Every smart marketer on the planet gets just how important data is in marketing.
But answer me these questions, and answer them honestly: Do you know how to analyze your marketing data? Do you know how to use your analyses to improve your results?
During his presentation at Call To Action Conference, co-founder of Orbit Media, Andy Crestodina, revealed that many data-driven marketers are not getting any value from their analytics. They tend to admire data charts rather than analyze the data and act on it. Unfortunately…
Pretty charts don’t actually do anything for you unless you take action.
Crap. Who else thought that looking at a few neat graphs in Google Analytics was enough?
Analyzing Data can be as Easy as 1, 2, 3
To increase traffic and conversions, marketers need to know how to interpret their own data and turn data insights into action. Andy debunked the myth that you’ve got to be Einstein to analyze your data. This is jolly good news for those of us who break out in cold sweats at the mere thought of number crunching.
He laid out a fool-proof three-step approach to help marketers analyze their own data and turn their analyses into action. It involves using the ever-trendy (but actually invaluable when you know how to use them) Google Analytics reports: Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversion.
Let’s dig in.
1. Turn Ideas Into Questions
What do you want to find out?
2. Find Answers
Look for a report that can help you validate or reject the idea.
3. Take Action
Take what you’ve learned and use it to optimize your marketing results.
By using these simple but effective steps, you can find the answers in Google Analytics to some of your most pressing marketing questions. You’re going to learn how to decrease bounce rate, rank higher in Google, boost reader engagement and increase conversions. Trust me, this is game-changing stuff.
Make sure you’re logged into Google Analytics and on the Reporting page. Let’s do this!
Audience Reports
Google Analytics Audience reports don’t just tell you who your users are; they also show you how sticky your website is. If you want to find out how well your website is working across various devices and browsers, this report is your new best friend.
Example: How to decrease your bounce rate using Audience reports
Sometimes bouncier can mean better, but this is not the case in marketing. If you have a high bounce rate (whether on your website or blog), then it’s likely that your content isn’t very relevant or user-friendly.
For smart marketers, the aim of the game should be to get bounce rates as low as humanly possible.
Using Google Analytics Audience reports, Andy shows us how to find out our website’s bounce rate across different browsers.
1. Ask a Question
“Is your website working well in every browser?”
2. Find the Answer
Click on Audience reports > Technology > Browser & OS. This will give you an overview of the bounce rates for users of every browser.
Select “Avg. time on page” from the drop-down list in the third column. This shows you which blog posts your readers are engaging with most compared to the site average.
Look for similarities between the most engaging posts. Do they talk about the same subject? Are they the same type of post (e.g., a how-to or a guide)? In the example, the posts with the highest engagement all cover Google Analytics. Hey, what a marvelous topic for a blog article!
3. Take Action
The actions are pretty obvious. Once you know which posts your readers dig, you need to deliver more of the good stuff. Invest some time in promoting these posts. Create and publish more content on the same or related subjects.
Conversion Reports
If a marketer’s ultimate goal isn’t to convert, then what is? Conversion reports give you valuable insights into which of your website pages or posts push people to convert. It may not be rocket science. But it certainly is pure 24 karat marketing gold.
Example: How to increase conversions using conversion reports
1. Ask a Question
“Which blog posts inspire action?”
2. Find the Answer
For this one, you need to have goals set up in your Google Analytics account. If you haven’t, there’s no time like the present.
Go to Conversions > Goals > Reverse Goal Path. This shows you which pages your converters were looking at before they completed an action, or goal.
Select the goal from the “All goals” drop-down list. In the example, Andy selects “Newsletter subscribers”.
This shows you which pages people were on before subscribing to the newsletter. Now click on “advanced” to add a filter.
Voilà! A list of the blog posts your visitors were reading before subscribing to your newsletter.
3. Take Action
With this valuable info under your belt, you can now focus your efforts on driving traffic to the posts that convert the most visitors. Andy recommends promoting these posts using social media, email or even showcasing them on your website’s homepage. You could also publish more content on your highest converting topics.
From Passive Marketing to Active Marketing
There we have it. A whole host of great examples — based on asking questions, finding answers and taking action — that we can all use to perform our very own analyses and improve the results of our marketing efforts.
Andy taught us that analyzing our own marketing data is fundamental to improving our marketing results and that anyone — dataphile or dataphobe — can do their own seriously valuable data analysis. All you need is a Google Analytics account and a no-nonsense approach.
As for the most valuable takeaway of them all? Inspiring marketers to not only act on their data, but also to adopt a culture of analysis, reflection, and experimentation. Now you’ve got the tools you need to become an active data-driven marketer; the rest is down to you.
This post originally appeared on Unbounce, and is republished with permission.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Unsplash/Pixabay.com
In-post Photo: StockSnap/Pixabay.com
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