I know that small business owners have a hard time collecting, watching, and making decisions based on their data.
I’m not going to mince words here. If you want to grow to a place where you can compete in your industry, it’s time to stop making choices for your brand purely based on your gut.
Start reporting on your traffic, sales, social media, and email data analytics to make choices for your business.
Nine Times to Use Data Analytics for Choices in Your Brand
1 – Data will tell you why sales are low
If your sales are low, use data analytics to figure out why.
It’s not always 1:1, but there are basically two reasons why your sales could be low:
- Your conversion rate sucks
- You need more traffic
Start with your sales data and look at your conversion rate – if it’s below 2%, focus your attention on figuring out what part of your website needs to do a better job of converting people by looking at data all the way through the pipeline.
2 – Use data analytics to identify traffic spikes
Now, to see a spike in traffic, you need to actually look at your traffic over time, which we HIGHLY recommend doing – and we teach you how to do in Session 5 of our Bloom Your Brand Course.
BUT if you see a spike in your traffic, jump into your Google Analytics and figure out exactly where they came from. Where did they land? What platform did they come from?
Try to figure out exactly why your traffic increased, what did it, and whether you can connect it with a significant boost in sales.
3 – When your sales spike
BOOM nice work!
If you see a spike in your sales, it’s time to take two minutes to celebrate… then dive into your data analytics.
Figure out what caused the spike – did you improve your website? Is it a specific page? Are you driving more traffic somehow? Did you have a great affiliate marketing promotion?
If you know what spikes your sales, you can replicate it. You can also create a plan to capitalize on the new customers that just came your way.
4 – Data analytics will help you increase your followers
It’s good to know when your followers on your social media channels spike. The thing is, if you’re not watching this over time, then you can’t be sure when you do see the increases in your followers.
So watch this every week and when you see a bump in your followers, couple it with your posts within the week. Look at any hashtags you used, anyone you tagged, the imagery, and the content. Were you tagged in any else’s posts, were you shared?
Your data will tell you all of this information, and when you know it, you can figure out how to capitalize it.
5 – What to do when you see a drop in your email open rate
If your email open rate falls for more than a couple of emails, you need to figure out why.
We suggest working with Klaviyo because you can find detailed data about every single campaign.
Start by identifying potential causes of the drop in open rate. Look at the domain information of the campaign and see if one of the domain ORs is lower than average. In our experience, this is usually Google. If your gmail OR is low, then it’s likely that your email pinged their algorithm and you’re in the promotional folder.
If all of your domain open rates are lower than usual, then start running tests and look into your deliverability.
If your deliverability is fine, it’s probably got to do with your subject lines and your content. Figure out how to make your emails better.
6 – Seeing a decrease in referral traffic? Data has the answer.
It’s not abnormal to see regular shifts in referral traffic because of the 24 hour new cycle and sheer volume of content that gets pumped out every day on every channel.
But, if your referral traffic trends are starting to tank, look into where it was coming from before, whether that increase in traffic was worth it for your brand, and what actually changed when it decreased.
If your referrals are worth it and they’re tanking because you’re not working on this aspect of your brand, then you know your next step is to start focusing on this aspect of your brand a little more.
7 – To increase your email sales
This is awesome. If you’re running email marketing campaigns and you see sales coming in unexpectedly from one or more of your branded emails, dive into what caused it.
Did you put a link in a different place? Did you share information differently about your brand? Did you change your CTA or a button color?
Whatever it is, good job. Nail it down and do it again.
8 – If you’re seeing changes in your clicks on IG
Clicks from IG can be huge for your brand right now. More and more people are using IG for help online shopping.
If you notice that your clicks have increased, identify the posts that are driving traffic to your website. Look at the hashtags on the post and the content. Post that types of content more often and keep watching!
9 – Optimize and improve your landing pages
If you’re driving people to a landing page and you want that landing page to work, you have to look at the effectiveness of the landing page itself.
If that LP isn’t converting above a 25%, it’s important to figure out why – is it your landing page or is it your content? Or is it the audience that you’re sending there?
Look into how people are getting to your landing page, what they’re clicking on/looking at on the page, and how far down they scroll. Use that information to make incremental changes that will increase your conversion rate on the page.
Are you using your data to make choices for your brand right now?
