INNOVATE - Adopting New Data Strategies for Better Marketing

Last month Google produced an essay on data you need to read

As the essay says, "the volume and variety of data has exploded. Data is no longer rare and hard to gather. It's everywhere and many brands can't keep up".


There is a wealth of information in this essay, and some good survey data too. If you manage a program, identifying the top three things most data programs lack is most important:

• Lack of confidence. Data storytelling is an art; it’s hard to learn and hard to do. Your team may hesitate to even attempt it. But if technology can begin to find and surface insights automatically, you're halfway to a good result.
• Lack of trust. "Why should I stick my neck out?" That's the eternal human question. Emphasize to your team that you'll back them up, and encourage them to keep a clear trail of the data that led them to a particular decision or hypothesis for an experiment. Succeed or fail, that data trail will be a valuable learning tool for the next go-round.
• Lack of time. Making the most of data takes daily time and commitment. Yes, finding free time is always a problem in business. But people who have zero time are guaranteed to ignore valuable data.

Here's the LINK

You may think you can't afford data analysis. You do so at your peril.


WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
There are many ways to gather data about your online business and customers. Constant Contact gives you a cost effective way to survey your clients. Hootsuite and Google Analytics provide data about your online and social media activities. This is an investment that will pay for itself many times over.

DIGITAL - Measure Social Media Using Google Analytics

If you’re using Google Analytics and looking for a way to measure your social media, look no further.

Social Media Examiner has come up with four ways to use Google to determine how digital media affects your business.

Verify Social as a Traffic Driver

Google Analytics will provide a look at the overall traffic sources that deliver visitors to your site or blog. Included in this report is traffic from social media.

When you see traffic from social media alongside the traffic from other channels, it’s easy to see the impact social has on your site’s traffic.

(Social Media Examiner)

This information can be broken down even further - into specific social media channels.

These reports can be found under Acquisition.

Attribute Revenue to Specific Social Media Posts

When you’re creating posts for social media, you can include links back to your site that Google Analytics can track, sort, and analyze.

When you combine these links with UTM tracking and goals, you get insight into how social media is impacting revenue. Depending on how detailed you’d like to get with it, you can set unique UTMs for all of your social media, per channel, or even per update.

Find Out How Visitors From Social Media Consume Your Content

Google Analytics will allow you to track three other types of goals: duration (how long social media visitors stay on your site); pages/screens per session goals and event goals (how many times visitors from social media play video on your site).

See How Social Media Impacts the Conversion Path

If your business or brand wants to learn how social contributes to something like acquisition or to know how effective social media is at driving email subscriptions, there are conversion funnel reports that can show you just how influential social media is in making these conversions happen.

Don’t worry if some of this sounds complicated. Social Media Examiner provides step by step, simple instructions.

Read the full article here.