Marketing Analytics 101: How to Tell if All This Marketing Stuff You’re Doing is Actually Working
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You’re doing all the marketing things. And it sure feels like it because you’re spending hours every week toiling over your ad strategy and finding just the right caption for your latest Instagram post.
But besides putting your heart and soul and precious business owner time into it, how in the heck do you figure out if any of it is actually working?
If you can’t tell what’s bringing in customers (or at least moving people closer to becoming customers), you’re basically flying blind. And while vibes are fun (we love vibes, we’re the queens of vibes), they’re a terrible business strategy.
Instead, you need to know how to read the data and analytics coming from the powerful online tools at your fingertips. Then, take those and convert them into meaningful and actionable next steps for your business.
By the end of this post, you’ll have a better grasp of:
What numbers actually matter
Which metrics are lying to you
How to look at your data without wanting to throw your laptop across the room
Let’s do this!!
Marketing is experimentation (but data tells you if it’s working)
We say this all the time: marketing is a lot like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. You try things. You test channels. You tweak messaging.
That part is normal.
What isn’t normal (but very common) is running experiments and never checking the results. Or worse, deciding something “worked” because it felt busy or exciting. Or because you got 2K views on a reel.
Sometimes what feels like it’s working just isn’t. And sometimes what feels boring is actually doing the heavy lifting.
That’s where data comes in.
Your data only needs to help you answer two questions:
What’s working? And consequently, what should you double down on?
What’s not working? As in, what should you stop, tweak, or rethink?
If a metric doesn’t help you answer one of those questions, it’s probably not worth your attention.
Systems you need before you analyze anything
Before you can review data, you need systems that actually collect it. At a minimum, that usually means:
Your email platform’s analytics (Squarespace, Kit, ActiveCampaign, GoHighLevel*)
Your website platform’s analytics (WordPress, Squarespace)
Your social media platform’s analytics (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube)
Your podcast platform’s analytics (Spotify and Apple Podcasts)
If you get a decent amount of traffic: Heat maps can be incredibly helpful. We love Microsoft Clarity because it’s free and easy to use.
If you don’t get much traffic yet: That’s not a failure. It usually means you’re either early or marketing in the wrong places without a clear strategy.
Maybe, down the road:An SEO tool like SEMrush can be useful, but it’s not step one.
One mantra we live by is “Use all the free things first,” and that absolutely applies to your analytics. Think before you use a paid tool. Most businesses can get by with using built-in analytics tools and the Google product suite. Don’t overcomplicate it and spend your precious marketing budget unnecessarily!
If you like data without the overwhelm…
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We send it monthly. It’s insightful, tactical, occasionally funny, and always written for small business owners who want real talk about growing a business.
What you should actually track (by channel)
You don’t need to obsess over every number in your analytics tools, but you need to understand the big players.
Big Bad Pro Tip: When collecting and reviewing any data, we generally encourage you to look at trends over time. I.e., review your website traffic data month over month instead of daily. Checking data too frequently can take you down an unhelpful rabbit hole and make you quite miserable.
And most of the time, comparing your numbers to your own past performance is far more useful than trying to look at it against industry benchmarks or influencers on Instagram touting their “insane growth in 3 days”.
Which website metrics matter
If you host your website on a site like Squarespace, you might have built-in analytics. We recommend that everyone also leverage Google Analytics. It’s a free tool that’s super easy to integrate into your site (or if you’ve got a “website guy” for that, just ask them to connect it for you).
Once you’ve got the tool in place, start with these data points:
Traffic: How many people are visiting your website.
Are people showing up? How many of them? Are there more of them than in the prior months? If traffic went down, why? Is it a seasonal pattern or did a particular page that was responsible for bringing in traffic suddenly lose its page one rank?
Bounce rate: How many people are leaving from a particular page on your site.
Did your bounce rate suddenly rise? Could it be due to a technical issue on your site or a slow load speed?
Time on page: How long people are staying on a page.
Are they actually reading or clicking around? If they’re not spending much time, why? Is the messaging not compelling? Is there no clear next step or call to action (CTA) that tells them where to head next?
These numbers help you understand whether your site is doing its job or politely ushering people right back out the door.
Email marketing metrics to watch
Email marketing is one of the easiest places to see what’s working since most email tools, like ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, and Kit, have great analytics tools built in.
