The Data We're Using to Make Better Marketing Decisions

Welcome to another episode where we unpack the profound impact of data analytics in steering marketing strategies! If you're eager to discover how real-time data can redefine your business growth, this episode is your treasure trove. Join us as we delve behind the scenes of Cricket Matters, revealing the tangible benefits of leveraging tools like Google Search Console and advanced email metrics to optimize and revitalize marketing efforts.

Timeline Summary:

• [00:01:18] Data Review, Google Search Console
• [00:02:00] Website Performance Insights 
• [00:06:00] Email Metrics Discussion 
• [00:11:00] Content Strategy Planning 

Key Takeaways:

1. Google Search Console as a Necessity: Discover how this tool provides invaluable insights into website traffic and user engagement, which are crucial for tweaking marketing strategies.
2. Impact of Email Marketing: Learn from the staggering success of targeted email campaigns, which boast high open and click-through rates, underscoring the importance of engaging content.
3. Understanding Audience Search Behavior: Gain a clearer picture of what potential customers are searching for, allowing for more focused content creation that directly addresses user needs.
4. The Power of Data in Content Strategy: See real examples of how data-driven insights lead to better content alignment with audience interests, significantly boosting online visibility.
5. Long-Term Data Analysis Benefits: Realize the long-term benefits of regularly checking and analyzing marketing data to stay ahead in a competitive market.
6. Audience Re-engagement Strategies: Strategies for re-engaging an audience through effective communication and tailored content.
7. Future Planning Using Insights: How current data influences future marketing tactics and content planning for better alignment with audience needs.

Websites and Links Mentioned:

• Strength Matters
• Free Strategy Call

Quotes:

"Harness the hidden power of Google Search Console to revolutionize your marketing efforts." - James Breese

"Incredible stats with email marketing show the power of engaged audiences." - Andrew Wallis

"Knowing what your audience searches for is like having a roadmap to their needs." - James Breese

"Data is not just numbers, it's the voice of your potential customers." - James Breese

"Every piece of data tells a story, make sure you're listening." - Andrew Wallis

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Chapters

• 1:18 Data Review, Google Search Console
• 2:00 Website Performance Insights
• 6:00 Email Metrics Discussion
• 11:00 Content Strategy Planning

Transcript

[00:00:00] James Breese: Strength Matters Media, Video, Print, Podcasts. All right. So today's episode is all about the data we're using to make better marketing decisions. So I'm going to take you behind the scenes of Cricket Matters again, right? Cause that's a good point in case you listened to the last episode, we talked about the revamp and how we're doing it.

[00:00:19] And this is the data we started looking at when we were doing the rebuild of the website and also looking at the channels we're going to use To market the business. So you're going to need to use YouTube. If you're not watching us on YouTube, that's fine. We'll try and talk as much as we can to tell you the data, what you can see.

[00:00:35] If you listen to your cars, if you're in your car, do not watch YouTube as you're driving. That's a silly thing to do. But the idea is if you can go watch it on YouTube, go check us out on YouTube. You'll see it here. But this is the stats and the information I shared first. Andrew, I'll let you take over for a couple of seconds as I share my screen onto this.

[00:00:53] Andrew Wallis: Yeah, no worries. Hey, I'm always excited, uh, as a viewer when we go behind the scenes. Um, I always [00:01:00] find these. Types of episodes, um, interesting, um, that the content here, I think is going to be extremely relevant to, to everyone. Um, so if you can, uh, jump over onto YouTube to watch it in a safe and, uh, relevant fashion, then that'd be brilliant.

[00:01:18] James Breese: Cool. So I'm gonna take you behind the scenes. First of all, on Google search console. If you don't know what Google search console is, you need to find out and install it as part of your business, right? I'll just leave it there for now. But this is giving us stats and data as you can see on the screen here.

[00:01:32] So i'm going to play around with the screen here. This is the last three months, right? You can see there's a steady spike of interest. So we've had a total of 2, 100 clicks to the website, right? On a website i've done and forgotten about Nine months ago. Let me just emphasize that point. I think this is incredible impressions 

[00:01:50] Andrew Wallis: Yeah, for something that's been forgotten about since, what, September, uh, 2023.

[00:01:55] I think that's, uh, incredible stat 

[00:01:58] James Breese: if I go the last 16 months, just [00:02:00] so you guys can see the data in front of us here now. So, all in all. Look at the, look at the spikes, right? The change in time over time. Cause it takes a while for Google to launch it. But look at that at the start, zero, zero, zero, zero, first four, five, six months, then it starts to spike here.

[00:02:14] And that's typically normal for Google, right? It takes you a while to build trust and build authority in the sites, but look at it growing now. So in the last 12 months plus. We've had literally 5, 000 clicks roughly and 170, 000 impressions with an average click through rate, which means 3 percent of the time people click on it.

[00:02:30] So we can do a bit better, but the average, a good average industry standard is 2 to 5%. So we're doing okay, right? That those numbers may sound gobbledygook to you guys, but it's okay. But I'm just showing you behind the scene. This is a brand new website. We've launched and we're driving traffic to it and we've done nothing with it properly.

[00:02:47] We just set it up 70 percent correctly right at the start, which is more than most people. But what I want to do is take you down onto this page and show you this. These are the queries people are looking for according to [00:03:00] Google and how they're finding you. And this is the information you need to understand in terms of how we want people to find your business.

[00:03:06] So at the top is Cricut Matters. Which is great. People are searching for our brand name, no matter where it is. People are searching for us and coming to the website. We want that to be in the top three search queries. Number two is how to increase stamina for cricket. Now I find that fascinating because there's no way in a million years I would ever use a search term stamina for cricket, right?

