Measuring, monitoring, tracking, and testing metrics often get overlooked by companies and we have been often surprised when marketing departments look in confusion when asked for metrics reports. What is even more confusing is that drawing a metric report is not only incredibly easy, but it is extremely useful for you and your business.
So, we put together a few insights into how you can practically go about tracking your marketing efforts. We unpacked what you should look out for, where to gather your information and how you can effectively use it in your business.
Let’s get started.
Make Use of External Automation Tools and Platforms
If you are running a business and the marketing department single-handedly, our first advice would be to get yourself some automation tools. Luckily, there are tons out there for almost everything in your marketing department. From social posting and content creation to email creation and management.
Not only do they reduce your risk of errors and mistakes being made, but they also reduce the amount of time that you spend on each task. Aside from this, they will also give you some great insights into statistics of how your posts and campaigns are doing.
For example, let’s say you are trying to increase your follower count on Instagram, you might want to consider using a growth tool. However, be careful which one you choose. Social Meep, for instance, might get you banned from Instagram, so you should find an alternative that focuses on organic growth.
Use Your Own Social and Email Platforms
The thing is, even if you don’t buy yourself into an automation tool, you can actually check for yourself. Where do you think they got the information from after all?
The first thing you need to do is ensure that you have business accounts set up on all of the platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even WhatsApp. From there, go through “Insights” and start exploring what is actually going on on your page. You can track various metrics on the pages, from engagement on the post to click-throughs, likes, follows, conversions, and opens.
Remember though, you actually want real people, real fans, and real followers. You want to build up a community rather than just followers and likes. In a lot of cases, brands with thousands of followers usually have tons of bots that like and comment.
You want real, organic people who are actually interested in buying your products and services. So, we highly recommend looking at your followers and cleaning any that seem like bots. From there, track how well the campaigns are doing based on those metrics.
Get Started With Google Analytics
This is an absolutely essential tool for your business. Getting metrics and insights from your social channels is one thing, but knowing what is happening on your website is another completely.
You will want to know how much traffic is coming to your site, what it is doing, how it is behaving, and where it is going.
What do we mean by this? Well, Google Analytics allows you to see how much traffic comes in on a daily basis and actually shows you where it is coming from. Is it organic? Did it come from Facebook?
From there, you can see where it goes on your site. Is it landing on a page and bouncing from there after reading your blog post? Or, is it starting to move on through the sales funnel? Where in the sales funnel does it get stuck?
You will be able to see all of this information on the Google Analytics dashboard. It might take a while to work out how to use it, and you will need to work out how to create your links effectively. But, when you combine this with your channel metrics, you will start to get an idea of what is happening on your site.
Utilize This Information to Improve the Business
And this moves us on to the next point.
Why should you be going through all of this?
Well, the fact is that all of this information can show you what is working in your business and what isn’t. That campaign that you launched last week. How successful was it? How many conversions did you really get from it?
This will help you plan and create campaigns in the future. Use this knowledge to see what people respond to and what falls flat.
Bottom Line
It is important to know that report reading and gathering enough information to take action actually takes time. In fact, it will most likely take a few months. You will notice fluctuations in traffic, but slowly you will see what works and what brings in the traffic.