Chapter 5: Paralysis of NO Analysis
Remember the old saying “paralysis of analysis,” referring to analyzing something so much that you never take action? Well, you can also get paralyzed by not analyzing data to see if what you’re doing is working or not.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of analyzing reams of data, especially for a small business. But I absolutely believe in tracking the results of your marketing campaigns to gauge your success and plan future efforts.
A tremendous benefit of the digital marketing age is that almost everything you do can be tracked and used to improve your campaigns for better results. What good is all this flashy techy stuff if you can’t use it to make more money right?
Here’s my philosophy about analyzing marketing campaigns for a small business. It is essential to do it, but keep it simple. It’s easy to get wrapped up in pages of data and lose sight of your objective. Most small businesses I know don’t have a marketing department with MBAs and MMAs sitting around analyzing reports! Spending money on a bunch of disorganized “shotgun style” mobile marketing efforts just because it’s the latest marketing fad is just foolish. It doesn’t have to be expensive! You can either do it yourself or hire a pro with experience building and managing successful mobile marketing campaigns for small businesses.
I like examples so let’s show one; you decide to run a text message marketing campaign and offer customers a discount for a specified amount of time. You can track how many messages you send, who you send them to, how many of the messages are opened, and how many customers take advantage of the discount. If you design the campaign properly you can even extrapolate out how much your business increased from offering the discount. Maybe you’re not happy with the results and you try adjusting the campaign by changing the offer, and see what happens. If the results are better you stick with the change. If not, you can try a different idea. Every business and its customer base are different so results vary.
The most important thing is to track at least a minimum portion of your results, analyze them, adjust, and repeat. It’s a process that takes effort and consistency but yields very good results when done properly. NOTE: Any good, reputable consultant or agency will require a plan like this at least on a monthly basis. You want that.