Analytics, analytics, analytics. As a marketer, the importance of pulling marketing analytics has most likely been ingrained in you. And with the increased accessibility of analytics for all of our digital marketing, you've probably been buried in numbers and charts at one time or another.
The problem, however, with the number of metrics we are able to measure is that many marketers either don't know how to decipher analytics or they merely look at them and choose not to make any changes based on what they're learning. This is a huge problem because we aren't actually utilizing our analytics the way we should be, instead we're just looking at them because someone is telling us to but we aren't actually doing anything with them.
So how can you change the fact that you're looking at analytics and not doing anything with them? Well, first and foremost you need to make sure you have a great software you're using to measure your analytics. At HIVE, we prefer HubSpot's reporting tools above all the other analytics softwares we used (and, trust me, we've tried a ton of them)! What is it about HubSpot's tool that is better than other softwares? Well, first everything is measured in one dashboard. So you can literally go from measuring your blog traffic to measuring your social media effectiveness to measuring your website traffic all in one fell swoop. I also personally love that because they're all linked together, you can measure them against each other and even tell which tactic is affecting another one. I'm not joking when I tell you that HubSpot's reporting tools have changed the way we measure and optimize off of analytics. It's been crucial in helping us become better marketers.
So once you have a great reporting tool, then what do you have to do? You need to take a look at each of the metrics and determine what exactly they're measuring and what that measurement means to your company's overall goals and strategies. For example, if you're looking to increase the number of visitors who convert into leads, you'll want to pay close attention to your conversion rates on each of the tactics you're using. You'll want to look at which landing pages with which offers are convincing the most visitors to fill out the form and convert to leads. This metric will be more important to you than, for example, the number of keywords for which you're appearing on the first page of search results. Once you've determined which landing pages are converting the most effectively, take a look at what is different about those and whether you can make some changes to the landing pages not converting as well to make them more effective.
The other thing you'll want to look at, regardless of your goal is where the traffic that is helping you reach your goals is coming from. So, in the above example when you were most concerned about converting visitors to leads, you want to look at where the people who are becoming leads are coming from. Are they finding you through organic search results or clicking through from your social media? Knowing where these people are coming from will help you determine where your most qualified leads are finding you and will allow you to continue focusing heavily on those platforms.
So there you have it, the first few steps to not only pulling your analytics but to actually understanding them and optimizing your marketing efforts to provide potential customers with more information they are interested in and, therefore, become a better marketer. The most important thing to pay attention to when looking at your analytics is how you are effectively reaching your goals. And once you've determined that, optimize your efforts as needed.