I lost my watch the other day.
I remember putting it on in the morning before I left for work. Shortly after arriving at my office, I glanced at my wrist and it was gone. I retraced my steps – both literally and as a mental exercise. Did I take it off and lay it down? Did the strap break and it fell off? Did it get pulled off when I took my coat off? I don’t know what happened. I just know that I keep looking at my wrist every now and then expecting it to be there. Even though I know it is gone, I keep looking – out of reflex I suppose. You see, I have worn a watch for most of my life. Ever since I was able to tell time, I have had a watch. It has been my constant companion, and now, poof! it is gone.

I have a good friend who told me he gave up wearing a watch a couple of years ago. He reasoned that we are surrounded by clocks and a watch was a needless frivolity. He has a point. My cell phone is my constant companion. It has a clock. The computer I am using to write this article tells me the time. When I drive my car or use the microwave, the time is clearly displayed for me. So why do I keep looking at my left arm expecting it to be there?

The answer, of course, is that it is a comfortable habit. It has become so much of a habit that I did not realize how often I looked at my watch until it was gone. Now the same thing can happen in business when you are marketing to your clients. The way things always have been might become comfortable for you. However, times change and the environment in which we are doing business today is much different than it was just two years ago. Economic bad times force us to reconsider how we are going about our business. The way things used to be, there was a boatload of marketing dollars that were floated in the direction of goodwill marketing. Companies were willing to just keep their name in front of their marketplace without a lot of expectation of getting a return on their investment. No longer. Corporate executives are tracing a link between every penny spent and a real-live-money-spending customer. If you are in charge of your company’s marketing efforts, you know exactly what I mean.

So how do you get past staring at your wrist expecting to tell the time when your watch is gone (or marketing in a way that is different than you are used to doing it?) First of all, change your marketing language to first time sales and away from awareness marketing. Secondly, learn to measure your success.

Let me explain measuring success. There are a number of ways to put a yardstick to your marketing. For instance, do you keep track of how a customer finds you? One of the best ways to do this is to measure your web site usage, search engine activities, referring sites, etc. Your web site ISP should be able to give you insight into the data on your web site. If you have been successful in getting page views on a portion of your web site that pertains to a product or service you provide, consider how you can add a hook and an action point for sales on that page. This is where the language of your site needs to change to entice first time sales. A hook is simply an advertising device used to gain the attention of your client. An action point is telling them what they need to do to make a purchase. For instance, if you are selling pet supplies and you have a page on your web site geared towards fish enthusiasts, (since we are talking about hooks, I thought I would use fish) a hook might be a sale on new aquariums. You could entice them to buy it now by telling them that they get an extra 10% off if they order it from your web site. If you were in the market for an aquarium, this would catch your attention. The action point would tell them what they need to do to get this deal (click here to order your aquarium and receive the 10% discount. Offer expires tomorrow!) Hooks and action points are ways to move your clients past the awareness of your product to sales. This creates a measurable way to track the link between marketing dollars spent and sales gained.