Many small business owners and entrepreneurs feel like their marketing isn’t working. I get it. I get bogged down looking at the numbers and data too, and sometimes I think, it’s not working. But let’s slow down, make this easy and simple, and think about it in a more grounded way.
Only 18% of small businesses said they felt very confident in the effectiveness of their marketing, according to Constant Contact’s 2025 Small Business Now report.
There is so much we can measure now.
Likes. Followers. Reach. Clicks. Email opens. Website visits. Impressions.
Some of those numbers are helpful, but they don’t always tell you whether the marketing did what you wanted it to do.
A social media post might get a lot of likes and still not lead to a sale, an inquiry or someone visiting your website.
An email might have a good open rate, but if you sent it because you wanted people to register for something and nobody clicked the link, the open rate isn’t really what you need to be looking at.
So before you put a piece of marketing out there, ask yourself:
What do I want this to do?
If you’re promoting a product, maybe you want sales.
If you’re promoting an event, maybe you want registrations or people through the door.
If you’re sending an email, maybe you want people to click through to your website.
If you want more inquiries, maybe you want people to call, email or send you a message.
Give that piece of marketing a clear goal before you put it out there, and make sure the call to action lines up with it.
If you want people to register, tell them where to register. If you want them to buy, make it clear where they can buy. If you want them to contact you, tell them how.
Then when you go back later to see how it did, you already know what you’re looking for.
The other numbers can still tell you something, but you don’t have to pay attention to all of them every time.
And if you didn’t get the result you wanted, look at why. Was the message clear? Was the offer clear? Did you promote it in the right place and give people enough time? Was it obvious what you wanted them to do next?
The next time you’re about to post something, send an email or run a promotion, take a minute first and decide what you want it to do.
That one step will make it much easier to know what to pay attention to afterward, and whether your marketing is actually doing what you need it to do.
