We have all heard the rhyme April Showers bring May Flowers. In order to get flowers, we first must endure the rain. It is the same with taxes and business – you must spend time and energy to get the outcome you want. Flowers are a beautiful thing and they are the outcome we are all hoping for (except those with allergies – I think they would rather the flowers look good but that is it).
The outcome you want for a business is greater sales and more profit most of the time, but it can also mean creating the time and resources to meet our personal goals such as hiking the Appalachian or watching our children graduate. So, if we go backwards the shower would be both marketing and financial analysis of your business. The thing is that marketing does not always lead to sales and we often don’t know it because most businesses don’t track the response generated from a specific marketing event. It’s called ROI or Return on Investment and yes there is several ways to track each marketing campaign to ensure you are getting flowers and not mud puddles. One of the best ways to track it is to use specific codes on each campaign to allow you to see where the responses are coming from.
The other way to track this is through your finances. You need to track the overall advertising and marketing spending in comparison with the sales generated. If you have an ad that is doing wonders, but it is only bringing in $500 a month while spending $200 a month you might want to continue but breaking even or even losing money can happened if you don’t know what numbers to track.
So, what about taxes – I’m sure most of you are thinking that is just mud, no flowers there. However, there are lots of ways to save money on taxes simply by making sure you are paying the least amount possible. Most will only look at how to get more deductions but there are also tax credits, enterprise zones and even controlling when you recognize income.
If you want to learn how to track your April showers to allow for more flowers let us help put some tracking into place for you.