How to use metrics to get more clients

Whether you’re a tracking every month kind of girlie or you’re running your business based on vibes, I’m sure it’s not more data that you want but actionable insights from the metrics you’re tracking.  

You're asking: what do I actually do next? What can I stop doing? Where should I be spending my time if I want more clients? 

Because right now, it probably feels like you’re trying things and hoping they work, without any measure of what “working” actually means. 

Or maybe you avoid anything that feels like an evaluation out of fear that it means something about your business… Or worse, you. 

When I asked 67 solo business owners what they wished their metrics could tell them, those were the answers that came up again and again.  

In other words, you want… clarity. 

Here’s what most people don’t realize: your metrics can tell you exactly that and more. 

And you don’t have to be a freak in the metrics-tracking spreadsheets (like, um, me). It doesn’t have to be complicated or corporate or involve five different tools either. 

You can use your metrics to help make decisions about your strategy and business and it starts with something much simpler than most people expect: a basic marketing audit. 

What is a Marketing Audit?

A marketing audit is a clear, structured look at what’s actually happening in your business. Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t about building a fancy dashboard or becoming a “data person.”

Personally I enjoy a big piece of paper and a couple of pencil crayons, but you can also use a digital doc too. 

Here’s what you’re gonna do: 

Start by listing everything you’d done to market your business over the last three to six months – emails, social media posts, networking, referrals, collaborations, that one ad you ran in a newsletter, SEO. 

Then map those activities across your funnel, from awareness to conversion.  

Next you’re going to make a second list of your most recent paying clients and where they came from.  

Now this is where things get interesting because this is often the moment when the true story of your business – and how to get more clients – starts to reveal itself. 

1. Get the Big Picture: Are You Marketing All The Way Down The Funnel?

Effective marketing is marketing that leads to real sales - from awareness through connection to conversion. And for that to happen you need to be marketing all the way down the funnel.

Many solo business owners tend to over-focus in one layer of the funnel, spending all their time and energy trying to build an audience or in the content marketing hamster wheel, nurturing and building a warm audience they never sell too. 

When I first started working with Dominique, growing her audience and getting in front of new people was her top priority. She had recently launched a membership community and while her current members were raving fans, enrollment was low. 

An audit of Dominique’s marketing activities revealed that she had a small but warm audience that she emailed on a regular basis… but she had never invited into the community. She was missing an entire layer from her funnel - sales. 

So when it came time to focus on developing Dominique’s strategy, we started by plugging the gaps and ran a week-long sales campaign that filled a few spots in the membership. 

2. Validate What’s Actually Working

A lot of marketing advice is about everything you have to do, without any discernment if it’s right for your business model, stage of business or preferences (because they matter!). 

Analyzing your metrics can help you move from assumptions to evidence. 

Here’s an example:

Brenda’s entire marketing strategy was centered around Instagram - posting consistently, engaging daily and even hiring a VA to help her keep up even though she hated it. But when we reviewed her data, not a single paying client had come from Instagram. 

Despite her long-held belief that in order to run a successful business she had to use the platform, her clients were actually finding her through organic search - people who were actively looking for the services she offered and were ready to buy now. 

3. Find Efficiencies: Stop Doing What Isn’t Working (So you can do what does, better)

Just because you might need to be doing more marketing, doesn’t mean it has to be more of the same - especially if maybe you’re spending on time on tactics that aren’t working. 

Emily was sending a weekly newsletter, following all of the advice and “best practices” she’d learned online. But when we looked at her client data, none of her paying clients came from email – in fact none of them were even on that subscriber list. 

The real shift came when she realized she’d been using a volume-based marketing strategy for a relationship-based business. 

She stopped publishing her newsletter immediately. 

Instead, she redirected that effort to networking, coffee chats and asking for introductions; activities that felt natural to her and consistently led to clients but she believed didn’t “count” as marketing.  

For Emily, her metrics didn’t just tell her what to do – they gave her permission to stop. 

4. Prioritize What to Work on Next  

Once you understand what’s working (and what isn’t), your next steps become clear. 

Dominique wasn’t wrong in her assumption that she needed to build her audience to reach the goals she had for growing her membership. But attracting and nurturing new audiences takes time and Dominique needed sales today. 

So our plan prioritized a sales campaign first and then looked at a longer-term strategy for growth. It wasn’t an either/or kind of situation, it was a both/and. 

For Julie, digging into her metrics revealed that her emails were driving sales – something that she was surprised to learn. With this new insight she was able to form a hypothesis that sending more emails would equal more sales and create a strategy to test it out. 

Shifting from just “what should I do” to looking for gaps in the funnel or identifying what’s already working and doing more of that eliminates the guesswork and helps you focus on the highest impact activities. 

And for the solo business owner doing it all and then some, that’s great news.

Your Metrics Already Know How You’ll Get More Clients 

Marketing for growth is about embracing a spirit of experimentation, but that doesn’t mean you have to constantly be guessing.  

Random acts of marketing like that “books are open!” email sent to a cold audience might feel like productivity, but it might actually keep you stuck. 

Your next step isn’t a mystery of the great unknown, your metrics already contain the answers: 

• What to ditch 

• What to double down on 

• And what to do next 

And the real magic is in learning to see what your business is already telling you – and using that information to move forward with confidence.