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Data v Analytics
Before we dig into why analytics are important we first need to establish what marketing analytics are. Firstly, it’s important to understand that there is a difference between data and analytics. Fundamentally, data is just numbers and collections of information. Analytics is the discovery of patterns and trends within that data. Data on its own is fairly useless. You can collect it for years but if you don’t apply analytics, data is just data. Analytics is how we identify the important parts and the patterns, so that we can understand the data and, in essence, bring the numbers to life for a business.
More Than Just Numbers
One of the reasons analytics are often dismissed is that it is very easy to fall into the trap of treating them as just a part of your to-do list. Find the numbers, update your spreadsheet, tick the box for analytics and then move on. If that’s all you do, then you are missing the opportunity to use the data you have to not only understand your business better but also to use what you know to make more educated and beneficial decisions. I am a firm believer that good marketing will always be about experimentation. Testing and trying new things and harnessing creativity makes for good marketing. Analytics means that your experimentation is based on something solid. Do you want to make a guess or an educated guess?
What Analytics Are Important?
The ‘simple’ answer to this is the analytics that are important to you. You don’t have to measure everything but you do have to measure the information that you need to know for your business. For some businesses, it may be how many sales have been made on your e-commerce site and the average basket size. For others, it could be the number of brochures requested or contact forms completed. If you are a brick-and-mortar business, footfall could be important. The information that you need will vary between businesses and campaigns as well.
Combining data points and information is also important. It’s useful, for example, to know how many people click from your social media to your website but you need to combine that with your conversions. Your marketing activity may seem like it’s working if you see an increase in traffic to your website but is it still working if you see your conversion rate plummet? What if you noticed that a particular source pushes less traffic so you dismiss it and reduce your activity in that area but later realise that it has a much higher average order value? Would you still have dismissed it?
Small Business Analytics
One of the things I love about digital marketing is that for the first time, small businesses have access to the same tools as much bigger businesses. Bigger businesses may have deeper pockets and large teams, but they have access to the same GA4 as you do and the same social media insights. Smaller businesses are often time-poor, with much smaller teams and analytics can help you to make better decisions about where to spend your time marketing. It’s frustrating when you spend time building a campaign and managing it but see poor results. Arming yourself with information beforehand, so that what you do is based on what you’ve learned works (or what you’ve learned doesn’t work) is much more likely to give you the results that you are looking for.
When should I measure?
Analytics should be built into your marketing strategy from the very beginning. Whilst you can sometimes gather analytics historically it usually takes more time than gathering and analysing it as you go. Building it in and measuring regularly also means that you can spot any problems as and when they happen. Waiting for the end of a campaign can be unnecessarily costly. As a small business, with a more limited budget, it is vital that you can see where your marketing investment is working and not working for you. If you notice a problem with a campaign, i.e. you’re not getting the traffic you were expecting, it makes sense to pause it and make tweaks rather than waiting until the end of your campaign when all your budget has been spent and it’s too late to make changes.
In conclusion, analytics is important to every size of business, including smaller businesses. If used correctly, analytics gives you the insights into your business that you need to make the right decisions about where you should spend your marketing budget and apply your efforts.
If you want to know more about how to use measurement and how to build a marketing strategy, check out our Social Media for Business course.
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