In the A – Z of Marketing … A is for Analytics

At our last team meeting, in the pub, we discussed blog topics for this year. We came up with the idea of ‘The A to Z of marketing.’ Each week we will be blogging about one or more letters of the alphabet, each with a topic or two related to marketing.

For A we have chosen …

Analytics

Analytics are an important part of marketing, as they let you see how your website is performing. From showing you the number of visitors, location and language all the way down to what browser or even what smart-phone they are using. Analytics can help you segment your market, just as well as any survey or questionnaire can. It can give you all the details of your customers without having to burden them with answering questions. By looking at your website analytical data you can better target your market and this is vital in getting the phone ringing and bringing in the sales. The beauty of analytics is being able to see just what is working on your website – and what isn’t. If most of your website visitors are using an android phone or tablet and your new app is designed specifically for iPhone users, then it makes sense to change things.

Hopefully social media is a big part of your marketing plan, but just how well is it working? With analytics set up on your website you can see just how many visitors find your website by following on a link on Twitter or LinkedIn.

That’s not where the brilliance of analytics stops! If you have Google Analytics set up on your website, you can follow the journey visitors take. Once they arrive on your homepage, how long is it before they click back on their browser? You want people staying on your page for as long as possible, so if the information on your homepage is misleading or uninteresting how can you expect to draw visitors into a sale? Google Analytics has an incredible tool called the Visitor flow which allows you to see how people navigate your website. You can see where they go after viewing your homepage and where they drop off or lose interest.

We use analytics for the majority of our clients and find it a valuable tool for managing and measuring their marketing. It helps us build reports and liaise with clients on how their website and social media are working, it also shows them how well we are working at Appletree.

Do you have Google Analytics on your website? It’s free, so if you don’t, get it installed straight away.

Next time B will be for …?