THERE ARE A few key performance indicators (KPIs) that are absolutely critical to any pet business’s marketing strategy. Do you know them all for your own business?
1. Set an annual marketing budget.
Setting yourself up to restrict total marketing costs is a key part of making sure you don’t overspend and, more importantly, don’t try to do too much. Having a marketing budget forces you to prioritize and leave things out of your marketing plan, making sure that only the most important and impactful marketing tactics make the list.
2. Set an annual sales target.
Having a total amount you’d like to bring in in sales for the year lets you know in a brutally straightforward way whether your sales and marketing are achieving what you need. Here’s my pro tip: Make sure that whatever sales figure you set as your annual target is actually achievable. While setting a pie-in-the-sky sales figure invigorates and excites some, it freezes most of the pet business owners I work with. Then, when they don’t hit it (because it was unlikely they would from Day One), they feel terrible. Let your sales target energize you by setting a realistic goal you feel excited about, then watch as you get closer!
3. Check quarterly where you are in relation to each of the above.
Are you hitting your numbers? Great! Stick to your marketing plan and don’t change things up. Are you falling behind or spending more than you’d planned? It’s time to go back to the drawing board and reassess your marketing tactics, what’s working and what’s not.
4. Figure out which product or service has your highest profit margin and which is your best seller.
If this one surprises you, you’re not alone. Very few small businesses I work with know these two figures off the top of their head. The twist is that every single medium and large pet business I work with knows it, tracks it and uses it as a central piece of its selling strategy. Why? Because focusing on selling one to two products or services is infinitely easier and cheaper to do than trying to sell everything. What would be better to focus on than the thing that makes you the most, and the thing your customers love? So, sit down and do the math, and then try running your next sales promo just for these two. You’ll be surprised at the results!
5. Determine your average customer acquisition cost.
You now have a budget, know what and how much you want to sell, and have an idea for how you want to get there. Now here’s the trickiest part: How much do you spend to acquire a new customer? This KPI can be a bit nebulous and hard for even the pros to figure out, so feel free to think of it as a cost per email address or follower on social media instead. (If you use Facebook ads for email collection, this is super-simple: A target of about $2 per pet owner email is a good goal.) While this doesn’t give you a true 1:1 cost to drive a sale, it gives you the cost of finding and beginning to court a new customer. After that, your regular communications fill in, and there’s usually very little difference in cost in talking to 100 or 10,000 potential clients.
There you have it, the top five KPI to watch first to make sure your marketing plan does what it should.