New Year’s is the ideal time for making resolutions (that we keep until the second week of January). It seems like everyone around me is making promises in their personal life and in their business life.
If you ever trained with a coach, they would tell you that your goals have to be measurable. Don’t say that you want to lose weight, say that you want to lose 10 pounds in the first 30 days. The same is true in business, and in marketing. In this post, I have decided to share my ten 2013 resolutions for web analytics. And since your marketing and business goals depend on data and have to be measured to get accomplished, this will help you across all business areas.
- Address your data phobia. May be it is a little bit extreme to say that a lot of digital marketers have an extreme fear of web analytics data, but it is safe to assume that data is what often causes migraines. We often want analysis but get reporting. Google Analytics dashboard is not data analysis – it is merely data reporting that looks pretty. Data is telling us what we have; analysis is telling us what we need to do based on what we have.
- Consider the economic value of data. It is not enough to say that you need to decrease your bounce rate by 5%. Equate the decrease in your bounce rate by 5% to the amount of money that you can make through paid ads, selling more products and generating more completed contact us forms. Having a larger email list is good for your ego, selling more products via email marketing is good for the bottom line of your company.
- Not all marketing strategies are created equal. In order to turn a prospect into a customer you might have to engage in remarketing, email marketing and social media marketing. Each marketing strategy should not be equally weighted. Use attribution modeling to examine how each marketing tactic contributes to a sale.
- Pay attention to context. Tools like Google Analytics will not tell you things that happened in the world that caused a spike in traffic. Context is what makes life interesting.
- Tools are great, but great analysts are awesome. The true value of analytics only comes when people get to work on your data. Make sure that you have a team (even if it is a team of 1) that knows how to analyze data to help you reach your marketing goals. If you only rely on analysis that is automatically generated, you are missing out. True analysis can only be done by skilled analysts. This is Amin, one of our awesome analysts.
- Begin measuring your analytics ROI. Time that you spend on collecting, reporting and analyzing data is not free – there is an opportunity cost. In order to prove the value of analytics inside your organization, begin measuring ROI of your data analysis. When you accurately collect data, and properly analyze it, you are able to make accurate marketing decisions. Measure the impact of your analytics.
- Clarity trumps persuasion – I hear this phrase every time I attend MarketingSherpa program when they are speaking about copywriting. I, however, would like to use it in a slightly different context. Do not try to persuade any one with what you think. Use data and your analysis to clearly explain cause, correlation and effect. Clear data analysis is your ace.
- It is not personal, it is just
businessdata. Showing that marketing campaign was not effective is not a personal assault against whoever managed the campaign. It is rather an opportunity to use the available data to turn something ineffective around.
- If you do not have data, you should run an experiment to get it. Market and competitive analysis are good indicators at what is working and what is not. However, running a remarketing campaign is the only way to get the data you need to know that remarketing is or is not your best friend for 2013. Go and get proof.
- ACTION! This is a common phrase on any movie set. When you see true data analysis, this is what you will want to scream. This means that the data and data analysis that you are presented with are so clear and crisp that you know exactly what needs to be done to reach your marketing objectives.
Happy New Year!
