“Set It & Forget It” Works for Rotisseries; Not Marketing
You will only truly learn what works and what doesn’t work by actually executing your plan—no amount of case studies, research or theorizing can substitute for the real thing.
Over time, you can tweak and adjust as you learn what works, what channels are ineffective, etc. Perhaps you find that different channels work best for targeting different personas. In your next campaign, you adjust your marketing messages according to what personas are most responsive to each channel. If, after a period of time, you find that email marketing attracts your target personas better than social media, focus on growing your email subscription list. The more data analyzed, the more knowledge you have to correct and enhance your marketing materials and messages so they are optimized to your target audience.
That being said, after confirming the data is accurate (for instance, filtering out your own IP address in website views), you can begin investigating the information Google Analytics has collected. Our advice is to start from the outlook of trying to answer a question. If you start with no goal or notion of what to look for, you probably won’t make any relevant inferences. There are some handy tips you can do on your own to improve analysis of Google Analytics, and there are also services like Quill Engage who will take your data and reformat it into an easy to read report.
Marketing should be an investment that creates value, not another bullet on the agenda. Properly collecting, analyzing, and acting on the data your website creates assures that marketing stays relevant, focused, and returns on itself.
"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning."~Benjamin Franklin
Thanks and be well,
~Your Friendly Animus Rex Team
Selling Alignment Internally 1 will be next in the Align Your Marketing Strategy and Business Goals Series:
Start with WHY | SMART Goals | Buyer Personas | Performance Metrics | Tactics | Tracking | Analyze & Repeat | Selling Alignment Internally | Determine the Value of an Initiative | Selling Alignment Internally Conclusion
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Animus Rex builds world-class websites and provides no-nonsense, well-considered advice like this to all our clients. Want to know more, or have a question? Please Contact us. We're happy to help.