting that not every product release is significant one—many software companies have a goal of releasing new functionality monthly, even weekly.

In these instances, the associated marketing launch may only require an updated webpage, a refreshed marketing collateral, an email to customers, and a webinar.

Be proactive in defining launch tiers and ensure everyone at your company is aligned around the difference.

So, with that out of the way, here are five metrics to track during a major product launch:

1. Awareness

• Downloads / Invitation Signups—a lead magnet on your website (such as an eBook) can be used as an early signal of interest in your product. You can also consider using an invitation to preview the upcoming product during the pre-launch phase as early indicator of awareness.
• Website Traffic—measure traffic to your website throughout the launch timeframe to learn which specific launch activities “move the needle”.
• Promotional Channel Metrics—look at promotional channels metrics, such as click-through-rate in your advertising, email, and social campaigns, to gain an idea of the effectiveness of your positioning and messaging.
• News Coverage—news coverage can be an indicator of awareness but be mindful that this is a signal of the effectiveness of your public relations, not necessarily an increase in awareness of your potential buyers.

2. Engagement

• Free Trial Signups—a free trial is a great way to assess interest in your product and provide opportunities for prospects to discover value. It can also be the beginning of a nurture campaign that exposes prospects to more functionality in the product and offer opportunities for in-person engagement.
• Product Demos—a product trial that involves engaging with someone in your sales or sales team is a strong indicator of interest and intent.
• Community Involvement—tracking the participation in your community be prospects can be a good signal, if a strong and active community is a component of your go-to-market motion. 

3. Acquisition

• Conversion Rate—the ratio of leads that convert to customers is one of the most important metrics to track as it provides insight into the efficacy of the entire product marketing effort.
• Time to Close—the average time that it takes a deal to close can be a valuable metric to track, even if isn’t truly an indicator of the success of a product launch.
• Customer Acquisition Cost—the amount of money that it takes to acquire a typical customer is an important metric and indicates how challenging it is for your business to acquire new customers.

4. Retention

• Customer Usage—tracking customer usage over time, such as monthly active users, is a is a good signal of how much customers perceive value in your value. Some companies excel at acquiring new customers but do a less excellent job of keeping them coming back.

5. Referrals

• Net Promoter Score—determining evaluating how many customers are likely to recommend your product to others is a valuable metric for product markets to track. Although it doesn’t measure the efficacy of the launch itself it does signal the effectiveness of your product marketing overall.

Another great way to assess the efficacy of your product launch is with qualitative feedback that can be obtained through surveys, one-on-one interviews, and focus groups. This should be both internal and external:

• External feedback—collect feedback from customers and prospects to get reactions and constructive notes about the positioning, channels, and other launch elements
• Internal feedback—collect feedback from internal audiences, including sales reps, marketers, executives, and product managers.

You can use this feedback to identify opportunities for improvement. You can even consider using these opportunities as KPIs for your next launch.

Conclusion

Launching a product successfully can be challenging, as the high failure rates described earlier demonstrate.

By setting clear goals around launches, aligning your product, sales and marketing teams around these objectives, and ultimately measuring performance against these metrics will help increase the probability that your next product launch will be your best ever.

If you found this article helpful be sure to read my other posts on Five Steps To Creating a Marketing Plan for Your Business, Advice on Creating Your Unique Selling Proposition, and The Most Neglected Concept in Marketing.

Plus, keep an eye open for a future blog post on how to develop and execute a successful Go-To-Market Strategy.

Did I leave anything out? If so, get in touch with me at david@alphabetworks.com letting me know what it is.

Crucial Advice for Every Entrepreneur Wanting to Stay Motivated

By Sharon Lee

Do you sometimes struggle to stay motivated? I know that I do.

Staying motivated is crucial for every entrepreneur—funding concerns, long hours, team-building worries and an apparent lack of traction are just a few of the issues that can quickly lead to disenchantment and even burnout.

Motivation, thankfully, comes in many different forms.

Here are seven ways that I use to keep myself motivated at all times.

1. Visualize your future
From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, every great entrepreneur has had a vision of what they wanted to achieve. Be clear about what you want to accomplish and the steps you’ll follow to get there. If you haven’t already done so, consider writing your goals down on paper and review them frequently—ask how your daily activities are enabling you to achieve your goals. 

2. Find an inner strength
Although the pressures facing entrepreneurs can be fatiguing, they don’t have to be damaging. Convince yourself to welcome challenges and use them to make you better–after all, the muscles in your body become stronger through repeated exercise.

