Marketing PMP Journal ·
How to Measure Social Media Results for a Coaching Business
By Avery Kingstad · 4 min read
Updated
You’re spending time creating posts, showing up and keeping your social media active. But when you sit down to review the month, you still have one question: is any of this helping your business?
Likes and views tell you part of the story. To understand what’s working, look at whether your content is bringing the right people to your website, starting conversations and leading to inquiries about your coaching.
You don’t need to track everything. Start with a few numbers that help you decide where to spend your time next month.
Start with what you want to learn
Before opening your reports, choose a question. Are your posts about career changes bringing inquiries? Is the platform you spend the most time on helping people find you? Are visitors clicking through but leaving before contacting you?
A clear question makes the review easier. It gives you a reason to look at a number and something useful to do with the answer.
For example, “Should I keep creating this series?” is more useful than “Did my likes go up?” Likes can show what catches attention. You’ll also want to see whether that attention leads anywhere.
Follow the steps between a post and an inquiry
Look at a few different stages so you can see where people are responding and where things become less clear.
What to track | What to look for |
|---|---|
Reach or views | Is your content getting seen? Check how the platform defines the number. |
Website visits from social links | Are people taking the next step to learn more? |
Coaching inquiries | Are people asking about working with you? |
Relevant conversations | Are you speaking with people whose needs fit your coaching? |
New clients | Which of those conversations eventually becomes an engagement? |
Keep the numbers straightforward. A booked call and an attended call are two different things, so record them separately. Leave out spam, duplicate inquiries and your own tests.
If you haven’t reviewed an inquiry yet, keep it marked that way. You can decide whether it’s a good fit once you know more.
Ask people how they found you
A simple “How did you hear about me?” question can help you understand what brought someone to your business.
Keep their answer alongside anything your website or booking tool recorded. Both can be useful. Someone might say they’ve followed you on Instagram for months, even though their final visit came through a Google search.
You can also add campaign tags to website links. These are small pieces of information added to a URL to identify where a visit came from. Google’s campaign URL guidance explains how to use them in Analytics.
Use consistent names so the same campaign doesn’t appear under several different labels. Keep personal information out of those names, and test a link all the way through to an inquiry before relying on the report.
If someone else manages your marketing, ask them to show you where this information appears and what it can tell you.
Leave room for what you can’t track
You won’t always know which post helped someone decide to contact you. They may have seen several posts, heard about you from a friend and visited your website more than once.
Keep an “unknown” option in your records. That’s more useful than guessing and giving one platform credit for every inquiry.
You can still make decisions with incomplete information. Look for patterns over time, listen to what people tell you and be clear about which connections you can actually see.
Count what the work costs
Include the money and time that go into your social media: content creation, management, advertising, relevant software and your own contribution.
For a simple fictional example, imagine a coach spends $600 on social content and tracks six suitable inquiries connected to that work. That comes to $100 per inquiry. If two of those people become clients, the tracked cost is $300 per new client.
These are example calculations, not a target your business should meet. To understand whether the work is financially worthwhile, you would also need to consider what those clients pay, what it costs to serve them and how confidently you can connect the business to that marketing.
If that information isn’t available yet, start with the costs and inquiries you do know. You can build a clearer picture as your records improve.
Choose one thing to improve next month
Compare similar periods and note anything that changed: a launch, time away, a new offer or a broken contact form. When you have a small number of inquiries, one or two can make a percentage look dramatic, so keep the actual counts visible.
Then choose a useful next step. If people visit your website but rarely inquire, check the page and contact process. If inquiries arrive but sit unanswered, look at follow-up. These are places to investigate, rather than conclusions to jump to.
Write down what you change and when. At the next review, you’ll have something specific to compare.
Get a clearer picture of what’s working
If you’re putting time into social media but struggling to see what it’s doing for your business, Marketing PMP can help you work through what to track and where the process needs attention.