HOW TO USE DATA & ANALYTICS TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS
(NOT EMOTIONS)
As entrepreneurs and small-business owners, we tend to be emotionally invested in our businesses, which is completely normal. Today I want to challenge you to start using data and analytics to grow your business, and stop making decisions based on emotions. It’s easy to measure your worth on social media thinking about how many followers you have, or likes on your posts – or even get down on yourself for your email subscribers list not growing as fast as you’d like. But I want to tell you now that focusing on the emotional side of your metrics will not bring you any business growth or progress.
Instead, I invite you to let go of emotions, put on your CEO hat and dive into your data with excitement and determination. Your data and analytics are not something you need to be afraid of – being aware of your metrics is powerful as it allows you to see your business from a calculated perspective, learn about what your audience wants and make informed decisions to grow and market your business. Without knowing your brand’s analytics, you are flying blind – especially when it comes to growing your brand and business online. The beauty with digital marketing is that we are all given the same tools and opportunities to leverage them. The key is to take the time and energy to learn and apply the knowledge to your business!
I want to guide you through the top 3 things you need to set up now to start tracking your brand’s metrics to grow your business.
INSTALL GOOGLE ANALYTICS ON YOUR WEBSITE
This may seem like a no-brainer, but I’m still shocked to see how many entrepreneurs do not have Google Analytics set up and connected to their website. It’s incredibly easy to do – all you have to do is go to the Google Analytics site and then follow the steps to connect to your domain name. This is not something your web designer does by default, you need to either request it or set it up yourself. By having Google Analytics installed on your website, you will be able to see crucial data about how your visitors and finding and interacting with your website. You can see things such as how many users, which pages and screens get the most views, how much time people spend on certain pages, what sources are driving people to your website (direct, organic search, social or referrals). Having this information is incredibly important to monitor the success of your campaigns, for instance if you do certain promotions on social media, you want to see the effectiveness of your efforts in driving traffic onto certain pages of your website. Yes conversions are sales will show you results, but the entire data is incredibly valuable as you make your decisions forward.
2. CREATE A GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE ACCOUNT
A lot of entrepreneurs forget this step of the analytics process, and it is to start measuring your site’s search traffic and performance via the Google Search Console Website. It’s a free tool that will prove to be invaluable for anyone needing to fix site issues and really make their website rank higher in search results. The most amazing thing about the Search Console is being able to see what queries people are putting into search engines that ultimately lead to your website showing up in search results. You’ll be able to see your total impressions as well as the clicks based on those impressions. This is important because you can tell based on this data what the main keywords potential customers are typing to find you and how you can apply these to your advantage when using keywords in the copy of your website, or overall content marketing. You can also then make decisions based on your Click Through Rate for certain keywords and site pages – so you can improve your rankings. Google Search Console will also provide you with a summary of your site’s most popular content and referral sites that viewers are clicking on to end up on your website. Incredible data to help you make intelligent moves forward.
3. DO MONTHLY OR BI-WEEKLY SOCIAL MEDIA DATA REPORTS
The next thing I invite you to do is to ensure you are keeping up with your social media data. I think what matters most when planning out your social media content, is not just your interactions on the front end, but for you to look at the social plan as a whole and understand what content your audience is most interested in and resonating with. You will be able to step back, let go of your emotions and really see what types of content and posts do better than others and then be able to adjust your content marketing strategy accordingly. Less about “Oh I didn’t get as many likes on this post vs yesterdays” – and more like “Ok I see a pattern this past month with our Stories and the overall engagement is happening more on this form of content, so I need to be more active on my stories and perhaps less on Reels – Let’s test it out and look at the data next month.” Same goes for Pinterest or Facebook, Tik tok, you really want to make sure you are spending your time and energy on the right platforms for you – and really developing a strategy that grows both your audience and your end goal : turning your audience into clients!
Those are our first 3 steps ALL entrepreneurs should be doing to start tracking their data and analytics to grow their business! I invite you to really start falling in love with numbers, enjoy the process. Don’t let it intimidate you. If ever you need assistance in any way when it comes to designing your website, branding or developing your brand growth or content marketing strategy – reach out to us by contacting us here. We would love to work with you and help you grow your business.
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Hope this helps you in your search, remember you can always write us with any questions you may have, or to help you get started in pairing you with the righ Virtual Assistant for your team. Learn more here.
xo The BLOOM team