I'm amazed that there are still marketers out there that don't have a screen full of metrics in front of them virtually every day. As recently as 10 years ago I would have had some compassion for this oversight, but today, it occurs to me that there can only be a handful of reasons why any marketer doesn't stay glued to their analytics. If you are one of the holdout marketers that is not measuring your effectiveness, it is probably for one of the following reasons:
Five Reasons to Not Look at Analytics
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You are exclusively using outbound marketing/traditional marketing methods, and don't direct prospects to your website.
Thoughts: If your website is nothing more than a brochure, and your advertising has essentially the same marketing information as your website, you may have good cause to not direct prospects to it. If you haven't tried inbound marketing and content marketing, supported by marketing automation tools like HubSpot—with its ease of measuring the effectiveness of your efforts—it may be time to consider it. All of your marketing efforts will undoubtedly show improvement when you start directing your prospects to a website filled with helpful additional information that will allow them to make a wise buying decision. And you will be able to see exactly what they find interesting and what drives their buying decision.
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You are not taking the proper steps to ensure that you get the most out of your analytic tools, so the data you are capturing doesn't tell you much... and you lose interest.
Thoughts: One of the most common mistakes made by marketers continues to be the use of their primary domain URL, e.g. www.AmazingCustomerExperience.com, or main phone number in their advertising and marketing. If you are doing so, it makes analyzing the effectiveness of each of your outbound efforts (platform, publisher, etc.) much more difficult. Regardless, if your marketing efforts are sending folks to a content-rich website (which of course they should), even if it is your primary URL, you should STILL be checking your website analytics. There still might be clues as to visitors' origins and interests. And your staff should always ask callers how they heard about you so that you can measure the effectiveness of your efforts.
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You have tried to use your analytics in the past, but you just can't seem to extract actionable information from the gobbledygook of data that your analytics package presents, leaving you unable to actually take action and improve your outcomes.
Thoughts: I totally get this one. It probably means that you have not used the more recent tools, haven't opted for the training necessary to use the tool effectively, or have not employed the right tools. The biggest reason (among many, many reasons) why we are such advocates for HubSpot is that the analytics are simple to understand and include actionable tips for making improvements. No more gobbledygook!
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You just don't have time! You are a busy executive with massive responsibilities, and there's just no time to spend pouring over the stats.
Thoughts: While I certainly can relate to this one, the question you should wrestle with is: If marketing and/or sales are your responsibility, what could be more important than spending a few minutes each day or week seeking insights into the effectiveness of your efforts and taking steps to improve them? If you are using the right analytics tools it should really only take a few minutes to gain keen insights. If you have staff you can assign to further digest the data, that's great! But resist the temptation to push the responsibility entirely to them. Spend those few minutes to get firsthand feedback on the fruits of your labors and the efforts of your team. It will feel great when you start seeing steady progress toward your goals.
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You don't have a useful, easy to use analytics package in place to help measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Thoughts: Undoubtedly there are countless analytics packages out there. Some are still riddled with the problems of the past, i.e. they give tons of data, but no clear actionable insights. Others though, can provide clear, concise, near realtime feedback on your progress, and in some cases, give you straightforward direction on how to initiate improvements. HubSpot's analytics, for example, includes things like: tips on how to improve your SEO, suggestions on how to improve the quality and effectiveness of your blog posts, lead tracking and CRM tools, email marketing tools, search engine rankings on the keywords that matter most to you, competitor metrics, social media marketing monitoring, etc.
A New Day
Historically, pouring over mind-blowing volumes of numbers, percentages, and terms that make no sense was an understandabe excuse to not spend significant time studying the metrics. But today things are different. Tools like HubSpot make it not only palatable, but pleasurable. There is nothing more rewarding than watching those measurements that you hold dear tick upwards because of conscious efforts you took to drive them there. If you'd like to explore HubSpot, and how it can convert you into a marketer who faithfully watches the numbers in eager anticipation, please let 30dps be your guide. I honestly can't tell you how rewarding an experience it is.
