Do you get overwhelmed by your digital marketing analytics?  Many trainers, consultants, and professional coaches do.  There are a lot of channels to account for: email, social, SEO, SEM, referral links, etc. Trying to make sense of data from all the platforms that drive these channels can be daunting.  Trying to consolidate all the metrics into one tool like Google Analytics sounds ideal but can get very complicated and time consuming to implement and verify. 

This leads many trainers, consultants, and professional coaches to seek out simplified versions of the data through reports or dashboards.  While the motive is understandable, and even admirable, it requires a dedicated process of compiling the complicated data into a comprehensive and informative dashboard.  Anything less will oversimplify your data rather than clarify it.

Need an example of how oversimplification causes problems?   Recently a group of trainers were interested in how their personal social media posts compared to the posts to the company social media pages.  Compiling the data from the social media platforms data was going to take time and money that the trainers did not want to spend.

As a shortcut, the trainers requested monthly analytic data from their established marketing dashboard, Google Analytics, to get a high level view of their digital marketing efforts.  Since Google Analytics was set up to track traffic from social media and could be segmented to identify the source, the assumption was that it would be a solid data set to see what profiles were generating the best results, personal vs. company.  The data clearly showed that the company profiles were generating more traffic, about 3 clicks to one.

The decision was made that personal social media accounts were not generating as many clicks, so the trainers would scale back their activity on social media and invest their time elsewhere. A month later, leads had dropped by twenty percent.

What happened?  Oversimplifying the data meant that interactions on social media platform like comments or requests were overlooked.  Google Analytics was only compiling data from people that visited the site from social media links. It was completely ignoring any leads that were generated directly on the social media platform.

These lead sources were a rich channel of opportunity that suddenly was cut off because incomplete data was used to evaluate personal profiles. Upon re-instating personal profile activity and doing a more comprehensive review, we found that the trainer’s personal profile activity was producing slightly better results than the company profiles.

If you are going to evaluate an element in your digital marketing process, make sure you have a reliable and understandable data set to work with.  It’s almost impossible to get a comprehensive set of data from all your channels to account for all your marketing interactions. Be aware of your data’s blind spots and at least incorporate anecdotal for the channels where your data is not centralized. Simplifying complex sets of data is helpful to get digestible metrics. However, simplifying metrics often leads to oversimplifying the information which results in lazy and unproductive digital marketing decisions.

Analytics are essential for making educated improvements to your digital marketing campaigns, but only if the data is reliable. As the number of digital marketing tools expands, so does the complexity of the data. Minimizing your tool set helps minimize the complexities that can cause problems but even a streamlined digital marketing platform should be mapped so that you know how your data is flowing.

Most digital marketers run a monthly report of their numbers and then drill into any anomalies. That’s a great cadence for review but one that can gradually pull you from making accurate conclusions if the data is incorrect.

As an example, digital marketing platforms or apps like Eventbrite are often used to set up landing pages for calls to action. It’s not uncommon for digital marketers to forget to integrate that data into their preferred analytics platform (like Google Analytics) or account for the built in data for those tools.

This can pose a big problem. In this example, the digital marketer might only see outbound links from the website as traffic and ignore social or email traffic. They might then compare that fractional amount of traffic to the conversions they’ve achieved from the page and decide that the landing page is having an outstanding performance. So they re-focus on generating more traffic to the landing page which might not actually be a problem to begin with rather than page conversion tests (which might also not be a problem).

The point is that missing pieces of your metric flow can cause digital marketers to work on the wrong problem, or a problem that doesn’t exist at all. Make sure you fully understand how your marketing tools are collecting data so that you can come to reasonable conclusions based on that full data set.

The internet is a crowded place.  There are over 2 million blog posts every single day, let alone social media posts, podcasts, etc.   Even the best content can have a hard time standing out to a broad audience.  It’s often better to narrow your focus to a niche of the market to engage that audience specifically rather than trying to wade to the top of the content pile in general.

There are several different ways to target a niche. 

Type of Business

Do you have a target client that fits a specific kind of business?  Focus your content on that specific subset.  For example, we tend to work with B-to-B trainers, consultants, and professional coaches, so we create content that focuses on problems and tactics that small to mid-size firms encounter.

