It’s easy to get excited when numbers are growing: My Facebook likes are up, my email list is growing, I have X number of new twitter followers and Google Analytics said that I had a 10 percent increase in website traffic this week, but let’s focus on the numbers that matter.
The numbers that matter are different for each business, but generally speaking the numbers that matter are profit, loss and valuation. It’s great to have 100,000 followers on twitter, but don’t throw a party when you hit 100K, throw a party if you know growth on twitter means growth in profit. If there’s a direct correlation, then celebrate when you hit 100,000 followers.
In initial goal-setting meetings, clients often say “I want to get to X number of Likes on Facebook.” so I ask would you rather have 500 people on your Facebook page that creates $20k profit, or would you rather than 20,000 people on your Facebook page generating $5k profit? In light of that, we can adjust your goals so that it’s not all about how many likes are on Facebook, it’s about gaining clients, and Facebook may be a good platform for that, but let’s not measure our success at the top of the funnel. Let’s measure our success by how many of those people we can convert to clients.
Find, chase and celebrate the numbers that matter.