How to turn data into decisions

Ready to move from analytics to action? Here’s how we’d approach it if we were you.

Throw those vanity metrics in the sea

Come on, you know what we mean. It’s all very well and good saying your Facebook page has 30,000 likes, but if you’re only engaging 1% of those 30,000 people, then they’re not the facts you need to be focusing on.

Instead, look at what your audience is engaging with – what are they clicking? When they go onto your website, how long are they scrolling for, and at what point do they bounce off? If they’re watching a video, how long are they watching for? If you’re on a platform where comments are common, then what are people saying – what’s the sentiment?

All you need to do is start thinking a little deeper and putting the surface level figures to one side. Once you’ve got that in place…

Turn that data into insights

You’ve got the right figures now – brilliant! We’re very proud of you, we know how annoying GA4 is. But how is that going to help you improve your marketing material?

This is where you need to do more of a deep dive into your content. Find those points where people are jumping off the page and make tweaks. Figure out what content’s bombing and kill it off. Cull any dead pages on your website that might be hampering your SEO.

Just recently, we noticed that users were only scrolling so far down our work page, so we tweaked the layout a bit to put more tiles up front rather than leaving more spacious design features in. Once we did, we noticed people scrolling much further down the page because it was easier to see what was coming next. (And yes, that is a cue to go look at our latest case studies.)

Once you’ve got the data, it’s time to work out the action plan – and stick to it.

Let’s get testing

Before you go dropping cash like a 90s rapper on your adverts, it’s best to start small. That way, you can see how your campaign is likely to perform before you bring out the big guns.

We’re big fans of blueprinting – taking a campaign and launching it in a smaller area before rolling it out to a wider area once we’ve refined it. This lets us test not only the graphics and the copy, but it lets us see how well the landing page performs with a certain audience, whether there are any dead zones in the day we need to address, or whether our targeting is actually correct.

While we’re always making necessary tweaks and refinements to our live campaigns for clients, a blueprint means we can roll that campaign out elsewhere much quicker – and often, more cost effectively.

The bottom line

Once you’ve got the right figures, be sure to actually use them! Learn what makes your audience tick and test it out before big spends – that’s the path to success.

If that all sounds like too much hard work, then chat to us. Our digital team love getting into the nitty gritty of analytics and UX to understand what gets audiences excited and what gets them spending. Drop us an email or give us a call.