It’s 2024 and there are so many ways to market your business. From social media to email and live events to collaborations, the choice is endless. So where do you put your energy? How do you spend your time? Which channels should you be using?

In order to answer these questions and make the right marketing decisions for your business, you need to sit down and analyse the data. 

All of the digital marketing channels you are currently using have some form of analytics hub where you’ll be able to assess the performance of both the channel and the individual activity you are producing. And whilst traditional marketing routes won’t have these analysis hubs in place, it’s important that you are collating your own analytics dashboard to understand performance.

Here are the three steps to help you get on top of your analytics:

Step 1: Start with channels 

It’s vital that you have a multi-channel marketing campaign, as you don’t want to be reliant on one channel and you also need to ensure you have a number of high impact touchpoints.

The first step you need to take it to analyse your marketing channels. Take a look at all the marketing channels you’re using and study their effectiveness. Are they reaching your target audience? Are you seeing ROI? Are they driving appointments? Are you just using it because you always have?

Once you know this, you’ll be able to determine which channels you should keep as part of your marketing campaign, and which ones it might be time to part ways with.

Important: It may be that a channel is correct, but your content is not working, so you may want to keep going with this channel, but look at your content before giving up on it altogether. 

Step 2: Onto the content

Now you know which routes to marketing are working for you, you’ll want to understand what content within those channels are the best performing.

Every piece of content should have a purpose, whether it’s to educate, to build trust or to sell. You’ll need a mix of these to effectively engage with your audience. What you need to analyse is which types of content within these ‘pillars’ are working. Here are some examples of things to look for in some of the marketing channels:

Socials – best performing length of videos / real bride inclusion / humour / behind the scenes

Email – amount of text / length / placement of call to action

Live events – Layout / offers / location

After analysing what’s working best and what’s not quite doing the job, you should aim to do more of the high performing content and reduce the amount of ‘poor’ performing content types.

Step 3: Doing the analysis

Whilst it’s not always the best part of the job (for some, others may LOVE seeing the data), it’s incredibly important to make data recording and analysis part of your weekly/monthly routine.

My advice would be to carve out a set time both once a week and once a month to record your stats. You’ll want to keep these in one central place, and record the metrics from each channel on a weekly basis. The key here is making sure you are doing this at the same time each week to ensure the results are accurate. Then once a month, sit down and review the data you’ve collate across the past four weeks. See what’s worked well and what hasn’t. You’ll then have the data to drive your next move.

Step 4: Take action

YAY! Now you’ve got the data to make the correct decisions for your business. You may want to focus on a struggling platform and give it some additional attention to determine whether it’s right for you. And the best part, you can see what’s working well and do more of that! This will mean that you know the time and energy you’re putting into your marketing is going to the right place and that it will in time provide you with a good ROI.

Step 5: Making it simple

Carrying out this work can seem overwhelming and can put people off. But it is so important to make sure you’re on top of it, otherwise it will cost you in the future.

We have created a fantastic Analytics dashboard which includes all the main digital and traditional analytics metrics for bridal retailers to help them keep track of their marketing performance.

Bridal Buyer readers can get their own Analytics dashboard download for the reduced price of £10 (from £25). Simply email eokstudios@outlook.com with the subject line ‘ANALYSIS’ and I’ll send you all the info you need to access the download.

Or if you want 1-2-1 support kick starting your analysis journey or want monthly mentoring to keep you accountable, drop me an email.