Why Tracking Is So Important For Business Intelligence
Two of the key things that Ive been working on this last month revolve around tracking and data analysis. The changes come after some realisations during the COVID changes and how I see the shift in behaviours. Plus its better to know more than it is to know less.
What are these two key goals?
- Refining the Be Media tracking and Analytics setup
- Cutting my weight from 140kg to 125kg
You cant improve optimise and refine what you are not tracking. It's almost impossible to improve what you cant see. I think this is a critical message to everyone in marketing and business. At the agency we have had conversations like this almost weekly since COVID started back in February 2020.
Tracking your online activity and that of your audience is vital for building a strategy to improve your business operations in an uncertain time. Track everything or hire experts like the Mandalorian to help get you heading along the right path. Get your own Mandalorian trackers here.
If you can track it you can understand it. This applies to me dropping weight and to your business getting better at sales or better at paid traffic turning into appointments. The data never lies!
Some examples
Since late September Ive been on a covert mission. Ive stacked on a bit of extra COVID weight and working at a desk most of the day does not help. My covert mission is to lose 15-20kg to come DOWN from 140kg to 125kg and to build a better routine.
When ever you try to do anything online or with fitness there is usually a catch. Theres always something standing in your way making it that extra step harder. Trying to lose weight but Netflix is showing a new season of your fave TV show, building that new service you offer on your website, or trying to get better lead enquiry data but you don't have and tracking on your website.
You know all the important stuff that can stop you from taking action.
Most common problem I see for businesses that come to the agency is the tracking is not working correctly. I'll list out below some examples that we have seen in the last month of poorly configured tracking.
- The lead form notification uses an old email no one checks.
- The tracking is not monitoring all parts of the website & associated assets (blogs, subdomains, apps etc).
- The leads are being tracked twice and reported as total numbers.
- There is no confirmation notification being sent to the lead so they go elsewhere. The lead changes from a lead into a contact instead.
- The thank you pages are indexed and goal count is not correct.
The tip of the iceberg for mistakes. Now thats business covered what about my huge fumble in my personal project.
One mistake I made in my weight loss journey was to track the progress across 4 nutrition apps. I also lost the data from the starting point :( but thanks to my Girlfriend I have a pretty sweet tracking app now for progress. I fumbled the starting point spreading data across too many apps and not having one source of truth.
I'm tracking with the EasyDiet Diary for those interested.
Latest results down from 140 to 133kg. I'll have my target goal by the start of December or mid 15th or so December. *start weight was 140kg on a seperate app switched to EasyDiet Diary on October 12th.
Nothing to gloat about but its momentum to get to 125kg.
Much like my tracking mistakes above I recently worked with someone who was tracking everything in an old almost out dated in todays market Google Analytics version.
They didn't have the universal Google Analytics setup and couldn't understand the data not being correct. It took some convincing to show them where the mistake was even though they were given different instructions from their previous agency who told them month on month things were "just fine".
Seeing those old GA versions reminds me of Bobba Fett the original Mandalorian.
The first step is to give the client the bad news. Mr client the change to universal analytics tracking is a MUST and to do it you will lose some historical data. The positives are the improvement in meaningful business insights will increase 300% at least.
Ecommerce store owners see how we grew a beauty and cosmetics store from $400k annually to $2.8 million.
Not only did the above example have outdated tracking config but the goals being used didn't match their own business goals. The example I'll use is claiming that people who scrolled down to 50% of the page were a goal is not a meaningful business insight. Yes it helps when you are content driven but that wont create revenue for that business.
Speaking of content if you want to build a bigger audience you can do it by working with our reformed content marketing team here.
This can get overwhelming really fast when you DIY but if you were so inclined then just pick one thing to monitor to start off. Just pick 1 thing.
If you are a DIY business owner thats great I take my hat off to you. It can be hard doing all the things. The key message I want to communicate is understand the value of tracking activity across your website. The insights from this can help you grow or as we discovered in early COVID to see the new opportunities.
Businesses that have agencies doing it for them you can use this as a reference to ask them if they truly understand your unique business goals, and how does that reflect in your goal setup
A better business goal setup would look like this as a minimum:
- Click to call - lead
- Click to email - lead
- Form fill submission - lead
- Lead Magnet/eBook download - nurture lead
- Email newsletter list signup - nurture lead
This is the absolute minimums for getting clear about the attribution to your leads or revenue on your website. This works simply by identifying the sources responsible for the leads or sales on your website. You then want to place specific focus on marketing towards that source or medium and try to grow the leads from that place. That is as simple as I can make it.
The configuration of Google Analytics goals is our main priority when on-boarding new clients. The business goals must be reflected in the tracking setup. Creating a set of GA goals that capture the business goals is our starting point to providing value and ROI to our business client portfolio.
As a bounty hunter you learn pretty quickly that targeting is critical.
Now that you have fixed the mismatch of goals you can see that your website tracking is working. The actions that happen on your website that translate into goals that match your business revenue is a huge win for you. Also having the ability to see client retention and returning customers are what starts to make online marketing much more clear in terms of deliverables. We can track it and now you can see it.
Plus when you start making that sweet Yoda money business is good.
Once the tracking is setup and working the goals should now be connected to business KPI's things start looking better. The next step is improving the website for UX and conversion work to make leads turn into sales much easier.
When we do get it dialled in and working like a finely tuned machine it's a nice feeling seeing the results. Everyone wins in this situation and for many new clients at the agency they start to believe in online marketing again (some have been burnt by churn n burn agencies).
Building a relationship around successful partnerships is our long term focus. This also leads to being able to clearly explain the customer journey to our client partners who can now understand why we say tracking and analytics first.
Our aim with going hammer & tong on the business insights upfront is to establish a base measurement for what we have and where we need to be. Without knowing the baseline we cant aim with precision and would be working on gut feelings and guesstimates.
You shouldn't have to wrestle with 5 platforms, 10 spreadsheets and an elusive account manager just to know if your leads and sales are up this month or not.
The ideal setup for you is to have everything at your fingertips in 2-3 clicks. I like to have a source of truth for the key business metrics that influence my decisions to buy a business, buy a website, target a new vertical or hire a new team member.
The data doesn't lie and it helps me make choices that impact the business. I want this type of data available to me quickly and organised in a way that makes sense to running the business. If I had to flap through 10 tools and reports just to get the basics I wouldn't get anywhere. I want to be in cockpit looking at all the flashing lights with purpose.
Today, those businesses who are really competitive are the ones who are lean and agile. Making moves quickly based on factual business insights is what is working today. Businesses that have live structured business intelligence gives a greater competitive advantage than having a bigger team or bigger marketing budget.
This is just my quirky must haves for being lean and agile enough to pivot in a couple of days. The below is the output from all of our efforts mentioned above, building that relevant and actionable analytics tracking. It allows for better organisation of insights to be used to make actionable decisions.
The minimum business insights you want access to in 2-3 clicks:
- Your monthly P&L statement/report
- Your live incoming ??????
- Your live outgoing expenses ??????
- Your high level website performance metrics
- Your live goals and conversions
- Your advertising accounts live overview
When you have these at your fingertips you have a better sense of your business at a glance. You know the ins and outs and how you are doing without much thought. The data speaks for itself, you can make live choices as they are presented to you without needing weeks to assess the opportunity.
Things are moving faster than ever and if you hesitate you miss out.
My key takeaway
Track your business critical metrics, track what you need to know and have those metrics at your fingertips for reference when you need to make business impacting decisions.
My goal of dropping 15kg is happening Ill be at target weight by 15th December no later. ???
In the end you have to take care of the little green guy and be one that makes the big decisions. That is the way!
