Feeling overwhelmed by all the data in your Google Analytics account? You’re not alone. Information overload is real, and if you don’t know where to start, it can derail your entire digital marketing campaign. With more data readily available to marketers than ever before, it’s important to understand how data shapes your marketing strategy.

We’ve put together a quick and easy guide to help you focus on getting the most out of your data in three simple steps:

  1. Identify your business goals
  2. Define what success means to you
  3. Calculate your return

Identify Your Business Goals

The first step to understanding your digital marketing data is to identify your business goals. Let’s start by looking at the big picture:

  • Is this a corporate or company-level goal? Are there any top-level initiatives that need to be taken into consideration at this time?
  • What are your immediate and long-term objectives? Maintain occupancy levels, attract investors, increase sales, launch new products or services, build brand awareness, grow market share?
  • Is your business ready and equipped to support these objectives? Do you need to expand your team, tooling, or expert knowledge base?

Now that you’ve identified your goals, you can use them as the compass to navigate the way through your latest analytics report.

Define Success

Before you can measure success, you have to define it. Here are a few simple tips to help you figure out what success looks like:

  • Determine which specific data points relay a message of “this was successful.” Remember, key performance indicators (KPIs) and success metrics differ depending on your specific objective.
  • Not sure what success looks like? Take a look at historical data — year over year or month over month. If your goal is to drive leads and leases, take into consideration your prospective tenant’s journey in finding their next apartment. Ultimately, you want them to call your business, schedule a tour, and then evaluate their options. From this, you can analyze call or lead volumes to get a reference point for comparison. This will help to identify whether or not  your past marketing efforts have paid off.
  • Set expectations for short and long-term goals for the next time you evaluate data. What tactics will help you  achieve your definition of success? If you want to sign three leases next month, how many tours and calls does that need to be?
  • Finally, identify the main KPI drivers that will help you measure success: new vs returning visitors, time of day, location of user, source/medium, etc.

Once you know what success looks like, you can key in on the specific data points that align with your business goals.

Calculate Your Return

Over time, you will be able to use your data to calculate both your return on investment and the financial implications of your digital marketing campaign.  As you analyze your results, think about these key points:

  • Monetary success | How are budgets being allocated and what kind of KPIs are they driving?
  • Consider your time and money | Is there data to support or justify spending time on certain aspects of your campaign? For example, if you’re investing  time into managing a Facebook presence,  do you have evidence that this channel is providing an adequate return? If not, consider allocating your resources to channels with better ROI.
  • Identify patterns | What is your most effective digital marketing channel or avenue? For example,  if you notice huge boosts in traffic after blog posts or features in news outlets (i.e. press releases), focus your energy there. Maybe you see a boost in calls while you run search ads, meaning you should consider investing more advertising funds there.
  • Look at opportunities | If certain channels (social, digital advertising, print advertising, etc) are converting well, look at other opportunities in that sphere. If Facebook converts well, look at other social media channels.

Data isn’t there to overwhelm you. It’s there to help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your digital marketing campaign so you can move forward efficiently and effectively.

Learn More About Marketing Analytics with G5

If you need help managing your marketing analytics, G5 is here to help. With over 10 years of experience in real estate marketing, we’ve got the expertise and professional tooling you need to guide your digital marketing strategy in the right direction.

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