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As an entrepreneur of a small business, you know that marketing can make or break your success. To make the most of your marketing efforts, it’s important to use data to inform your decisions. In this article, we’ll discuss what data you should track, what tools you should use, and how you can use that data to improve your marketing.
The great news is that tracking data is probably easier than you may think. It helps when you only track the right data that has a pretty direct impact on your bottom line.
The first step in using data for marketing is to determine what data you should be tracking. Some key metrics to track include:
You should track the number of visitors to your website, how long they spend on your site, and what pages they visit. This can help you determine which pages are most popular and where you may need to make improvements.
The most important conversion metric is of course how many visitors turn into sales. But we also discuss the micro-conversions that can help get them to that point, so each campaign (such as a campaign for email signups) should track this micro-conversion data.
If you use email marketing (and I always recommend that businesses have their own email list), you should track the open and click-through rates of your emails. This can help you determine which subject lines and content are most effective at getting people to open and engage with your emails.
The easiest and quickest answer is the ones you already have.
There are many tools available to help you track and analyze your marketing data. Some tools are built into the platforms you use, while others are external tools that integrate with your marketing platforms.
Here are some tools to consider:
This is a free tool that allows you to track website traffic and visitor behavior, as well as set up conversion tracking.
You should always have Google Analytics added to your website, and best practice is to always keep the same GA account – even if you change website hosts, hire a new designer, completely move your website, or anything else. One account that follows your website through changes, so that you keep and can easily compare all of the historical data.
For even better results, you should use UTM links when sharing anything from your website anywhere else online.
If you use Facebook to market your business, you can use the built-in Insights tool to track engagement metrics and audience demographics. Most social media platforms have their own analytics or insights that you can access. Some only have those available for paid ad campaigns.
Facebook Insights aren’t quite as robust as they used to be unfortunately, and I can no longer access the same type of data that I found most beneficial. I actually pull all of this into a report in Google Data Studio (now called Looker Studio), so that I can more easily track the historical data.
If you use an email marketing platform such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact, you can use their built-in analytics tools to track email open and click-through rates.
A CRM can help you track customer demographics, purchase history, and engagement with your marketing efforts.
A/B testing tools, such as Optimizely or Google Optimize, allow you to test different versions of your website or marketing materials – including PPC ads or email campaigns – to determine which performs better.
Once you have the data you need, it’s time to put it to use. Here are some ways you can use data to improve your marketing:
By tracking metrics such as website traffic and conversion rates, you can identify areas of your website that may need improvement. For example, if you have a high bounce rate on a particular page, you may need to update the content or layout to make it more engaging.
By tracking customer demographics and engagement metrics, you can tailor your marketing efforts to better meet the needs and preferences of your target audience. For example, if you notice that a large portion of your customers are in a particular age group, you may want to create marketing materials that appeal specifically to that age group.
Having the data also allows you to double-down on those things that are actually working to move you towards your goals.
By using A/B testing tools, you can test different versions of your website or marketing materials to determine which performs better. This can help you refine your marketing efforts over time to maximize their effectiveness.
It’s important to note that not all data is useful for improving your marketing efforts. Some metrics may seem impressive but don’t actually provide any meaningful insights into your business. These are often referred to as “vanity metrics.”
Here are some examples of metrics that the CEO of a small business should not bother tracking:
While having a large number of social media followers may seem impressive, it doesn’t necessarily translate into business success. It’s more important to track engagement metrics, such as likes, comments, and shares.
And even those engagement metrics are more of a “vanity metric” if they aren’t leading to sales. I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs have told me that along the road to 7-figures, they’ve given up tracking these social media metrics – and in some cases also given up spending so many resources (time, money) on the platforms themselves – because they weren’t resulting in eventual purchases – which in the end is the ONLY metric that will keep your doors open.
While tracking website traffic is important, pageviews alone don’t provide much insight into visitor behavior. It’s more valuable to track metrics such as bounce rate and time on page, if you’re only going to include a couple of numbers on your data dashboard.
While having a large email list may seem like a good thing, it’s more important to track engagement metrics such as open and click-through rates.
I always say for social media followers and email list contacts, I would rather have 100 people that are super interested in what my business has to offer, than 1,000 who are not.
While ad impressions are good for awareness, it’s really only helpful to track those if your campaign is strictly awareness. And that’s an objective I rarely recommend for pay-per-click advertising … because you always gain awareness while still having another objective to the campaign, such as clicks.
While it’s important to track the success of your advertising campaigns, ad impressions alone don’t provide much insight into their effectiveness. It’s more valuable to track metrics such as click-through rate and conversion rate.
As a small business owner, it’s important to ensure that the data you are collecting is accurate and useful for making informed decisions.
The most important metric is sales. Yet a lot of marketing efforts aren’t easily directly attributable to a sales conversion – which is why we recommend focusing on specific data.
Here are some ways to determine if your data is good and growing like it should:
One way to determine if your data is growing like it should is to compare it over time.
Are you seeing an increase in website traffic, email subscribers, and social media engagement?
If not, you may need to adjust your marketing strategies to attract more customers.
It’s important to ensure that your data is consistent over time. If you notice significant fluctuations in your data, such as a sudden increase in website traffic one month and a decrease the next, you may need to investigate the cause and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly.
To ensure that your data is accurate, it’s important to validate it using multiple sources.
For example, if you’re tracking website traffic using Google Analytics, you may also want to cross-reference your data with your web host’s traffic logs.
Benchmarking allows you to compare your data against industry standards and competitors. This can help you determine if your data is good and growing like it should.
Data visualization tools, such as charts and graphs, can help you better understand your data and identify patterns or trends. This can help you make more informed decisions based on your data.
Like I mentioned, I pull a LOT of my online data into Looker Studio (and I’m sorry but I hate that new name … lol…). I do this for my own business and for many of my clients.
This allows us to create a quick overview dashboard to see and compare some of the most important metrics, plus separate pages for more in-depth analysis of each platform.
Tracking data is an essential part of marketing, but it’s important to track the right data. Tracking the wrong data can be detrimental to a business, while tracking only the right data can be extremely helpful. Here’s why:
If you’re tracking the wrong data, you’re likely making decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete information. This can lead to poor decision-making and ineffective marketing strategies.
Tracking data takes time and resources. If you’re tracking the wrong data, you’re wasting valuable resources that could be better spent on other areas of your business.
If you’re tracking a lot of irrelevant data, it can be difficult to determine what’s important and what’s not. This can cause confusion and make it more difficult to make informed decisions.
If you’re tracking metrics that don’t actually impact your business, you may get a false sense of success. This can lead to complacency and a lack of motivation to improve your marketing efforts.
By tracking only the right data, you can make more informed decisions based on accurate information. This can lead to more effective marketing strategies and better business outcomes.
By focusing on the right data, you can save time and resources that would have been spent on tracking irrelevant data.
By tracking only the most important data, you can gain a clearer understanding of your business and what areas you need to improve.
By focusing on the data that actually impacts your business, you can drive success and achieve your marketing goals.
Ready to supercharge your marketing efforts with data-driven insights?
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Vicky is the CEO and Chief Creative Strategist of Vicky Wu Marketing. She draws from 30 years of experience at the CMO level, the CEO level, marketing for Fortune 500 companies and multi-million and multi-billion-dollar organizations, PLUS strategies learned helping startups and nonprofits with limited budgets … now focusing on providing SMBs with effective and efficient marketing strategies – giving them access to the same level of expertise as the really big guys with deep pockets, that they may not otherwise be able to access.
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