There’s beauty in the numbers if you know where to find it.
Data; analytics; ROI; reporting—yep, you’re already bored. It’s ok to admit it—we’re all friends here, and this is one of those safe spaces they’re always talking about. As soon as you saw the words, the little voice in your head started to say, “OMG not again.”
And yet … here you are. You’re reading another blog post on four of the most boring words ever put together in one sentence. Why? Because you know your business is going to live or die by them. You just need to figure out how in the ever living crap you’re supposed to use them. You’re in luck. You have me. I’ll break it down for you in what we used to call, “Barney style.”
Step 1: Remember that those four words are interesting to your client and that it’s your job to turn “interesting” into “useful.”
So much has been said about data that we’ve practically lost touch with what, why, where, when and how the data is collected. All we have to do is install a Google Analytics plug-in on our website, and we know everything. But, if you have data without analyzing it, the data tells you nothing. And, if there is no measure of return on investment (ROI, but you already knew that) then why were you analyzing in the first place? Whether you’re running the best call center that has ever existed (like us), or you’re running a client’s website for them, your job is to identify what’s important, track it and then communicate it in a way that moves their business dials for them. If you’re not, then you might as well just hire us to do it for you.
Step 2: Ask yourself, “Are we measuring something that even needs to be measured?”
I have witnessed “required” reports being created that were monitoring a campaign that wasn’t even active anymore. The campaign had been mercifully put to rest, but the client wanted us to report on it. If the data isn’t measuring a current effort, or you have changed key performance indicators (KPI), then don’t waste your time on these lengthy processes.
Step 3: Figure out what business dials you want to move.
At iostudio, we suggest you start with the expectation. Ask questions like, “What is the desired end state?” Or, “What is our client’s goal with the program we’re tracking?” A good example of this is our experience with the Army National Guard and U.S. Navy recruiting efforts. A lot of clients would be happy measuring call volume and, maybe, correlating that to marketing efforts. But for these two clients, good ROI looks like a qualified and interested lead being sent to one of their recruiters. That’s it. They don’t care about callers—they care about feet in boots. Pretty simple.
Step 4: Build your measurement plan around your desired ROI.
After we know what to measure, we have to answer the how question. The Guard and Navy both have marketing efforts across social media, live events, local efforts, custom campaigns and lots and lots of online content with a specific call to action (CTA). Many of those CTAs include chat or phone engagement. To connect the dots from those contact points to actual leads, our data analyst stays in constant communication with our engagement team. And, by taking selected data from all of the tools used in the contact effort, they can develop very good data sets surrounding the many different efforts.
Step 5: Read the tea leaves, grasshopper.
After we have the data, we measure it based on many variables, like demographic, time zone, qualification sets, clicks per page, drop off rates, disqualifiers, dispositions from telephony, etc. These variables can then be formatted into very precise reports for the client’s review—and most importantly to track the ROI of the efforts. And when you have a data analyst as good as ours, you can even build real-time analytics into dashboards for monitoring effectiveness and volume.
Step 6: Profit, rinse, repeat.
At the end of the day, if you follow these steps, you’ll have visibility of your marketing efforts, and you’ll know what each is doing for you. You’ll know what works best for your business goals. And, you’ll probably have some pretty good clues why, and those clues will be usable.
And, if the idea of data, analytics, ROI and reporting are still weighing you down like a 50-pound load in a 30-pound rucksack, maybe you should just give us a call. We’d be happy to chat about how iostudio can help you get the most bangs for your bucks. We might even introduce you to our in-house alchemist/wizard/analytics guru. And, if we like you and you like us, he can be your guru too!