With the year winding down, many people are looking over their budgets and trying to see where they can cut things out. Marketing is often one of the first things companies look at, especially if they haven’t seen much improvement in their keyword rankings. Sometimes, it can seem like digital advertising and SEO are all about rankings. Which keywords are you ranking first for and which ones need some love? While keyword rankings can be a good indicator for how your website is performing, they aren’t everything, and you shouldn’t get too hung up on them. We’re here to tell you what you should be looking at in order to determine whether your marketing efforts are working for your business.

Sales Compared to Last Year

Look at your sales number from last year and compare them to this year. Are they up? Down? The same? At the end of the day, sales growth is the truest measure of marketing success.

Number of Leads Compared to Last Year

Leads are going to be things like calls, website form fills, or walk-ins that may not necessarily have turned into a sale. These can be a little trickier to track because you may not keep records of these things (although you definitely should, and a good CRM goes a long way). Your digital marketing agency should be tracking the leads you are receiving from your different avenues of marketing.

Ways Your Keyword Rankings Can Be Misleading

For some businesses, that keywords ranking report can be the be-all and end-all of their SEO campaign. However, these reports can sometimes be misleading - not intentionally, just because that is the nature of search engine positions. For example, let’s say you’re an electrician. You could be ranking #1 for “electricians in my area”, which seems great! Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of search volume for that keyword; it only gets about 10 searches a month, so you probably aren’t getting a lot of sales from that. On the other hand, you could be ranking 4th or 5th for“electricians near me”, which might seem disappointing, but that has around 270monthly searches, so you’re likely getting at least a few sales from that.

Additionally, when Google ranks local businesses, they do so based on a variety of factors, one of which is proximity to the searcher. Depending on where a person searching for your services is located, Google will sometimes display the closest business in that industry, even if they aren’t necessarily a great choice based on other important factors.

What Other Factors Help Drive Leads Outside of Rankings?

Online reviews are one of the best ways you can make sure that even if you aren’t ranking first for a keyword, searchers are still likely to choose you over anyone else and you can still make the sale. If three different businesses are displayed to a searcher (as they usually are in the Google Local Pack), that searcher will usually trend towards the one with the most and best reviews. Ask every single one of your customers to leave you a review and listen to the feedback. Studies show that people tend to put the most trust in companies with star ratings between 4.2 and 4.5, so even a couple of negative reviews won’t hurt you. At Creekmore, we’ll monitor and respond to your reviews for you, giving any potential clients the impression that you do truly care about your customers.

Pay per click advertising (PPC) is another great way to ensure leads even when rankings aren’t the best. If you’re in a very competitive industry or area, SEO may not be the best option for you.National brands are almost always going to rank higher on the first page than small, local businesses, but that doesn’t mean you can’t compete for sales.With pay per click, you only pay when someone clicks on your ads, so you’re only paying for leads. Plus, paid ads generally show on the top of the results page, which is especially critical for targeting mobile users who often don’t scroll past them. Additionally, SEO takes time whereas PPC can offer more immediate results. This doesn’t mean you can ditch SEO by any means; SEO and PPC work simultaneously to give you a more complete online presence.

 
If you're not sure whether your sales and leads numbers are worthy of the money you're spending to market your business or you aren't spending any money to do so, Creekmore can help! Creekmore Marketing is a local SEO and digital marketing firm that specializes in helping small businesses grow. We offer a free website review where we can check a variety of different factors and help you find out how to improve your company.Your success is our top priority, and we will work hard daily to improve your campaign's performance. Contact us today to learn more!