Tick-Tock...

My family vacationed near LaCrosse, Wisconsin a few years back.

When we were there, we stopped to visit the LaCrosse Clock Company and bought a Satellite clock that hangs in our kitchen.

It's one of those clocks that is automatically updated. Except the clock never knows it's daylight savings time.

And last night the clock set itself back 15 minutes. (I tried to reset it, but the satellite keeps setting it 15 minutes off.)

We use that clock a lot. So, everything we did last night and this morning has been late.

In much the same way, good marketers follow a marketing clock.

If we are keeping a tight pulse on our business using analytics, we know how our advertising, PR and promotion are working. And we use that information to adjust our sales and marketing actions.

If we don't keep an eye on that marketing clock, or if the data is old or out-of-sync, we are out of step.

Is your marketing clock working properly? Or do you need someone to fix your clock?

Takeaway: Measuring things like leads generation, sales to lead ratios, open and click-thru rates in emails, and other marketing analytics can help you adjust your marketing efforts and timing to the market response. Old information can be worse than no information. Without up-to-date details, everything we do in our marketing plan will be too late.