How do I know which marketing is actually working?

The question

Whoever answers the phone asks every new caller: how did you hear about us?

Then they write the answer in a column. That is the whole system, and for most small businesses it out performs any software you could buy, because it captures the one thing analytics never sees, which is the call that came from a search but was placed by a person who then walked in the door.

Why this beats a report

Marketing reports measure activity. Visits, impressions, positions, clicks. All of those can rise while your revenue does nothing at all. The front desk log measures customers, and customers are the only unit the business actually runs on.

Within a month or two the pattern is usually obvious and often surprising. Businesses regularly discover that the thing they spend most on produces almost nobody, and the thing they nearly cancelled produces half the book.

What to do with it

When answers start coming back as I found you online, that is search working, and it is the point at which paying for search stops being an act of faith. It is also the moment to stop paying for whatever has never once been named.

How this fits what we do

We measure one thing and it is deliberately narrow: your position for one phrase, checked every morning, with the dates recorded. We do not invoice off a traffic chart. We invoice after fourteen consecutive days on page one, and you can verify that yourself by searching.