On The Hill: Radar Hill Blog

One of the benefits of online marketing is the ability to understand the profile of your customers: exactly who is visiting your website and how they got there. You can see how many people have seen your website, how many impressions your Facebook page received, how many people saw your Instagram posts, which city people are visiting your site from - the list goes on. 

Unlike traditional marketing methods where you only had a general idea of how many people would have seen your billboard or heard a radio commercial or newspaper ad, you can track things much more precisely online.

While it may be a bit unnerving to know just how much data is being tracked online and how much Google and Meta know about you, this data is very helpful to business owners who want to take their marketing seriously.

But with the volume of data available, things can become overwhelming. It’s often difficult to figure out which data points are relevant to you, and what you should be taking away from them. With that in mind, let’s take a look here at how you can use this data to help your business grow. 

Why Data Matters

The goal of every business is to bring in customers, and online marketing is one of the best ways to do just that. It’s something that is crucial for any business, and that’s why you need to make sure you’re making the most of your opportunities. 

That’s where data comes in. It can tell you what you’re getting right, what should be changed, and where you need to be focusing your online marketing efforts going forward. 

There’s a lot of jargon and metrics when it comes to data, but at its simplest it often boils down to two simple questions: 

1. How many customers are viewing my business?
2. Are those views leading to purchases? 

Understanding this to can help you make informed decisions about where to allocate your marketing budget, which channels to focus on, and which tactics to prioritize.

One of the best ways to view all your website data is through Google Analytics, something we previously covered in this post.

So, What Should You Track?

While there are metrics that will be more suited to different businesses, there are a number of core metrics that will be useful to most businesses, such as:

• Ad clicks
• Average order value
• Bounce rate
• Device type
• Form submissions
• Newsletter subscriptions
• Social media engagement
• Time spent on web pages
• Top visited pages on the site
• Website traffic sources
• Website users

By tracking these metrics you'll be able to see how your marketing efforts are doing and identify areas for improvement. For example, if no one is submitting a contact form but you have a lot of visitors to your website, your site may not be optimized for your audience, meaning it’s time to reassess and update the layout of your website. 

There are even tools that track exactly where people have clicked on your website. We use one called Hotjar, which produces “heatmaps” showing which sections of the website users are interacting with. This is helpful for showing what exactly people do when they’re on a site and what they expect. For example if there are multiple clicks on a word or image that doesn’t have a link, it may be a good idea to add a link in that place as it will make your website more intuitive for your customers. 

What’s Right for Your Business?

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data that is available. On Google Analytics for example you can narrow down data to such an extent that you can see how many people from Vancouver are viewing your contact page after arriving on your site from Facebook, and how long they are spending on that page. But while that kind of granular detail can be interesting, it isn’t necessarily useful.

Figuring out what is important to you and the right things to track is more important than just knowing everything possible about your audience. And there are a few key steps you can take to ensure that your metrics are clear, relevant, and actionable:

1. Identify Your Goals
   Start by identifying the specific goals of your marketing efforts. Are you trying to drive more traffic to your website? Increase conversions? Boost customer retention? Each of these goals requires a different set of metrics to track.

2. Map Your Customer Journey
   This is just a way of framing the exact steps that a person goes through to become a customer. Write out how that happens and identify the key touchpoints along the way.  

3. Choose Your Metrics
   Based on your goals and customer journey, choose the metrics that are most relevant to your business. These might include things like website traffic, conversion rates, geographic location, and more.

Once you know how people are interacting with your business online, it’s much easier to know what marketing efforts to focus on. Unless you’re a large corporation, you won’t be able to focus your resources on every available channel, which is why knowing exactly where and what to prioritize is essential. 

Organizing this Data

If we created your site, you’re likely already receiving a custom monthly report from Google Analytics. This is a report where we have highlighted some of the basic metrics that are important for a website. 

There are also platforms that combine data from different sources into one report, for example you can see how many impressions your Google Business Listing received with how many Facebook followers and website users you had each month. If you’re interested in a custom report that goes into more detail or one that combines multiple sources, get in touch with us and we can help. 

Once you have a clear understanding of how your marketing efforts are performing, you can use this information to refine your strategy for better results. This may involve tweaking your messaging, adjusting your targeting, or experimenting with different channels or tactics to see what resonates best with your audience.

Ultimately, effective marketing is all about understanding your audience and providing them with value at every stage of the customer journey. By leveraging the right metrics and constantly adjusting your strategy, you can build a powerful marketing strategy that drives real results and helps you achieve your goals.