Like a detective at the scene of the crime, look for clues to help crack your unsolved marketing cases. In this article, we’ll aim to demonstrate the importance of knowing which data to use, where to get it and how to interpret it.
Take the guess work out of marketing and use data insights to make intelligent decisions, calculate ROI and fix any issues. Let’s take a look at some common cases.
Case #1 – Is My Social Media Working?
Why Is This Case Unsolved?
There’s too much ambiguity in the question. What does ‘social media’ include and what does ‘working’ mean?
How Do We Solve This Case?
Get specific with what you’re looking to achieve from which particular channel and set that as a KPI. It should be a numerical value and good examples include:
- Reach: 25k people
- Clicks to website: 500
- Leads: 30
- Conversions: 5
- Budget: $500
Where to Find the Data?
In terms of ‘reach’ data for Facebook, this can be easy to find. Just head over to your ‘page’ and click insights from the top tabs.
To measure traffic through to the website, you can take a look at Google Analytics:
The ‘channels’ reports within ‘acquisition’ will bring the stats on how people arrived at your website. Click on ‘social media’ to get individual stats.
Most importantly, you’re looking to ‘measure’ your social media performance. So you’ll also need to set up conversions.
Tip: Personally, I set ‘conversions’ to anyone that clicks on my ‘contact-us’ page. Because, if someone has read my content then decided to click ‘contact us’, then the ‘content’ has done its job. I want to measure that pathway. Google Analytics is calling that a conversion but these are just leads. The people that visit your contact us page are leads. True conversions are when those leads open their wallets.
Why Go to All This Trouble?
Imagine a business spends $500 per month on social media marketing. They don’t know whether it’s working. Finding out all the figures seems like hard work.
If they get zero leads from social, they could either a) change their approach or b) save the time and money and don’t do anything.
If they get lots of leads, they can look to scale up. What is the opportunity cost of not knowing? Imagine not knowing that social media was bringing a 1000% ROI and not taking advantage. Criminal. This is the reason why diving in to the data is so important. You get the opportunity to see what is working and maximise your returns.
When Is This Case Solved?
When you can calculate your average cost per lead (CPL) from social media.
Case #2 – on My Website, How Do I Know Which Keywords or Content to Focus On?
Why Is This Case Unsolved?
There’s no black and white answer but with careful research, you can inch closer to what is optimal.
How Do We Solve This Case?
Use a variety of resources to draw conclusions about which keywords to go for. Take into account volume, difficulty, intent to purchase and relevance.
Where to Find the Data?
Google Search Console (AKA Webmaster Tools) is the best free tool for SEOs.
Search traffic > Search Analytics > clicks + impressions
…and make sure the date range is as wide as possible (90 days). More data = more accuracy.
If you sort this table by ‘impressions’ you’ll get a list of keywords that triggered the appearance of your website somewhere in Google, ranked by volume. This is the keyword list you’ll want to explore first.
Words with a higher search volume can yield the best rewards. As an example, we had a client in Immigration. They said they use the words migration and immigration interchangeably but on the website, they mostly used the word ‘migration agent’.
When ranking words by impressions, we were able to see that the word “immigration” had more than double the search volume of “migration”. Naturally, we optimised the website content more towards that word and they instantly started to get around 20% more traffic on their site.
Next, in Search Console, click the check box for “average position”. This is a nice little trick: Keeping the table ranked by impression, cross reference those words with positions that are approx 8 – 20.
These are your ‘near misses’. Words with good volume and close to achieving a high rank. Perhaps they’re hovering between the bottom of page 1 or somewhere on page 2 or 3. Typically, these words can be some of the easiest to rank for (you’re virtually there already) and these words are proven (by the data) to be what searchers are looking for. Gold.
Why Go to All This Trouble?
This type of keyword research can be done within a few clicks and the combination of volume and average position is a potential goldmine of information. Unearthing some keywords that have high volume and close-to-high visibility can help bring in traffic and leads.
When Is This Case Solved?
When your content comprehensively covers all the major search queries and does a great job from a users point of view and a great job from a sales point of view.
If you’re looking for some further reading, check out these other great Marketing.com.au articles: