You have done the work. You added the photos, fixed your hours and asked a few happy customers for a review. Now you want to know whether it made any difference.
There are three ways to tell: what you did, what changed where customers look, and what customers did next. Marketbase tracks the first two for you. The third is yours, and it is the one that pays the bills.
In this article
- 1. What Progress measures, and what it does not
- 2. What you did, and what we found
- 3. Why the numbers lag the work
- 4. Reading the change when it lands
- 5. Counting the calls and bookings
What Progress measures
Progress runs from 0 to 100%. 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.
That makes it a measure of where you stand, not of how busy you have been. A business that sits at the top of every ladder reads 100% even if its owner has never opened Marketbase. A business that has done a lot of work Google has not picked up yet reads the same as it did before.
Key point
Progress is not a count of tasks done. Ticking a task does not move it. It moves when the next check of your market finds the change where customers see it.
Two other numbers sit beside it. Health, out of 10, says how healthy your marketing is. Market Rank says where you sit among the businesses in your trade and city. How Marketbase Scores Work covers all three.
What you did, and what we found
Your roadmap keeps two records side by side. The first is yours: each task you tick is saved with the date and what you saw when you ticked it. The second is ours: what the next check of your market actually finds on Google, your website and your other listings.
Most of the time they agree. When they do not, the roadmap tells you plainly that a task came loose since you ticked it, because the last check did not find it, and serves it again. That is not a telling-off. Often the change was made in the wrong place, or Google has not shown it yet.
When every task for a priority is ticked, it waits for the next check. Once the check confirms the work, the roadmap moves you on to the next piece of it.
Why the numbers lag the work
Your market is checked again about once a month, so a change you make today shows in your numbers after the next check, not the same afternoon. There is a second lag on top of ours: Google's own.
Edits to your Google listing go through Google before they show, and that can take days. New reviews build up over weeks, not in one go. A fixed website page is only read again when Google next visits it.
Picture this
An illustration, not a real business. A physio in Hamilton ticks three tasks on her Google listing one evening: new photos, a written description and her Saturday hours.
At the next check, the photos and hours are there, and her listing climbs its ladders. The description is not, because she saved it as a draft and never published it.
Her refreshed roadmap opens with what moved, and serves the description again. Five minutes later it is live.
Reading the change when it lands
Your roadmap stays as it was written until you ask for a new one. When your market's next check has landed, press Refresh Roadmap. The new roadmap opens with what changed since the last one.
- The tasks you ticked since the last roadmap
- Where you moved up, or down, on the things we check
- Which priorities cleared, and what replaced them
- How far your Market Rank travelled
For the longer view, open your Business Overview. It shows your health over time, and how far each of your three numbers moved since the last check. Look at it across a few months, not week to week. One check is a snapshot, three in a row is a trend.
Tip
Your rank can move when you stand still. If a competitor sorts their listing, they pass you. Holding your place in a busy market is progress too.
Counting the calls and bookings
Better numbers are only worth having if more people call. Google already counts some of this for you: your listing's performance view shows how many people called you, asked for directions or clicked through to your website from it. Check it once a month, on the same day, and write the numbers down.
For everything else, ask. When a new customer rings or books, ask how they found you, and keep a tally by the phone or in your booking system. If you take bookings online, add a "how did you find us?" question to the booking form wherever your system allows it. A salon, a clinic and a sparky all get the same answer from it: which of their channels is pulling its weight.
Put the two side by side. If your reviews climbed in March and "found you on Google" doubled in April, you have your answer.
Put it into practice
5 minutes today
- Write down your Health, Market Rank and Progress as your starting point
- Note last month's calls, direction requests and website clicks from your Google listing
30 minutes this week
- Sort your roadmap's first priority and tick each task as you finish it
- Check each change is live where customers see it, not saved as a draft
- Add "how did you find us?" to your booking form or your phone script
Ongoing this month
- After your market's next check, refresh your roadmap and read what changed
- Compare your three numbers and your call count with the ones you wrote down
Where Marketbase fits in
Marketbase tells you what to do, shows you how, and does it for you if you want. About once a month it checks your market again, so you see what your work changed and what to do next.
Start with your free report: find your business by name and see where you stand today. Then sort it yourself, or we'll do it for you.