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Do you know how much available cash your business has at any one point? Do you know what you do for sales or how much you’ve got in the bank? When it comes to business, numbers is the game. You have to have a solid handle on the facts and figures to ensure that your business thrives. But would you believe that a large number of business owners don’t know what their close rates and sales opportunity numbers are? Do you?

There’s no denying that we live in a digital world; many business owners, however, do not track key performance indicators or keep watch over important metrics when it comes to their online efforts. This puts you at serious disadvantage. You need to be aware of the numbers in order to optimize strategies, which can in turn boost your sales. But what numbers should you be looking for, and how do you leverage them to make your business better?

Among the most critical stats and metrics of which to keep track:

 Visitors To Your Site: The first thing that you need to know is how many visitors come to your website or blog on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. By knowing these numbers you’re able to see how effective your inbound marketing strategy is.

Let’s say that you’ve got 1,000 hits per day on your blog. Then, one month you notice that the hits are dropping significantly. If you are aware of this, then you can figure out what you did differently in the past few months and adjust. With data and insights, for example, you can determine which posts perform better and how to craft content that is more engaging or which facilitates greater reader participation. Using insights to guide your decisions enables you to build your audience back up.

Perhaps you write a blog post that suddenly goes viral. You get tens of thousands of hits on the post and you watch as that translates into sales. You can take notice of what the blog was about so that you can attempt to create other posts that have the possibility of generating the same amount of buzz. As they say, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Nor can you improve.

Conversion Rate and Leads

The next set of data you should learn about is your conversion rates. These are the numbers that show how effectively your website is at transforming curious readers into leads or customers. If you don’t know what this number is, you’re in trouble as it’s one of the most important indicators. It shows how well your program works so that you’re able to adjust it if efforts and initiatives aren’t translating into sales. After all, writing amazing blogs and scoring tons of hits is, ultimately, a waste of time and resources if f you’re not getting any leads or sales as a result.

Leads are always important, but sales qualified leads are considered the most critical. These leads indicate that the prospect is more willing - and nearly ready - to purchase from you. These are the leads you should focus the most of your attention on.

Around 10% of all of the leads your website gets are considered to be sales qualified leads but it’s important that you know what percentage of your businesses leads are sales qualified leads. If the number is significantly lower than 10%, then something definitely has to change within your inbound marketing and data strategy.

Adjusting Your Numbers

So what do you do if your numbers are down? First, make sure that you actually know what your company’s numbers are. There are a number of ways to discover how many hits you get on your site, what your conversion rate is, and what percentage of leads are sales qualified leads. Digital marketing specialists in the industry can help you access and interpret that data.

Once you know your numbers and you know that they’re not as robust as you’d like, you can start to adjust your marketing strategy. Not getting enough hits on the blog posts? Ask a few people to look them over to see if they’re unappealing or even unreadable. Many times people believe they’re writing great content when, in reality, the content is very difficult to read.

Then, if you know you have great content, start looking at the sharing numbers. Blog posts are like juicy gossip: the better they are, the more they are spread around. And the more that they get around, the better chance you have at getting sales qualified leads.

Knowing your business’s digital analytics is extremely important, but how do you keep track of the numbers? Inbound marketing specialists suggest having a spreadsheet that has all of the information on it for you. Keep track of the numbers, make a note when visitors spike or decline, and you’ll be much more capable of ensuring that your website brings you the leads that you need - and that you can convert them into sales.