“Man… You got fat!”

A couple years ago, a friend sent me a picture of us over Memorial day weekend at the pool. I have to say – I was disgusted… She looked great in her bikini, but me??? Not so much. In fact, I was disgusted at how much I had let myself go.  All I could think to myself was “Man, you got fat!”

By the next day, I got a workout routine from my cousin Dean who is an amazing personal trainer and I got started. His #1 tip? It wasn’t about working out, or even what I should eat. It was to measure everything.  How long I work out. How much weight I lift. My beginning weight. My body measurements… Everything.

“Why do I have to measure everything?” I thought. “Can’t I just start working out?”  So I skipped that step.  By the end of the week, I quit because I worked my butt off, I was tired, and I GAINED weight!

By the following week, I figured “fine”. I’ll start measuring… I bought a scale, I measured my waist, my thighs, my arms, and kept track of all of my workouts (none of which I could actually complete for the first 3 weeks).  However, because I was measuring – I was able to celebrate each success along the way. Better yet, improving upon those small successes continued to get easier and easier!

When I was discouraged because I hadn’t lost weight, I could celebrate that I was dropping in waist size.  When I hadn’t lost waist size, I could celebrate that I had gone from being able to do 5 pushups – to 50 – to 500!  Amazing things can happen when you’re measuring your successes.

What does that mean for you as a business owner? The same thing…

If you’re not measuring how effectively your advertising dollars are being spent – you have no way to improve.  For 90% of advertisers – that means you stagnate or worse — you quit.

Here are 7 things you should ALWAYS be measuring (and tracking) when advertising on Google AdWords. Measure those 5 things, and I guarantee there are at least a dozen ways you can improve to get more sales, while spending less.)

1. Phone calls from website (And there is no excuse for not doing this now that Google helps you do so for free.)
2. Opt-ins/Leads/Sales
3. Actual value of each purchase
4. Conversion rate of mobile phone visitors vs computers (You’d be shocked at how different these metrics can be & until you know that difference – you’re missing out.)
5. Which sitelinks & call extensions are working best.
6. Result of ad split tests.
7. Return rate of visitors (via remarketing)