What Google Analytics Can’t Tell You (And How to Get the Info You Need)
Google Analytics has plenty of info, but not all the info. Bridge the gap between what Google Analytics can and cannot tell you with these tips.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
We’re firm believers in using Google Analytics, but years ago we identified the problem with relying only on Google Analytics to inform our marketing decisions. (Read about our Call Tracking case study here.)
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A Better Way to Calculate the ROI of Your Marketing Investment
“Marketers have access to data [today] that allows them to track individuals’ various interactions with a brand before their purchase, and better understand what role each interaction … played in the eventual sale.
This approach, called “attribution modeling, ” allows companies to attribute appropriate credit to each online and offline contact and touch point in a customer’s purchase cycle, and understand its role in the revenues that ultimately result.
Developing an attribution model is a gradual process. You can’t get there all at once. There are four key stages in the journey:”
Sales Renewal’s insight:
The authors lay out an excellent road map, but like most things in life, the devil is in the details. Sales Renewal, as Growth Spurt readers know, focuses on small businesses and the details are particularly devilish for them since they don’t have the technical & financial resources of the big boys.
Almost all small businesses rely on Google Analytics (GA) for the authors’ Step 1 because it’s free and will tell them what marketing activity to credit for bringing the visitor to the site (ad click, natural search, etc), which pages they clicked through, and whether in the end they converted into a lead or sale. The challenge small businesses face therefore isn’t “data in different databases” but the limits of GA.
For example, imagine a visitor who comes to a site by clicking an online ad, clicks thru pages 1, 2 & 3 and then purchases something. So using a simple attribution model, you might think GA will credit the ad campaign for the sale. It turns out, however, that it does not: if takes more than 30 minutes for them to click from page 2 to page 3, GA loses track and considers the page 3 click to be an entirely new session. GA will report 2 different visitors (the first who came from the ad, the second who magically started out on page 3) and so does not attribute the sale to the ad click.
Sales Renewal’s business model (sharing the risk & reward) makes us very big believers in ROI-focused marketing but it’s a very challenging thing to do, especially for small businesses. That’s one of the reasons, for instance, that we’ve been developing our SR Analytics system for 6 years.
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Sharing the Rewards & Risks in JointSourcing Works: Client Revenue Goes Up and Costs Go Down
Given that Sales Renewal’s JointSourcing is truly one-of-a-kind-there are no other Marketing General Contractors that shares the risk and reward-it is not surprising that it requires a bit more explanation than the familiar, fee-for-service, single-marketing-strategy (like PR, inbound marketing, advertising, direct mail, tradeshows, …) approach every other agency takes.
But numbers have a way at cutting to the heart of a matter, so here are three simple charts that show that JointSourcing increases leads and revenue (bar graphs in the charts below) while decreasing the per lead or sale cost (line graphs below). Note: To ensure client confidentiality, all chart data is expressed as relative to their initial period.
Manufacturer Client Performance Over 2.5 Years
During the 2.5 years from 1Q13 through 2Q15, JointSourcing increased qualified leads by 380%, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 87% per year.
Because of JointSourcing’s increased productivity, while the client’s marketing budget did grow somewhat, it grew far, far slower than their leads did. As a result, JointSourcing decreased cost-per-lead by 74% (-42% CAGR).
Our strong, long-term relationship with Sales Renewal has been critical to Metro Sign & Awnings’ accelerating growth.
Because I wasn’t familiar with it when we first began almost 4 years ago, I was a little unsure of the JointSourcing “partnership, ” but I’m a big believer now.
Sales Renewal really treats the marketing of my business as if it were theirs – whether it’s going to bat for us with a vendor on their own or how proactive they are in analyzing and continuously optimizing our marketing.
This saves me time and allows me and my team to focus on sales. In fact, we have been getting so many leads that we are hiring more sales people to close all the new business.”
