You’re practically up to your nose in numbers. You have notes on how many people are visiting your recently launched landing page, how many likes your company got in the last 30 days, and everything else you can imagine. It’s a lot. Now what do you do with it?
Let’s discuss 6 ways you get the most from your numbers.
1. Figure Out Where The Numbers Should Come From
When you’re doing research, you don’t just use one source. When you’re diving into the data, you shouldn’t use one source, either. What works for tracking numbers on the sales side of things won’t work for tracking social. Yet, it’s important to accurately measure both sides to understand your consumer journey. It’s crucial to find a set of tools that work for your specific business, to help you create a full picture of what’s going on.
2. Decide Which Numbers You Should be Using
We live in a time of nearly infinite data capabilities. It’s a good thing, but it can also make it overwhelming when you’re looking to problem solve in a specific area or understand a certain behavior at a granular level. It doesn’t take every ingredient in your fridge to make the perfect lasagna, and you don’t need every piece of data to find answers. Have a goal in mind – take what you need, and leave the rest in the fridge for something else. Weed out the irrelevant.
3. Make the Connections
Conversely, you do need a variety of colors to make an eye-catching painting. What matters is how you use them, how you apply them and how you put them together with other colors.
For instance, social data, sales data and website behavior go hand-in-hand. Looking for the content that drives social engagement and website traffic and seeing how it translates into sales is valuable to your overall strategy.
Remember that the best insights come from looking at overall trends, rather than singular occurrences. It’s the climate vs. weather analogy. If 500 people are leaving your homepage without looking at any other content, but 5 aren’t, you can’t declare success. Finding overall patterns in the data can help you discern behaviors and draw insights, which, in turn will help with long-term goals.
4. Be Self-Critical
It’s easy to use data to affirm that campaigns or initiatives are working. Confirmation bias is not productive in a data-driven environment, however. Don’t be afraid to find faults.
Remember that the data does not judge you. It’s a neutral party that objectively states facts. Cringing at a lack of traffic to a page and ignoring it doesn’t help anything or anyone. Going in and understanding where that page fits in the candidate journey and implementing solutions that help drive better traffic and optimal user behavior patterns does.
5. Create a Strategy
When you’ve weeded out the extraneous, compiled the relevant and identified the connections – what do you do? You put it all together in the form of a strategy. Every company has their specific nuances that will determine the best path forward, but common next steps include:
- Channel Optimization.Optimization just means using every channel to its full potential. If you’re seeing no traffic on your company YouTube page – use the data to determine whether to pull the plug and find a better outlet, change up the content, or better allocate funds to increase engagement.
- Allocation.Use the data to figure out which aspects need better allocation of your time and resources, which are duds, and which can be better optimized.
- Content Creation.Finding the right types of content for the right channel is crucial to driving conversions in any market. Focusing your efforts on replicating the effective aspects of well-performing content will pay-off long term – let the data lead the way.
6. Fill in the White Space
Are you seeing users get stuck in certain points of your funnel? Use data to understand where you’re lacking in terms of user paths and fill in the gaps. If you don’t seem to have any blatant gaps in your funnel, but are still seeing a low conversion rate, use your insights to improve the journey overall – making it more visually appealing, relevant or engaging.
Having data around for the sake of vanity statistics is futile. Understanding it and using it to create beneficial strategies that support your desired outcomes is paramount to your success.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jody Ordioni is the author of “The Talent Brand.” In her role as Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Brandemix, she leads the firm in creating brand-aligned talent communications that connect employees to cultures, companies, and business goals. She engages with HR professionals and corporate teams on how to build and promote talent brands, and implement best-practice talent acquisition and engagement strategies across all media and platforms. She has been named a "recruitment thought leader to follow" and her mission is to integrate marketing, human resources, internal communications, and social media to foster a seamless brand experience through the employee lifecycle.
