What metrics should wellbeing businesses actually be measuring?
As a small business, you want to know you're growing and increasing your income each month. Even if you don't consider yourself a marketing whizz, chances are you have a website, a Facebook, Instagram and maybe even a TikTok, you use email, have a booking system... And maybe you do the odd flyer or collaboration. For someone who says they don't do much marketing....put it like that and it tells a different story.
When you come to the end of each month, how much time do you spend measuring if your marketing is "working?" And what does working even look like? It's easy to think things like more Instagram followers are a sign of business growth. But it's really not that simple. If you run a massage centre or a yoga studio in a small town in England, I would urge caution in thinking that hundreds of Instagram followers from all over the world are a sign that your customer base is growing. It can be a nice confidence boost to see your social media efforts paying off, but as with all things, it's definitely quality over quantity. I’d even go so far as to say for many businesses, even engagement isn’t a primary metric that demonstrates business growth. You might have a super supportive following on Instagram who don’t actually spend with you. Maybe lots of your customers aren’t even active on social media, but they are active in frequenting your studio. So again…. a hundred likes might not be meaningful.
So instead, these are some business metrics I would propose you consider looking into if you want a sign your business is healthy and moving in an upward trajectory.
#1 Explore customer acquisition
This is a fancy way of saying how many new people do you bring into your business each month? We know that not all enquiries will convert to paying customers, so I would recommend you measure the percentage of enquiries that become paying customers. Let's imagine you get 5 enquiries a week, 2 don't reply to your reply, 1 comes back with more questions, and 2 go on to book. That's your conversion rate. It takes a lot of marketing effort to get those 5 enquiries, it means your SEO is attracting customers or your social media is enticing... So focus on what you can do to convert more of those to paying customers. We find that more personalised messages work best.
#2 Measure the average spend of your customers
Maintaining and expanding your core customer base is absolutely crucial to having a sustainable business. Your loyal customers are absolute gold dust. You should always be looking at how you can keep your most active customers happy. If you offer a monthly membership, you'd want to see this figure growing each month. If you have regular bookers who have a treatment with you, how many do you have who are incredibly regular and reliable?
A metric to measure either uptake on a membership scheme, or average spend for customers is a super important thing to keep an eye on.
#3 Re-engagement of drifted customers
Naturally, some customers will drift away no matter how lovely your services are. It doesn't mean they aren't interested anymore, and they could be enticed back. A handy thing in your email database is to tag or segment customers who haven't been with you for a while, can you do a special offer to remind them why you're so lovely? Maybe they have lost a bit of confidence if you're a fitness or physical provider and could use a safe pop-up to reacquaint themselves. If you offer treatments, maybe they've stopped making time for relaxation and need to be reminded how important it is.
It's always valuable to think about your business growth in terms of these three audiences: new customers, existing customers and drifted away customers. Instead of looking at a lightweight metric such as followers, why not reflect on whether you could probe a bit deeper and feel empowered by the data insights you uncover.
If you want help in working out what metrics matter to you, we offer one-hour sessions to help you get yourself on track.
