Ignoring Analytics: A Tale as Old as Time
Okay I’m just gonna say it: if you’re posting but not measuring your analytics, you’re wasting your time (particularly if you’re trying to grow your online presence). There’s several reasons we ignore our analytics (I used to when I was new to marketing, so don’t worry, you’re not the only one). In this post, I’m going to dive into your potential reasons for doing so (*cough* excuses) and provide solutions.
Problems & Solutions
Congratulations! If you made it to this point in the blog, you clearly care about the direction your marketing’s heading. I LOVE fun, consistent fonts and attention-grabbing logos, but marketing requires so much more than that to work. Aaaaaand that’s where measuring your analytics comes in. Here’s a few reasons small business owners tend to ignore their analytics and how you can…not do that anymore.
“I don’t have the time.”
So here’s the thing: if you have time to create content, you have time to measure your analytics. It’s about carving out time to do so. While analytics can be an all-day thing (there are plenty of professionals who are full-time marketing analysts), it certainly does not have to be. For example, I spend 30 minutes per week logging my analytics. It’s about making analytics a priority and a part of your regular marketing system (and this will look different from business to business depending on your bandwidth).
“I don’t understand what to look at.”
You’re not crazy; a lot of people avoid their analytics because they don’t know what’s worth measuring, how to understand the results, and how to pivot based on what they’re seeing. The truth is: what you should measure wholly depends on your goals. That being said, I unfortunately have no blanket statement to share here that tells you what you should and shouldn’t be looking at.
“I don’t need to measure my analytics.”
Well, it’s hard to believe you wholly feel this way since you’re reading this blog, but I’m glad that maybe you’re second guessing this belief of yours. You do not need to measure your analytics if you enjoy guesswork in your marketing. But analytics removes guesswork from your marketing by:
Giving you a numbers-based understanding of your audience (not vibes-based)
Helping you to make informed decisions about what precisely to create
Providing you with clear data about where and when you should be showing up online
If that’s not what you’re interested in, then don’t measure your analytics!
Conclusion
Analytics are the difference between guesswork and data-backed marketing decisions, but I get it. It’s frustrating to learn a new thing amongst all of the things you already have going on. Ultimately, the learning curve is just a small time investment for what will be a huge payoff in the end.