Most marketing tools hand you a page of numbers and leave you to work out what they mean. You get percentages, trend lines and jargon, and still no answer to the question you care about: is my marketing working, and what do I do next?
Marketbase answers with three numbers. They mean the same thing on every page, so once you know them you can read any of it.
In this article
- 1. Health: how healthy your marketing is
- 2. Market Rank: where you sit among your competitors
- 3. Progress: how far up your market's ladder you have climbed
- 4. When the numbers move, and what moves them
Health, out of 10
Health answers "how healthy is my marketing?" It reads from 0 to 10, for your business as a whole and for each area: your Google listing, reviews, Maps, citations, Facebook, website and opening hours. Higher is healthier, and the colour runs from red through to green with it.
Think of it as a check-up. It gives you a feel for where you stand before you read any detail, and area by area it shows where you are strong and where you are not.
Market Rank, #X of Y
Market Rank answers "where do I sit against the businesses I compete with?" Your market is your trade in your city, so a Christchurch hair salon is ranked against Christchurch hair salons, not every salon in the country. You see it as a place and a total, such as #6 of 24, overall and for each area.
Rank is relative. It moves when you improve, and it also moves when the businesses around you do.
Progress, from 0 to 100%
Progress answers "how far up have I climbed?" Every thing we check has a ladder set by your own market, from where the weakest businesses sit to where the best sit. Progress is how far up those ladders you are, across everything we check. The top of every ladder reads 100%.
Because the ladders come from your market, the same number of reviews puts you near the top in a quiet market and halfway up in a busy one. That is the point: it tells you where you stand among the businesses a customer would actually choose between.
Key point
Progress is not a count of tasks done. Ticking a task on your roadmap records what you did, and it does not move Progress. The number moves when the next check of your market finds the change.
When the numbers move
Your market is checked again about once a month. Each time, all three numbers are worked out afresh, for you and for everyone you compete with. Your overview shows your health over time and how far each number moved since the last check.
The work moves the numbers in a chain. Fix something we check and you climb its ladder, so Progress goes up. Your health in that area improves, and as it does you pass the businesses below you on Market Rank.
Two more things are worth knowing. An area we have not measured yet says "not measured yet" rather than showing a zero. An area we measured and found nothing in, such as the website areas for a business with no website, shows a real zero, because that is the truth of it.
Reading your numbers
5 minutes today
- Write down your Health, Market Rank and Progress as a starting point
- Find the area with the lowest health on your Business Overview
30 minutes this week
- Open your roadmap and sort its first priority, or hand it to us
- Read the report for that weakest area to see why it sits where it does
Ongoing this month
- Keep working down your roadmap between checks
- After the next check, compare your three numbers with the ones you wrote down
Where Marketbase fits in
Numbers on their own do not get you the call. Marketbase tells you what to do, shows you how, and does it for you if you want. The three numbers are how you see it working.
Find your business by name and your free report shows where you stand. Then sort it yourself, or we'll do it for you.