Many of you know I just love data. When there are facts and statistics, I believe we can make wise business decisions that omit emotion and feeling. Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s a lot to be said for having a gut feeling and an instinct, but I know data has rarely steered me in the wrong direction.
If you’re like me, this is about to be one of my most prominent seasons for marketing. With the natural influx of back-to-school enrollments and the return of many of our college-age coaches, I can finally dive into marketing and see an almost-immediate return.
If you’re marketing blindly though, you’re missing out on a greater potential return on your investment. Here is how I use data to help me make wise marketing decisions.
I have a Google Search Console pixel on the back end of my website. This helps me see what people are searching on Google when they ultimately land on my site. You’ll often find your business name abbreviated, shortened or misspelled. Obviously, take those out of your consideration. We’re not going to purposely do any of those things on our site, and lucky for us – Google is smart enough to understand what people are trying to say.
Here is what you can find from Google Search Console though:
- What are your top pages on your website people are visiting? (You can also find this on Google Analytics.)
- Are they doing this because you’ve been marketing these things heavily or is it because there is a natural season or time of year people have developed an interest in a particular program?
- Around this time of year, my Trunk or Treat page should be one of my top 10. If it’s not, then I know as of Sept. 1, I better really start marketing that to vendors and the public. If people aren’t on my site looking at the details, I’ll probably have a smaller turnout than hoped.
- What are the top things people are searching that land them on my website?
- Years ago I was shocked to find out that though gymnastics is one of the smaller programs at my gym, it was the #1 searched activity at my gym. So, I used that information to market my gymnastics program.
- We also wrote some blogs that were informative regarding the different types of gymnastics (and what we specifically offered) and the difference between tumbling and gymnastics classes.
- Through both Google Analytics and Google Search Console, you can find out the flow on your website. This means, you can see where people are starting on your site and where they drop off.
- If they’re dropping off, it’s either because they’re done finding the information you’ve provided, and hopefully they’ve registered or taken advantage of your call to action.
- If not, then they didn’t find what they needed and they either lost interest or they gave up and called you. Either way, you need to provide a strong CTA on the pages they’re dropping off or provide them with the information that makes them comfortable enough to take action. (Sometimes this is silly stuff like pictures not loading fast enough!)
Spending just 20 minutes every few months looking at your data will show you a lot of things that can help you make better decisions for your business. Here’s what I learned by looking at mine this morning:
- “Tumbling for dance” and “Dance tumbling” are two searches near the top of my list.
- Action: Use a picture of a dancer who is tumbling in a post.
- Action: Write a blog about the benefits of tumbling for dancers.
- Action: Make a post about semi-private lessons and how it is helpful for those with busy schedules.
- Action: Write a blog or post about a dancer who gets to compete beautiful tumbling skills and what classes she’s been in at Twisters over the years.
- “Homeschool events near me” made it on my top 20 list. (I’ll be honest, batting cages was #2 for me, but I didn’t think that would benefit you as much, so I moved down the list”.)
- Action: Market our 12 p.m. All Levels Tumbling Class
- Action: Post in homeschool groups about our School-Age Daytime Playtime
- Action: Push Justin to make the “community library” stand at the gym to encourage homeschoolers to bring a book/leave a book.
- Action: Consider doing a “free playtime pass” for completing a book reading log.
- Action: Go live during daytime programming.
- “Birthday parties near me” was next on my list. (Now, to be honest, I am already marketing the heck out of these, but it was good motivation to keep going.) Here are some action items I thought about though:
- Action: Go live during a birthday party this weekend.
- Action: Share our birthday party reel on our story again.
- Action: Pull some old ads for parties from Connect 3 to freshen up the content (yes – we’ve done C3 for so many years now that old is new again!)
I hope that helps you guys figure out how 20 minutes of research on your Google platforms can help you develop content and ideas to hop on what’s trending with your prospects.
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