One of the most important success factors of small businesses is the ability to generate revenue, and to do that, most businesses need to market their services and products to bring in new customers and sales. The challenge for small business is how to make their marketing dollars work the hardest, and this requires careful tracking and measurement. Here’s one way to get started tracking your marketing spending so that you can find out what’s paying back the most.

List your sources of revenue

First, determine where your sales are coming from by making a list of all the ways you are currently attracting customers. Here are a few:

• Website via search
• Social media
• Google ads
• Referrals from existing customers
• Ad in a local magazine
• Article or Newsletters
• Board membership on local nonprofit
• Chamber of Commerce membership and participation

Track your expenses by source or method

Once you have your list, it’s time to look to your accounting system. Create an account for marketing expenses in your chart of accounts to track expenses for these marketing methods.  Sort them by the payee to review totals for each category.  If you need our help, please feel free to reach out.

The goal of this step is to be able to get all costs associated with each of these marketing methods so that you have a total cost over time by method. Don’t forget labor: if an employee spends three hours a week updating your social media accounts, this should be included in your costs.

Determine the source of your sales

To the extent you can, match the sales that come in with the marketing source or method. In other words, if a customer knows you from the Chamber and spends $500 with you, match the $500 revenue with the Chamber marketing source. Do this for every sale you can. If you don’t know or can’t attribute the sale to any one method, then code it to an Unknown tracking code or account.

This step can be difficult, depending on your business type, especially if your customers are anonymous, as in retail or restaurant sales. However, every business can do better by asking “how did you find out about us?” to each new client that comes in and recording that answer.

For online sales, you can use tracking apps such as Google Analytics to help you measure digital marketing methods.

Do the best you can on this step, and implement procedures to capture this information as accurately as possible for future sales.

Analyze and adjust

This is the fun part. Once you’ve done all the hard work, you should be able to match sales to costs and determine the volume of sales that are coming in for each marketing method. Let’s say you found out that you are getting no sales from your nonprofit board membership, the newsletters articles, and social media. You now have some decisions to make.

If you are doing these things solely for the purpose of marketing, you could cut them out and focus on the remaining methods. It could also mean that you need to redo your social media strategy; it’s not working now, but another strategy might. Or just one article or newsletter is not enough, but three articles could start paying off.

At any rate, you have far more information than you did before you started, and now you can make smarter decisions about your marketing. If we can help you code and crunch all of these numbers, please reach out any time.

There are a lot of deadlines that come with running a business. Missing some deadlines can have serious financial implications to the health of your business. Let’s take a look at how much you’ll save by being on time with the following deadlines.

Payroll

One of the toughest deadlines of all, making payroll, is essential to keeping employees happy. Making payroll tax deposits on time is even more crucial. You’ll save the following in penalties by staying on time with payroll deadlines:

• If you’re 1-5 days late with payroll tax deposits, the penalty is two percent of the payroll.
• If you’re 6-15 days late, you’ll pay five percent in penalties.
• If you’re more than 15 days late, the penalty goes up to 10 percent.

And that’s just the federal penalties, not your state penalties.

Income Taxes

Everyone knows about the April 15^th deadline to file your taxes. Some people file an extension and have until October 15^th. However, we need to remember that the best estimate of your tax liability needs to be paid by April 15^th even if an extension of time is granted. Failure to correctly estimate and pay income taxes leads to a penalty that is calculated by multiplying the number of days the tax is late by the effective interest rate.

Paying Vendors

If we’re slow to make our accounts payable payments, our vendors may tack on a penalty, but the larger consequence is the effect on our credit score.  Plus, you will get better pricing from your suppliers if you pay on time and within terms.

Business Goals

It’s so easy to let internal deadlines slide, but they may be the most important of them all. To move your business forward, set goals with deadlines so that you can measure your results.

Mastering Deadlines

Here are a couple of tips to master your deadlines so you can avoid the above consequences:

1. Keep a list of deadlines, or hire someone to help you with them.
2. Make a mental commitment to yourself that the deadline is important to your business.
3. Set aside the time you need to prepare for the deadline.  Block time on your calendar and stick to it.
4. Remind yourself of the consequences of missing the deadline.
5. Try not to overcommit. Delegate other tasks when possible.
6. If possible, automate or systematize the processes around the deadline so that it’s met automatically.
7. Stay up late if you have to in order to meet your deadline.
8. Celebrate when you meet your deadline!

Attracting and retaining talent in your small business can be a giant step toward growing into a mid-sized business. Beyond attracting new employees with salary and benefits, here are several perks, policies, and benefits to consider when recruiting women, and employees in general, to your workforce.

1. Flex work hours.

Everyone likes regaining control over their workday, and offering flex hours can be one of the lowest cost policies to implement. Flex hours support work-life balance and are especially important for employees who have school-age children who can plan work around their children’s day.

2. Wellness initiatives.

Large companies are able to offer a wellness program, but small companies can take small steps to reach the same result. Find a local gym to partner with for a membership discount. Bring in the occasional yoga teacher. Or hire a nutritionist to speak once a quarter to your employees. All of these small initiatives demonstrate to your employees that you honor a culture of wellness.

3. Maternity and adoptive leave.

Do you have a policy about time off for new parents? And more importantly, you’ll need a process to re-integrate the employees into the business when they return.

4. Child care support.

Even if you can’t afford to provide onsite child care, you might be able to partner with a local child care facility to provide reduced or subsidized rates.

5. Gender hiring goals and metrics.

Do you have an equal number of men and women in your workplace? If not, do you have goals in place to adjust the ratios when possible? If you have a disproportionate number of one gender making all of the hiring decisions, you may want to consider the effects of implicit bias on your hiring processes.

6. Mentoring.

One way to speed the growth of employees is to provide mentoring. All employees will benefit from strong role models.

7. Opportunities for promotion.

Both men and women will perform better when there is a clear path to promotion as well as leaders in current positions who demonstrate leadership.

8. Dress for your day.

One of employees’ favorite perks is to be able to dress casually when no customer meetings are scheduled.

9. Paid time off.

Paid time off, which used to be called sick pay, is a favorite. But now, with most employers, you don’t necessarily have to be sick or explain your reason for wanting to take a personal day from work.

10. Gender-neutral company events.

Many companies create events for employees and sometimes customers to enjoy and mingle. This can include the company Christmas party, lunches, and happy hours. It can also include sports events such as golfing and attending baseball games. For every traditionally male event, be sure to plan a traditionally female event to keep the options gender equal. Spa day, anyone?

These benefits are a great start to attracting top talent, boosting employee morale, and maintaining a happier workforce in your business.