Marketing Bee Documents - Measuring Success

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Bee Docs' Web Stats Graph

I'd like to share some of my experiences marketing Bee Documents and our products. One of the first things I did when I founded Bee Documents was define the metrics by which I would measure my marketing effectiveness. Here are some of the things that I track over time.

• Sales Revenue - Of course the most important measurement of marketing effectiveness! Several years of working with an accountant has taught me the power of a monthly profit and loss statement.
  
  
• E-mail and phone communications - I also track and chart the number of phone calls and e-mails that I receive requesting information on our products.
  
  
• Google Ranking - Besides referrals, most of our new customers find us on Google. We use Google's web service API to daily track and chart our position in the search results of 10 keywords that are important to us. On some future date, I'll show you how we track this metric.
  
  
• Web Traffic - We really work hard to make our web site interesting, relevant, and up-to-date. The amount of traffic coming to our web site is a good way to see how many people out there are getting our message.
  
  
• Press and Blog Mentions - The best advertising is the kind that other people do for you! Google and Technorati both have tools for tracking what other sites are linking to our site.

By establishing good tracking methods for these metrics, we are able to judge the success of various marketing efforts. For example, is it better for us to pay for print ads or is it more effective to give away free software? While, I have certainly made mistakes over the first three years of running Bee Documents, having solid measurements allows me to avoid repeating expensive mistakes and refine our marketing strategy as we grow.

Labels: beedocs, marketing, statistics