Check Your Own Marketing in 30 Minutes a Week
You do not need a report or a dashboard to know whether your marketing is working. You need about half an hour, five questions and a sheet of paper. This guide gives you the questions, tells you where to look for each answer, and turns what you find into one change for next week.
Set it up once
Pick the same time every week and put it on your calendar like an appointment. Keep one notes page, on paper or on your phone, where you write down the answers. The same time each week matters more than which time you pick.
The five questions
1. Did the posts go out? (about 5 minutes)
Open your Facebook page and your Instagram profile, and scroll back over the last week. Count what actually posted, then compare it with what you planned. If a post was missed, write down why. Count the misses and do not judge them.
2. What got the most response? (about 5 minutes)
Look at likes, comments and shares. Find the post that got the most and write down what it was about. A tip, a photo, a question, a behind the scenes shot. One good post tells you what to do more of.
3. Did anyone call or click? (about 7 minutes)
Posts are there to get people to reach out. On a computer, go to business.google.com, select Performance, pick the last week, and select Apply. Google shows calls, website clicks and directions. Calls only show if you have a phone number on your profile, and Google says the searches number updates at the start of each month. Write the numbers down. Then count the calls and messages you got yourself, and ask your staff what they heard.
4. Are your hours and photos current? (about 8 minutes)
Look at your Google profile first, then your Facebook page. Are the hours right? Is a holiday coming up? Do the photos look like your place today? Add one new real photo if you can. For the holiday part, see Check Your Hours Before the Holidays. For photos, see Which Photos to Put on Your Google Listing.
5. What will you change? (about 5 minutes)
Pick one thing, and write it down. Only one. When you change one thing, you can tell what made the difference. When you change five, you cannot. Some ideas:
- Post on a different day.
- Lead with a photo of your work instead of a graphic.
- End a post with a question.
- Reply to your newest reviews. See How to Answer a Google Review, Good or Bad.
A page to copy
Each week, write these five lines:
Week of: [date]
Posts that went out: [number] of [number planned]
Best post: [what it was about]
Calls, clicks and messages: [numbers]
One change for next week: [what you will do]
If you only have 20 minutes
Do questions 1, 3 and 5. Did the posts go out, did anyone call or click, and what will you change. That adds up to about 17 minutes. A short check you actually do beats a long one you skip.
Keep a running page
After a month, you will have four weeks of answers side by side, and the pattern gets easy to see. To judge a specific change, see How to Tell If a Change to Your Marketing Worked.
Once a quarter, step back and look at the bigger picture. For that, see How to Review Your Own Marketing Every 90 Days.
Be patient with what it tells you
This check is simple on purpose. It will not measure everything, and a week or two is a short time to judge a plan. Give a plan a full quarter before you decide it is not working. For why, see What a Real 90 Day Plan Looks Like, With a Sample.
If you would rather hand this off
Writing and publishing the posts, and replying to reviews and comments, is the part we take off your plate. We write and publish your posts on schedule, keep your Google profile and listings current, and reply in your own voice. Every 90 days we look back at what worked and plan the next quarter. See our 90-Day Plan FAQ, or get started.