How to visualize your customers' multi-channel lives: Part 1
There are unlimited number of analytics platforms - so many that it can be extremely overwhelming. Even to those who are used to tracking their website traffic or how their emails are performing, the difficult part is understanding which platforms to use and how to cross-reference this data.
It's all about story-telling! Data and analytics are really just trying to tell you a story. It's up to you to create a process to piece it together.
How do you write a story/paper? You most likely write an outline, add some bulleted notes and then add in the detailed information. That's what we're going to do with data! This 2 part series will help you map out your customer journey (outline), align marketing channels and their objectives to each stage in the journey (bulleted list) and then add in the metrics (detailed list).
Part 1: Figuring out which platforms you are tracking analytics for
Part 2: Understanding which metrics are important for each channel
Most people already have an idea of all the platforms they are using, but if you are anything like me, writing it down always helps to visualize and plan! There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to mapping out your analytics systems so I will take you step by step through the process. If you have any other questions, feel free to leave a comment below or send over an email to sailusha@unicorncx.com.
Now, let's get started! Part one will be focusing on setting yourself up for success by mapping out which platforms you will need to track analytics for.
It’s all about the customers
We all know that for a business to succeed, it has to be customer-centric. From the beginning, your mission, vision, strategy, advertising, etc. is all based on the value you want to provide your customers. Why not apply the same methodology to your analytics strategy? Start by really thinking of who your customers are, how they find your website/online services and how they interact with your business. Use this information to create a customer buyer journey.
Depending on the type of business you run, "buyer" can mean something different.
For e-commerce companies, buyer is of course someone who purchases a product
For a service based company, buyer can mean someone who signs up for a consultation
For a blogger, buyer can be someone who signs up for a newsletter
Write out each stage in your customers' buyer journey. This can be as complicated or as simple as you would like. The number of stages can depend on the complexity of your marketing strategies or how many touch points your customers go through before completing a "purchase." This is the first step in helping you piece together your story. Think of this as creating the outline for your story, so that later it is easier to fill in each section with more details. See some example journeys for each type of business below:
Service based/E-commerce customer buyer journey
Research & discover: How does your audience find your services or products?
Engage: Are there any opportunities for your audience to learn more about your business and interact with a community (ex: sign up for blog, join a Facebook group, sign up for an e-book, etc.)?
Evaluate: Does the audience have a chance to test your service/product? (free consultation call, free trial, free samples, etc.)
Purchase: How does your audience sign up for your services (call, over the website, etc.)? How do you stay in contact with them after?
Blog customer buyer journey
Research & discover: How does your audience find your blog/content?
Engage: Are there any opportunities for your audience to interact with a community (ex: sign up for blog, join a Facebook group, etc.)?
Purchase: Do you have any affiliate links you need to track?
Customer journeys are dynamic but for this exercise, use the "ideal" or most likely journey. The important piece is to ensure all the marketing channels are captured in the next step!
Mapping out your marketing channels
After writing your customer buyer journey stages, the next step is to map out your marketing channels/platforms against each stage. If the step above is like writing out the outline, this step is adding in the bullet points to each section so that when you start adding details, you know exactly where they go!
This is such an important step because it helps you plan for the metrics you want to track! When you start to write out marketing channels, make sure to get very specific about the channel and the objective for each stage. This means that you can have the same channel listed more than once because each channel can serve a different purpose across the buyer journey. Understanding the purpose of each channel at each stage is a great way to understand what metrics you need to track and generally the whole story that your data is trying to tell you.
Example: If you run a Facebook ad at the beginning stage, you might just be tracking how many people landed on your website but then if you run a re-targeting ad later in the stage, you really care about your conversion rate. This is only one example!
Here is what this looks like for my own business!
Research & discover
Instagram: Grow my brand awareness & draw people to click on my bio link to read blog posts
Facebook: Grow my brand awareness, draw people to click on my posts back to website & find clients through Facebook groups
LinkedIn: Keep a professional presence and have people click back to my website
Engage
Newsletter: Sign up to receive blog posts and tips of improving your analytics.
Evaluate
Consultation call: Schedule a free consultation call with me so I can understand client's pain point & provide a solution. People can do this through the website or through email links.
Purchase
Sign up for a service: For my business, there is no way to sign up online for a service. This happens after the consultation call, so I would just want to know the number of people who convert from a consultation call to clients.
Creating a customer buyer journey can be super helpful when you have a ton of platforms that each provide analytics. This is all about putting the pieces together to better understand the story that your data is telling you!
Now that you have the outline and bulleted list completed, part 2 will go into filling in the detailed notes using metrics.