"I personally prefer to turn those entrepreneurship pressures around and use them to push me and my business harder, faster, farther." Aaron Schmitz, CEO and President of Equity Technology Partners explains that, "I've seen how a lack of motivation in entrepreneurs can affect their mental and physical health and, while it's an easy trap to fall into, it's also avoidable."

3. Exercise regularly
Exercise is a great way to release stress and become reinvigorated. By nature, exercise is similar to entrepreneurship—both involve hard work, excuses are not welcome in either, and they're all about personal development. The dedication and motivation that comes from exercising carries over to entrepreneurship—so don't skip that workout.

4. Mediate frequently
Find some time every morning or evening to meditate. It doesn't really matter what it takes to clear the mind, but finding a calming process to wipe the mental slate clean is a great tool for staying motivated. It invigorates and refreshes, allowing you to see each day as a new opportunity.

5. Delegate decision-making
Although you probably have a lot of tough choices to make each day, too much decision making can take a toll. Try to limit your decision-making as much as possible. Delegate to your co-founders and employees in your work life, and significant other, family and friends in your non-work life, as much as possible—doing so will help you motivated because you will be confident that, when it comes time to make those important decisions, your ability to do so will be as strong as ever.

"You can become exhausted by decision making and the day-to-day activities," says Mary Ferguson, President of Concenter Services. "Delegating as much as possible can be a crucial factor to staying motivated."

6. Appreciate your progress
If you feel yourself becoming demotivated, take a little time to realize how much progress you have already made. Make of a list of your accomplishments—it's a great way to appreciate your personal progress and it can be pleasantly surprising, too. Put your mistakes into perspective. Don’t look back with regret and, instead, view every mistake as an opportunity to learn and become better.

7. Take time off
Sometimes, a break is all that's required to feel reinvigorated. We are are human, after all, and we get tired. Spending some time with friends or family, or perhaps embracing a hobby, provides the refreshing mental break that allows for a proper return to form the next day.

Lastly, motivation comes from many places, and not just mental ones. With the unbelievable range of cultures, values, and regions across the world, inspiration and new ideas are virtually limitless. Find time to explore. There are endless ways to find motivation in the world, so don't hesitate to expand those horizons.

Remember that starting a successful business is easy; running a successful one takes confidence, flexibility, innovation, passion, tenacity, tolerance, vision and more. Find ways to keep yourself motivated and you’ll increase the likelihood of meeting the requirements of the job.

5 marketing metrics every entrepreneur needs to know

By David Ronald

There are metrics, and then there are metrics.

Metrics need to be measurable and actionable—if you are going to select your marketing programs based on data, those data need to correlate directly to the success of your business.

Web and marketing analytics tools such as Google Analytics, HubSpot Analytics, and KISSmetrics enable you to delve into the metrics that will help you to understand the customer journey and identify what sort of content and which channels are contributing to the bottom line.

But what, exactly, should you be measuring?

In this post I will examine five key metrics that provide insights into how your marketing is performing.

1. Customer acquisition cost
Add up all money you spend on marketing programs and divide it by the number of new customers. Track this over time to determine and observe if the cost is increasing, decreasing, or staying constant (ideally the cost should decrease as the efficacy of your marketing programs improves).

2. Marketing contribution to revenue
Quantify all of the new customers you signed up and look at what percentage of them started with a lead that marketing generated. This is much, much easier to do when you have a marketing analytics systems, but you can do it manually by contacting each new customer by email or phone.

3. Revenue per channel
Identify your most effective channels (organic, ads, social media, direct email, referrals and so on) by looking at how much revenue each one generates and compare it to the cost of running the channel.

4. Inbound traffic mix
Determine how much traffic is coming into your website and which channels your visitors are coming from—you can do this manually using tracking URLs, Google Analytics, spreadsheets and the like, and marketing automation programs help too. Track how the total volume and mix changes over time.

5. Conversion rates
Track how well your website is performing. Better yet, monitor how specific pages are working. Adjust landing pages and see what changes. Test, for example, if the wording and layout can be improved or if the Download button should be higher up. or determine if your call to action is underwhelming or your forms too complicated. And explore which offer your visitors respond to.

Measuring these metrics with as much precision and consistency as possible should be an integral part of your marketing focus.

And, of course, statistics mean nothing if you don’t do something with them. Getting to the people and journeys behind the numbers delivers insights that help you direct spending to the most beneficial programs.

Thanks for reading. Do you agree with everything on this list?

Did we leave anything off?

Leave us a comment or question.