Just because 2018 is well under way doesn’t mean it’s too late to refine your business plans for this year. Having plans in place for client acquisition, retention, marketing, and every other part of your business will help guide you as you navigate your business and prepare you for anything unexpected.
So where you start when making plans for the future? By looking to the past. Here are some of the metrics from 2017 that you should keep in mind when making decisions. They’ll give you insight into your current business and help you set baselines for your 2018 goals.
We think these metrics are so important that we’ve made them easily available to all Pike13 customers through our reporting platform.
Growth Metrics
To set goals for growth this year, it’s important to understand how you did last year. How many new clients did you acquire? Were you able to retain them? Did you offer any new classes or events?
Understanding how you grew in 2017–and what drove that growth–will help you determine which tactics worked and which didn’t. Try to repeat those successful tactics, and avoid or modify those that didn’t work.
Remember to show gratitude to the clients that helped you grow that year. Research shows that even a little bit of client appreciation can lead to long-term retention. Get a sense of which clients are most loyal to your business by checking out your top-paying clients and clients with the highest attendance rates. These loyal clients are prime candidates to help you grow even more through referrals.
Sales Metrics
You love teaching and engaging with your clients, but at the end of the day you’re a business owner and sales numbers matter. How much revenue did you collect? How much of that was through recurring plans, prepaid plans, passes, and retail? Understand where your income is coming from to better plan for inventory and pricing in 2018.
There’s another important metric here, too: how much revenue you didn’t collect because of unpaid clients. Your business could be missing out on thousands of dollars in revenue if you aren’t tracking and following up with unpaid clients. Make it a goal in 2018 to follow up with any unpaid clients at the end of each month.
Engagement Metrics
It doesn’t matter how many classes you offer if they aren’t well-attended. How many enrollments were booked in your classes? Of those enrollments, how many were unconfirmed? Knowing how many clients didn’t show up each month is as important as knowing how many clients did. Check in with clients who you haven’t seen in a while. That personal touch may be just the thing to bring them back.
Keep in mind the reasons a class might have low attendance. It could be the content of the class, but it could also be the day of the week or the time of day the class is being offered. Take a look at peak and off-peak times at the weekly and daily levels for your business. Is there a day or time that performs best? That’s where you’ll want to cluster your classes.
To recap...
Business can’t move forward without an understanding of what’s happening right now. And you can’t understand what’s happening right now without a good understanding of what’s happened before. Use data to understand trends of client behavior and identify opportunities where you can make improvements to the client experience.
There’s a lot of data out there, but the 10 pieces of information I discussed in this article will give you a good measurement of the health of your business. To remind you, those data points are:
- Client acquisition rate
- Client retention rate
- Top-paying clients
- Revenue collected through plans and passes
- Revenue collected through retail
- Past-due invoices (unpaid clients)
- Enrollments completed
- Confirmed attendance
- Peak days for business
- Peak times for business
And remember, don’t stop collecting data. Not only will it help you determine if any changes you make are working, but it will give you a baseline to make your business plans for 2019 and beyond.