Industry

Is there a specific industry that you serve?  For instance, we often work with sales and leadership development training firms and will often use those industries as examples in our content.

Service

Can you narrow down what you are offering your audience? As the internet grows, it is difficult to be all things to even a specifically targeted group.  For instance we focus on email marketing, social media marketing, content creation, SEO, and web development so our content is almost always specific to tactics for one of these categories.

Defining your niche doesn’t mean you have to always keep within those categories but it’s best not to stray too far.  For instance, we provide video editing in certain cases where a client needs the service but doesn’t warrant having a dedicated provider. Just because it’s something that we provide here and there does not make it core service, so we don’t target video editing techniques in our digital marketing channels. 

It also doesn’t mean that other opportunities outside your target focus won’t be generated.  We work with several non-consultant firms and consultants for things other than sales and leadership that see the application of the same techniques in their business.

Building up an interested audience is critical to get the focus necessary to generate business opportunities.  That is much easier to do with a targeted message that speaks specifically to a certain demographic (your target clients) rather than trying to cover everything and hope the right people notice.

It’s becoming increasingly common for people to say that their business is a digital or technology company regardless of the industry, product, or service they offer.  To be honest, this statement often rings hollow when reviewing their digital capabilities. There’s many companies, big and small, claiming to be “technology companies” that aren’t particularly adept with technology. Undeniably technology is becoming more and more prevalent but it’s important that digital marketing stays focused on the content or services that drives value for clients.

Many trainers, consultants, and professional coaches are following this trend of categorizing themselves by how their content is delivered rather than by the content they offer. Even if you have a sophisticated interactive webinar training series or best-in-class online learning platform, the material being delivered via those digital channels is what drives the value, not the channels themselves. 

It’s fine to highlight digital benefits or technical conveniences, but those things are not going to increase engagement on their own. The best technology tends to be platforms and processes that go unnoticed.  That’s the ideal scenario where clients and prospects enjoy the benefits of your technical delivery without thinking or struggling with it.  If you are using technology as a diffentiator, focus on how it delivers your valuable content seamlessly rather than the technology itself.  Your digital systems won’t mind being an unsung hero.

Image Courtesy of gleonhard / flickr.com

“Immediately” has become the expected time frame for online inquiries and requests.  Calls to action are no exception.  If a user submits their payment and/or personal information then they expect to promptly receive what was offered.  And, for the most part, digital marketers and the tools they use have evolved to meet this timeline.  Auto responders and customized fulfillment pages are now commonly at the ready to fulfill online requests.  So does that mean that calls to action now HAVE to be available immediately?

To some extent the answer is yes.  But that doesn’t mean that CTA’s that can’t be delivered immediately have to be abandoned.

For example, free physical events or briefings used to be a mainstay offer for many trainers, consultants, and professional coaches.  These events gave a sample of training so that prospects can get a taste of what training is like. However, the inconvenience of actually going to an event and needing to wait for the content is a legitimate detriment to some users and has made filling a room more difficult than it was in the past.

So in person events are no longer an effective call to action?  Not necessarily, but the offer likely needs to be modified.

One obvious option is to deliver a webinar rather than an in-person event.  While the prospect still needs to wait to get the content, they can do so from the convenience of their home or office. If the session is recorded, it has the added benefit of being an on demand offer after the webinar takes place.

For many trainers, however, a webinar is often a pale imitation of delivering their content in person. So another option would be to expand what’s included in the event.  If prospects need to physically come to a location and wait for the content, make sure the event is worth the inconvenience.  Offer robust topics so that prospects feel more like clients than just getting a sample. In many cases, this becomes a fee based event but the added value can be emphasized in the marketing materials.

If smaller in-person events are still an effective offer to your marketing campaign, there’s no reason to stop doing them just to offer more immediacy.  However, you might offer some immediacy in how the event is delivered.  An immediate registration confirmation is a given.  But how about reminders?  Use the slower delivery time to your advantage by offering reminders with content associated to the event so that anticipation builds rather than the added steps feeling like a chore.

There’s no doubt that online users default to expecting on demand delivery.  While catering to that expectation is necessary for many CTA’s, it’s simply not possible in all cases.  For CTA’s that can’t be delivered immediately, make sure to have some intermediate steps to bridge the gap from opt in to delivery.