— Tom Dunn, Owner and VP of Sales & Marketing
eCommerce Client Performance Over 4 Years
During the 4 years 2010 to 2014, JointSourcing increased e-commerce sales by 170% (28% CAGR)
At the same time, JointSourcing decreased cost-per-sale by 33% (-7% CAGR).
Working with Sales Renewal is a real partnership, I know the floral business and Sales Renewal knows technology, marketing and sales.
I’ve been a small business owner for 26 years and I appreciate having someone who, thanks to its financial interest in my success, is almost as motivated as I am to grow my business.
— Helen Halloran, Owner
Different Levels of Marketing Investment Lead to Different Levels of Revenue Growth & Cost Savings
While from the accounting perspective marketing costs are considered an expense, an equally important way to view them is an investment: if you want your business to grow you have to invest in growing it. While the Concord Flower Shop has grown its web sales 28% per year while lowering its cost per sale 7% per year, Metro Sign & Awning has blown past even those impressive numbers, increasing its leads 87% per year and decreasing its cost per lead 42% per year.
These differences arise from the growth vs cost goals each business had which during the JointSourcing Blueprint, translated into the breadth and depth of their JointSourcing Solutions. Metro’s is more comprehensive and includes all of the important digital and real-world strategies for their business with each strategy nicely elaborated. The Concord Flower Shop’s JointSourcing Solution is focused just on online marketing and as you can see from the figure, invests about ¼ of what Metro does in marketing. It is this difference in budget, scope, resources and strategies that leads to their different growth & savings rates.
For a more detailed understanding of Sales Renewal’s unique JointSourcing Solution, please see these JointSourcing™ in Action case studies:
- JointSourcing: a Breakthrough Solution with Stellar Client Results – a more detailed explanation of JointSourcing’s results
- Collaboration Leads to New Strategies, Brand, Site, Marketing Programs and … a Blue Ribbon
- Sales Renewal Corp. Wins Battle Against Google Adwords on Behalf of Its Client Metro Sign & Awning
- How the Concord Flower Shop More Than Double Its Online Sales and was Ranked in the Top 1% of Local Businesses by Google
Find out if JointSourcing is right for your business
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Sales Renewal’s insight:
Given that Sales Renewal’s JointSourcing is truly one-of-a-kind-there are no other Marketing General Contractors that shares the risk and reward-it is not surprising that it requires a bit more explanation than the familiar, fee-for-service, single-marketing-strategy approach every other agency takes.
But numbers have a way at cutting to the heart of a matter, so here are three simple charts that show that JointSourcing increases leads and revenue (bar graphs in the charts below) while decreasing the per lead or sale cost (line graphs below). Note: To ensure client confidentiality, all chart data is expressed as relative to their initial period.
John Wanamaker Would Die for This: We Now Know Which Half is Which!
There is a popular saying which goes “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Over the years, I have heard many a CEO/CFO substitute the word “marketing” for “advertising” as they lament about all the money they are spending on brand awareness and demand creation with little demonstrable return on investment. But those days are over.”
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Thanks to analytics, trackable phone numbers, trackable emails and marketing automation software you can now know which half of your marketing budget is working and which half is not … and adjust your marketing activities and budget accordingly. The author provides a few interesting examples of the old and new ways of marketing.
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Beyond Digital Analytics Metrics – Analytics & Optimization
In this post, Pere Rovira discusses COGS (Cost Of Goods Sold) and LTV (Lifetime Value), two fundamental business metrics that can help web analysts be more meaningful and influential with their analysis.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
This articles does a nice job of starting to explain why a typical off-the-shelf analytics platform (including Google Analytics) may not provide you with useful data, even though it seems like it does.
There are many metrics that are important for managers in a data-driven organization both tactical (cost per click, click thru rate) and business (cost per lead, return-on-marketing-investment). Your analytics platform must provide both types in easy to understand ways so that the decision makers can deploy resources towards the programs that will generate the most profit, not just the most revenue.
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