What does it mean to be driven by the data? What is the data? Where do you find it? How does it drive your business forward?
What is Data Driven?
A data driven approach is based on analysing data with the end goal of improving customer experience and therefore achieving business targets and growth. By analysing available data, a business is able to better understand customer experience, business efficiency and make strategic decisions based on this information.
What Is The Data?
Historic sales trends, website traffic, advertising return, conversion rates, returning customers, click rates, average spend – these are just a few examples of what your data could be.
Every business will have different data requirements. An online retail store will have a different set of data to a services based website. It is important to recognise WHAT you want to track and HOW it can be used to make ongoing business decisions.
Where Do I Find It?
One of the most common places to look for data from your business is Google Analytics.
This requires some time and skill to initially set up, but once in place has the ability to offer you a number of different insights about your business. Historic data is stored within your Google Analytics account for you to make comparisons against.
Of course, whilst GA is the most common tool for finding and collecting data, it certainly isn’t your only option.
- Website hosts will also collect information about your visitors and their journey through your site.
- Previous P&Ls contain revenue and costs that can be used as comparison data.
- Return on your ad spend can be found within your advertising platform.
- Social media platforms offer stats on followers, interactions and engagement.
How Do I Let the Data Drive My Business?
Collecting data is an almost pointless exercise unless you are able to analyse it and take learnings from it to drive your business forward.
So, how do you use the information you’ve collected? There are so many answers to that question. I’m going to look at a few here, but if you’re interested in digging deeper, drop me a message and we can book a call.
Identify Drop Off Points
By looking at website data you can identify a common theme of entry pages and drop off points. Is there something missing on a common exit page? Maybe a call to action can be added?
Making changes to common exit pages can help you to keep your customer on your site and hopefully direct them to your target page.
Social Media Engagement
Statistics provided by social media platforms allow you the insight of what content your followers are connecting with, what time is best to post and which platforms work best for your business.
Sounds obvious, right? But so many businesses do not track this data. There are a number of softwares that post to your social media platforms on your behalf at a time scheduled by you; for example Hootsuite and Buffer to name just two.
Acquisition Data
Does it matter where your website traffic comes from as long as it hits your site? Yes! Knowing where your traffic has found you, tells you which areas of marketing you need to put some focus on.
Are you paying for all of your traffic? Your SEO probably needs some attention to get you more organic traffic and become less dependant on paid ads.
Do you have referral traffic? Is there an additional incentive you can offer for customer referrals? Word of mouth is known to be the best form of advertising!
The introduction of GA4 will take data analysis to the next level for your business. The current format of Google Analytics will expire in July 2023 so have your GA4 set up before then.
Did you know that GA4 set up is a service offered by The Numbers Assistant? If you want to know more, get in touch.
Whatever data you collect, wherever you collect it from, the data can drive your business forward to achieve those goals.
And if you don’t love data, outsource it to someone who does! We are out there to do it for you and provide you with the answers you didn’t know you needed.