Don’t hit the refresh button 10 minutes after your email is sent, but 24-48 hours after any campaign, check in on:
Open rate: If open rates are low, it might mean your subject lines aren’t doing their jobs. Make sure it’s no more than 7-9 words and is compelling enough to get someone to open. This is prime time for A/B testing. Try different subjects. Here are a few ideas: Use a subject line that’s direct and 3 words or less. Try one that uses someone’s first name. Put your brand name in the subject. Ask a question that appeals to your ideal audience.
Click-through rate: If people aren’t clicking, maybe buttons aren’t clear enough, or the topic isn’t interesting enough to capture someone’s attention. Consider minor tweaks like making the buttons or hyperlinks brighter, moving CTAs to the top of the email, or simplifying so you only ask readers to do one thing per email.
Unsubscribes: One unsubscribe isn’t a crisis. A consistent spike is feedback. And too many unsubscribes could put you on notice with your email provider. (Yikes! We want to stay far away from any email provider’s naughty list!) If you see a sudden increase in unsubscribes, try to figure out why. Was it an off-putting subject line? Was the topic inappropriate for your audience? Was your list just old and out of date? (In which case, an email list clean-up could be in order.)
These metrics together can help you gauge the approximate success of a campaign. And if it’s your first email? GREAT! Don’t let anything deter you. Keep going! If it’s your 100th email? GREAT! Don’t let anything deter you. Keep going!
That’s our way of saying, let analytics be your guide and help you test small changes. But don’t let one bad email keep you from showing up in people’s inboxes next week or next month.
Social media metrics (the ones that matter)
This is where people get tripped up because it’s so easy to go all 😍 over the vanity metrics.
Instead, look at:
Reach: How many people see your content?
Engagement: Are they interacting with it?
Conversions: Does it lead to anything meaningful?
Reach and engagement are fine. Conversions are better. And no, conversions don’t always mean purchases. Sometimes it’s email signups, link clicks, or profile visits that actually go somewhere.
A quick word on vanity metrics (and why they lie)
Vanity metrics are numbers that look impressive but don’t tell you much about business impact.
Think:
Likes
Follows
Generic “engagement”
These numbers can feel good and still do absolutely nothing for your revenue. If you want a deeper rant on this, we’ve got a whole episode and blog post on vanity metrics that’s worth revisiting.
The takeaway: don’t confuse attention with results.
Attribution matters more than you think
Attribution is the process of telling which marketing channel brought in your leads. If someone clicked on an email and made a purchase, the email would be attributed with bringing in that customer. Attribution is a tricky thing in marketing, and we’ll have a future episode that gets into the weeds on that one.
But the ultimate message is this. Don’t assume one channel gets all the credit.
You might think:
“That Instagram post crushed it.”
But in reality:
Someone saw you on social
Then read your emails for weeks
Then finally clicked from a fabulous email newsletter
Each of your marketing channels works together. Very rarely does one post or email act alone. But it’s still important to know whether most of your purchasers are coming from paid ads or your email list. And analytics tools, like Google Analytics, can help you figure that out.
How to review your data without going cross-eyed
Look monthly, not daily
Daily metrics will make you emotional. Monthly trends will make you smart.
We care about movement over time, not random Tuesday spikes.
Watch for red flags and green lights
Not every change requires immediate action.
Lines trending up and to the right? Love that.
Sudden dramatic drops? Investigate. Could be a technical issue that’s resolved quickly.
Flat numbers? Not always bad.
Context matters. Seasonality matters. A fitness business will spike in January and dip mid-year. That’s expected. The key is knowing your patterns and planning around them.
Make small, incremental changes
When something underperforms, your instinct might be to burn it all down and start over.
Don’t.
Small tweaks over time are easier to measure and far more effective. Big wins rarely happen overnight, and when they do, it’s usually after a lot of subtle optimization.
Give things time to work
Different channels move at different speeds.
Social posts give feedback fast.
Email funnels need weeks or months.
SEO needs patience.
If you don’t give a tactic enough time, you’re not measuring performance. You’re measuring impatience.
Test one thing at a time
A/B testing is your friend. If you change the subject line of an email while also changing the formatting, structure, and button text, you’ll have no way of knowing what’s responsible for the improved click-through rate.
If a change is so small it makes you say, “Is that really going to matter?”, we’re willing to bet you’re on the right track.
And if looking at your data is like trying to navigate the high seas without a compass…
We LOVE a puzzle/mystery/data deep dive. Schedule a free 15-minute connect, and let’s get to sleuthing together.
