Decisions.
We make them every day.
From the trivial, “am I going to wear my Adidas or Nike sneakers today?” to the more personal, “do I send my child to a private or public school?”, or when it comes to business “should I be throwing more budget into my LinkedIn advertising?”, or perhaps something like “is it time to launch a branch overseas?”.
We are surrounded by choices daily and it’s important we have all the facts before we make any decisions.
For example: If my Adidas sneakers were recently chewed up by my puppy (based on actual events) then I would choose to wear the Nikes, however, if I was unaware and didn’t have this info, I may have wasted my time and made the wrong decision. See?
Ok, so maybe this scenario wouldn’t cost you too much time or money BUT our other examples could have much bigger consequences should we not have all our accurate data and insights on time.
Over the past 9 years of being in digital, we have been subject to a common problem. Generally speaking, tracking on a client’s website has not been installed or set up correctly.
From major issues such as:
- No tracking installed
- Double tracking installed
- Tracking installed incorrectly
- No conversion tracking set up, or only forms tracked but calls and emails not tracked
- Double data being pulled through
- PayPal or other Payment gateways receiving the credit for online sales
- Traffic Sources not tagged – common ones are visits from your newsletter or Social Media ads
To the less dire:
- Only big conversions being tracked. E.g. Newsletter subscribers are ignored
- Audience Lists not set up – as our path to purchase gets longer, we need to reengage with potential clients and get them to return to our website
- Cross-Device reporting not setup – did someone start on a mobile device but convert on their desktop?
- Demographic reporting not set up – what is the breakdown of gender and ages
- Search Console not linked – we need to understand our SEO results better
Either way, we are making decisions – whether for marketing or business – based on BAD DATA which ultimately results in BAD DECISIONS.
For example: If my conversion tracking is showing 2 conversions when it’s supposed to be 1 conversion, we would think that our website is performing better than it is. So, based on that we could decide we need more sales staff to close these leads and we could hire someone when we don’t need them… and 3 months later we’re left wondering why our Net Profit has decreased.
The reason?
BAD DATA caused us to make a BAD DECISION.
We could choose to ignore the data and continue with the assumption & guessing game BUT just imagine what we could do with GOOD DATA! Data that shows us where we need to spend our marketing budget, where our next pop up store should take place, the best time to run radio spots, what content we should be spending our valuable time writing, and and and …you get it? The list of possibilities is endless.
BUT we’ll tell you how to use data to make better decisions in our vlog later this month so make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel to get a notification as soon as it’s out!
