Have you recently started a business and want to know how to tell if you’ve been meeting your post-launch goals? By creating goals and benchmarks for your company, you can use Key Performance Indicators to determine how well your business is doing. The first 6 months post-launch is very important because your brand is newly operating and you need numbers to look at growth. You have put yourself out there and are testing how you and your product or service fit into the market. What you do with the information you receive is very critical for the success of your growth. Look at these KPIs in order to see your success:
1) Understanding Traffic
- Chances are, your website host has analytics that can show you where your traffic is coming from most often. Referrals and geographic locations are important to look at because it can tell you where you are doing well or need to improve with advertisements or marketing. Google analytics is also very helpful with looking at different aspects of your web traffic and helping you to gain a better understanding of your overall communication strategies.
2) Newsletter & Subscriber Count: Open Rate Metrics & Click-Through Rate
- If you offer monthly newsletters or subscriptions to updates and notifications, you have people who have made the decision to receive your online marketing. You want to make sure and watch how much this decision is made over time and look for patterns. Did you gain 10 people in a week, or was it 20 people in a month? Email marketing is oftentimes the primary way to increase marketing and communication effectiveness because it is easier to reach many people who are already familiar with your brand and eager to find deals. When you send out emails or newsletters to customers, we want to see an open rate of 16-20% then a click through rate of at least 2-5%.
3) Social Traction
- On the particular channels you choose to engage on, look at engagement numbers and follower increases. Similar to email marketing, look for patterns and see what brings in the most traffic. Growing successfully on social media can be really good validation of successful brand growth because people are making the decision to select your brand and press follow. Look at what content is doing well, which times and frequency to post are best, and these numbers will tell you when and if people are resonating with your brand.
4) Customer Feedback
- Brand owners are often too shy in the first 6 months of post-launch to ask how people think about their brand, so they will do a survey. We don’t really want to hear their answers right away, but we know we need to find out. Instead of surveying, it really is best to get on the phone with customers. You want to find out how they found you, what they loved or what you can improve upon, how they enjoyed the unboxing, or if they shared your brand with anyone. Customers often want to tell you these things but don’t know how, so reaching out is a great way to see how you are perceived and create relationships with customers. You can also hire someone around 6 months post-launch for customer feedback. This can reduce bias and give a more honest answer.
5) Sales
- Overall, sales will certainly tell you if you are doing something right or wrong. In the beginning, however, there are much more friend and family buys. Take that into account when you look at your numbers because these often end early on and you want to look at outside buyers. This will be more sustainable in the long run. Look at which products or services people buy most. Can the ones that don’t do as well be updated in any way or taken out of inventory in future releases?
At Scaling Retail, we’ve launched brick-and-mortar and e-commerce businesses all over the world. Questions about building, launching, or growing your fashion business? Send an email to hello@scalingretail.com for a complimentary consultation.