Today’s guest post is written by Keith Perhac, founder and CEO of the full funnel analytics platform SegMetrics.
Most businesses give lip-service to the importance of data in marketing — and then spend all their time thrashing around with incomplete, inaccurate, or just unhelpful data. It’s crazy!
What’s worse, most of these businesses know their data isn’t as good as it could or should be, but still they don’t take steps to remedy this. They’re too busy putting out fires caused by a lack of quality data (and then starting more in the process).
At SegMetrics, we’ve helped thousands of businesses gather, fix, analyze, and leverage their data. We’ve identified four data mindsets that, once you grasp them, can revolutionize your business and really unlock your growth.
But first, you have to understand the problems that poor data tracking will cause in your business.
Signs that you have a data problem
In the day-to-day rush of running your business, it can be tough to step back and determine if missing or bad data is a serious problem — or if it’s just another thing on your endless list of todos.
To help you decide, here are three common symptoms your business is suffering from underlying data problems:
Problem 1: You can’t tell if your campaigns are working or not. Obvious, but surprisingly common. In an effort to grow, many businesses add more tactics (more ads, more channels, more emails, etc.) until they can’t tell what is or isn’t bringing in actual paying customers.
Adding more platforms and systems to your business only compounds the problems. (More on how to solve this in a bit.)
Problem 2: You don’t know where to optimize your marketing efforts. Without a clear view of what is and isn’t working, most businesses fall back on doing more of everything. This might help in the short term, but eventually you’ll run into limited time and/or money.
After you fix the low-hanging fruit, how do you keep growing? And are you improving things or just making them worse?
Problem 3. You’re uneasy about making big business decisions. And for good reason: you’re just guessing!
If you were making an informed, data-driven decision, you’d have a lot more confidence. And you’d know how to quickly judge if you made the right call. Without good data, you just don’t know.
Thankfully, these are all solvable problems…
A new way to think about data
At this point, you might be tempted to dive into your messy data, determined to roll up your sleeves and finally figure it out. Hold on!
To really solve this problem – and tee up your business for rapid growth – you first need to adapt a few, new data mindsets. These will help you shift data from an overwhelming problem or confusing mess into a strategic advantage. “Installing” a few strategic data mindsets will make addressing your data problems and unlocking rapid growth much easier and faster.
Let’s walk through each…
Data Mindset 1: You need to look beyond the top of your funnel
Most marketers spend months (if not years) mastering website analytics like Google Analytics (GA). This means learning all the technical terminology, metrics, variables, and quirks. But even if you master GA, it’s only great at measuring website interactions. This is a surface-level, top-of-the-funnel view.
What about the rest of your business? What about all the other parts of your marketing funnel?
Many businesses (especially e-com businesses) default to only looking at top of the funnel metrics. This is a major missed opportunity. If you can’t track the impact of your marketing efforts through every stage of your funnel, you’re flying blind.
Data Mindset 2: Not all data tracking is equal
Some marketers try to fill in the GA gaps by studying metrics from other platforms critical to their business, like ad platforms, email providers, and payment processors. But the data in these systems often disagrees with each other!
When you have multiple systems giving you different leads and customer information, who do you trust? And why?
What’s worse, when your data is siloed in different systems, you can’t analyze how different segments of your audience react at each stage of the funnel. Maybe you can calculate the conversion rate of your sales page, but how does that conversion rate differ with paid leads vs organic leads?
The solution is a data platform that connects and normalizes all of the data from your different systems.
Data Mindset 3: Data you can’t track is worthless
If your data is siloed and not looking at your full marketing funnel, can you even trust it? Google and Meta love to take credit for conversions, but how many of those can you trace to specific, verified, paying customers?
(Hint: Ad platforms love to inflate their numbers.)
The golden standard for data tracking is the ability to trace any piece of data – a click, a sign-up, a purchase – back to an identifiable individual. Don’t settle for less.
The more accurate your attribution through the entire funnel and customer lifecycle, the more accurate your metrics and the more strategic you can be in your marketing decisions.
Data Mindset 4: Only track what you’re willing to take action on
Once you unlock full funnel, non-siloed, normalized data for your business, take a breath. Now, only track what you’re willing to make a business decision about.
Even with better analytics, there will always be more data than you can meaningfully use. Just as you can get bogged down from too little data, you can get bogged down from too much data. This is much less common, but keeping your eye on the critical KPIs and reports for your business gives you more time and energy to focus on improving them.
Better data also makes it easier to focus. Once you know where to optimize your marketing efforts, you can dial up your data tracking on the important parts of your marketing funnel and dial down your data tracking on the parts that aren’t important or don’t need your immediate attention.
This data mindset – and the right analytics platform – will empower you to make the most of your data. You’re always in control.
Data Mindset 5: Get data curious
Finally, don’t forget to be curious!
After helping thousands of companies dig into their data, we’ve found that some of the most exciting growth opportunities come from unexpected correlations and hidden patterns in your data.
Yes, your data is black-and-white. That lead did or didn’t convert. But your data tells a story, and you can learn to read that story, ask questions, and uncover valuable trends.
To get you started, here are some valuable questions worth exploring for your own business:
- Which of your traffic sources brings you the most leads? Which traffic source brings you the most customers? What about revenue?
- How much does each touchpoint in your marketing funnel impact your revenue?
- Can you see which ads bring in customers with the highest lifetime value?
- How does your Return on Ad Spend when you change your attribution window from 30 days to 60 days? What about 90 days?
- Do you know which of your customer segments are the most profitable?
- Do you know which of your ad platforms are the most profitable?
- Can you tell which products your customers tend to buy together?
- What is the average length of time between when a customer first visits your website and when they opt-in or purchase? (You might be surprised.)
- (Btw, if you can’t answer these questions with your data today, you need SegMetrics.)
One of the most exciting moments in working with your data is finding a hidden profit lever in your business that’s been right under your nose the whole time.
See your business in a new light
In the past, businesses that wanted to track their data — and use it to improve their campaigns and accelerate their growth — had to invest in a full data team. That means hiring expensive data engineers to compile the data and analysts to interpret it.
Thankfully, platforms like SegMetrics automate all of this now. You can sign up for a free, 14-day trial from SegMetrics and explore all this for yourself, using your own data. We provide support to get you up and running quickly and answer any questions you have.
Don’t let incomplete, inaccurate, or unhelpful data derail your business growth. Take control of your data today!