It still seems that a lot of companies are allergic to Google Analytics. We’ve been told:
“We periodically hire someone to review our Google Analytics.”
How can you only “periodically” learn where your traffic is coming from – and what traffic you’re getting from each marketing effort? I guess that means you’re only spending marketing budget “periodically”?
How can you only “periodically” review how many unique pageviews of your key lead generation offer page – versus how many completed the form? Aren’t you interested in improving conversion of the traffic that you’re spending money to drive to your site?
If you hear yourself saying, “We need to generate more leads. So, I think we need to create a new website . . .”, we’re talking to you here. Why not look at each element leading up to creation of the lead, to see where you can improve the process – before spending a lot of time and money on a new website that likely won’t even solve your lead generation problem.
If you’re running an ecommerce website, how do you only “periodically” review the number of unique pageviews to each key product page – while likely wondering why certain products aren’t selling?
The answers to many marketing problems can be uncovered by looking at progress step-by-step from driving traffic to creating either a lead or a sale.
Is It a “Marketing Math” Problem?
Maybe it’s that a lot of marketers are allergic to what they perceive as “marketing math.”
Does Google Analytics sound like a lot of computation or analysis has to be involved to glean insight? Does reviewing your traffic sources and views of individual pages seem like a “nice to have” – rather than a critical element for maximizing your marketing efforts?
You can uncover problems as well as opportunities by just reading the numbers in Google Analytics. It really doesn’t have to involve “math” at all.
Whether an “allergy” to Google Analytics or a fear of “marketing math,” you’re missing the ability to correctly diagnose what’s actually going on with your marketing. And that’s the cause of the all-too-common disastrous hiring of the wrong resources. If you don’t correctly diagnose first, you don’t know what you need. So you keep hiring resources and initiating projects that never had any chance of solving your problems in the first place.
Your Competitors are Likely Doing Data-Driven Marketing
We have more data now than we’ve ever had available on the customer journey — but too many marketers aren’t even paying attention to it.
With digital marketing tools at our disposal, you can follow the prospect’s journey through clicks from various media channels to your website. You can see how those visitors convert to leads or customers. And you should be able to identify exactly where problems lie along the way, and where there are opportunities to boost results.
So why doesn’t everyone analyze marketing results step-by-step?
Is it because Google Analytics sounds scary, like programming (or math) might be involved? Is it because you don’t know exactly what to look for or what metrics to compute? (Check out our 12 Digital Marketing Metrics to Track Regularly)
For most marketers, once you start looking around in Google Analytics, you realize it’s much easier to use than you thought – and you can get so much more value from it than you expected.
It’s Partly a Management Problem
Those who manage media channels or marketing campaigns may not be required to produce results reports (and they may not know what they should be tracking).
Management may not expect marketing to produce results or equate results to costs. And that’s a shame – for both the company and for the reputation of the marketing team.
Before the digital era, the excuse for doing marketing without tracking results was that you couldn’t track many efforts. But now, we can track every click. There’s no excuse for ignoring “clues” to diagnose how effective your marketing efforts are.
Correct diagnosis is the key to consistently great marketing results. When you correctly diagnose, you can focus your future marketing efforts where you’ll likely have the highest return. You know where to spend time improving or what outside resources you might need. (And you know what not to change, because it’s working.)
But when you misdiagnose your situation, you pursue solutions that don’t have the best chance of improving results. Maybe you haven’t identified the real problem. Or you ignore easy-to-fix opportunities that could really make a difference in results.
The CEO or the marketing leader needs to be the agent of change here. Establish the metrics you want to see monthly, so you can start to compare results month over month.
Make step-by-step analysis a priority among the marketing team, so everyone understands the value of analyzing the metrics you want to manage to.
The focus should be on correctly diagnosing exactly how effective your efforts are at each step in your conversion-to-customers process.
Excerpted from our new BESTSELLING book, “The Results Obsession: ROI-Focused Digital Strategies to Transform Your Marketing,” now available on Amazon!
Learn more about The Results Obsession and see the Table of Contents
The book goes step-by-step through Google Analytics to help you understand your website visitors, evaluate your content, and track effectiveness of your Offers and landing pages.
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