The 9 Numbers That Tell You If Your Marketing Is Working | Ep. 51

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You spend money on a website, LinkedIn posts, maybe some email and a trade show booth, and then you ask the question every owner asks: is any of this actually working? For most of us the honest answer is a gut feel. The machines are cutting chips, so marketing must be doing its job. That is not data, and on this episode I wanted real, practical advice on how to know.

So I brought in Brendon Forrest from Gorilla 76, cohost of The Manufacturing Marketer, to walk through it with me. Brendon’s whole world is building and running marketing programs for manufacturers, and he came with a list of nine metrics that turn marketing from a guessing game into a set of numbers you can manage the same way you manage scrap rate or on-time delivery.

Along the way we get into the difference between a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead, why you should probably count deals instead of dollars, and how to back into a marketing goal from your growth number.

I also come clean about something a lot of you will recognize. For years my CRM lived in my head, and that is exactly why good opportunities slipped through the cracks. Brendon makes the case for getting that out of your brain and into a system, and explains why speed to lead matters so much: the shop that follows up first almost always wins the deal.

We close on the metrics that do not matter, the vanity numbers that make you feel good but never tie back to revenue, and a simple five-step framework you can start using today. Set a goal, capture the data, analyze it, then execute. Same as everything else we talk about on this show, because the math does not lie.

What’s Covered in this Episode

• (0:15) Welcome to Buy the Numbers, and why even a one-person shop is already a marketer
• (0:53) Brendon Forrest joins the show for the first time, from Gorilla 76 and The Manufacturing Marketer
• (3:42) The real question every owner asks: I’m marketing, but is it working?
• (5:01) IMTS Job Shops Workshop and Networking Reception, Tuesday September 15, a half-day built for shop pros. Register at IMTS.com
• (5:57) Marketing is just data gathering: It’s another business function you should invest in
• (7:01) How marketing and sales work together as one funnel
• (8:48) Pipeline metrics: new contacts, marketing qualified leads, and sales qualified leads
• (12:34) MQL-to-SQL conversion rate (and what a low number tells you)
• (14:21) Revenue metrics: opportunities opened and what matters most long term
• (17:03) Count deals or dollars, and the lead-time problem that a CRM solves
• (23:14) Mike’s growth math and backing into how many MQLs a month you actually need
• (26:38) Pinpoint whether you have a lead-gen problem or a closing problem
• (27:34) ProShop ERP: implement best practices shop-wide and see fast ROI
• (29:11) Efficiency metrics: cost per opportunity, web traffic, and how AI search is changing it
• (35:19) The qualitative story: green, yellow, red tracking of lead quality and why the trend matters
• (39:13) Verdant Capital: get pre-qualified for equipment financing before IMTS, application only, good for 90 days
• (40:08) CRMs: Why Brendon recommends HubSpot for small shops
• (45:31) The metrics that don’t matter: attribution, open rates, and the 3,500 dollar IMTS badge scan
• (50:49) The 5 steps you need to take to hit your goals

Resources Mentioned

• IMTS.com
• ProShopERP.com
• Verdant Capital
• The Manufacturing Marketer, Brendon’s weekly show
• Industrial Marketing Summit
• HubSpot, the CRM Brendan recommends for small shops

Connect with Brendon Forrest

• Connect with Brendon Forrest on LinkedIn
• Listen to The Manufacturing Marketer