[00:03:30] Cause I'm in the industry. I'm a bit. Well, let's say I'd use one to see how do you build aerobic capacity? How do you build the cardiovascular capacity because that's the terms I use but Joe public and Joe blogs Want to know stamina stamina. 

[00:03:46] Andrew Wallis: I think that's a key point. I think that's a key point that James that you mentioned because again, as fitness professionals, we there's terms that we use and we expect [00:04:00] our audience and our clients to be using.

[00:04:02] But that's clearly not the case. So we have to. Take a step back and that's where the power of using data and utilities like Google Search Console that we can determine the terms that people are using. And if we blend that into each piece of content that we create, then we're showcasing to Google and our audience that we're talking on that topic and increases the traffic to our sites.

[00:04:30] James Breese: Absolutely, and as you can see here, so the stamina is like wow. I need to look into that. That's something I never used. So you can use those terms. And you can see 2k time trial. That's a famous cricket test for pros. People are searching for that. They come into that for us. So we wrote a blog post about it because there's a famous article of one of the famous cricketers got kicked out of the team for not hitting the benchmark and it caused uproar because the standards weren't upheld, but the point was that's it.

[00:04:53] So there's a few things in here. Stamina, stamina, again, how to increase stamina for cricket batting, endurance training, [00:05:00] plyometrics for cricket. People are finding us for that. So I got done a few more pages here. How to improve stamina for cricket, plyometric exercise for cricket, strength training for cricket.

[00:05:10] Well, we come number one for strength training for cricket. Now that's the big drive of most of the stuff we have, but we started to see terms and phrases people are using to find us in the first place, not finding us. They're finding the articles we've written to come and come to us. So what that's giving me is a whole heap of ideas.

[00:05:29] Of the topics I need to write, the videos potentially I need to write because people are actually searching them and there's thousands of people doing it too. So this is the data we're using in terms of Search Console for our website to help people find us on Google and on YouTube too, potentially. And that's in the last 16 months and you can see the traffic if you're watching on the YouTubes here.

[00:05:51] Now, the other thing I looked at was the email metrics. Now, I went back in time to have a look at some of the emails we sent out to [00:06:00] some of the people on the Cricut Matters email list. Cause of the whole time this has been going on, we've been building our email marketing list throughout the whole, I've done nothing with the website, essentially, and we've been building those lists.

[00:06:13] So I went back in time and had a look at an email I sent out, and this was incredible. I couldn't get over this. It just blew my tiny little mind. Email marketing is hard, right? You've got to work with the networks. You've got to work with the providers to get here. But the things that stand out here, if you can see the numbers, it's a hundred percent successful delivery rate.

[00:06:33] This at the time was about 800 emails. I think it was. And then you have an open rate of 61. 9 percent with a 3. 81 click percentage. 

[00:06:44] Andrew Wallis: Right. That's incredible. That's, uh, I, I was blown away when you shared that with Josh and I, um, the other day, 

[00:06:52] James Breese: you can see guys in the stats, you know, that's on September 11th, right?

[00:06:56] At 4 42 PM as a podcast that we sent out here. [00:07:00] Now, was that a one off? No. So if I go into this again, so we go into the survey one, we sent, this is our new email system that we didn't have any other stats before it, but I looked at the quick amount of survey, look at the stats on here, but again, 100 percent successful delivery.

[00:07:13] 66 percent open rate. And again, that was a 12 percent click through, click through rate because we were asking him to give us more information and help us. So that's a bit skew if, but the point is the open rates and successful delivery is incredible. Now I put out one yesterday because we started emailing the guys.

[00:07:30] Again on cricket matters to start building up to the cricket season and there's everything. Um, where's this is I got the naming convention wrong here. I actually forgot to name it properly. But again, in less than 24 hours, we've got an open rate of 30 percent of an email list. I haven't emailed in nine months.

[00:07:46] So I'd like to think this will increase. In the next few days when people start opening their emails, but these are the numbers and stats that are telling us that a, we know what we need to create content for in terms of cricket players to be found [00:08:00] and B, we kind of know that email marketing is a big channel for us because it's a highly engaged audience.

[00:08:07] And these are the metrics we're doing to help make better decisions to help make better marketing decisions for us moving forward in launching and really growing. Thank you. Cricket matters. Whew. A lot of data and stats around you. Anything you want to pick up on? 

[00:08:21] Andrew Wallis: Yeah, I think just on this screen here with the open rate, um, uh, for yesterday's, um, email that went out at being 29%, correct me if I'm wrong.

[00:08:33] Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong. And that to me is what I would be expecting overall for an open rate around 30%. Is that a correct sort of metric that they generally have as a benchmark? 

[00:08:46] James Breese: Yeah, I think so. Anywhere between 20 and 40%. It depends what industry you're at. But you want more highly engaged audiences interacting with you so they can learn more information about it.

[00:08:56] That's, that's the most important thing. So yeah, I [00:09:00] think for strength matters, we're around the 25 to 30 percent mark. But again, we're in the middle of like culling a lot of the email lists there to make it more engaged, which I think is really important. But yeah, no, this is, this is like around industry normal benchmarks.

[00:09:13] I'd like to come back to this in a week's time. 

[00:09:15] Andrew Wallis: Yeah. That's what, uh, blew me away for seeing the 66 percent open rates on the cricket matters side of things. And I think, I think this has been useful for folks, um, because we're always talking about the importance of analyzing. Uh, your data taking time out and reviewing because success leaves clues, doesn't it?

[00:09:36] And equally mistakes leaving bigger clues, I guess. But for people that perhaps aren't doing this and listening to this, how, what would you recommend for them to have the frequency of them looking at Google search console? Would that be like a once a month type approach? 

[00:09:55] James Breese: From what I'm seeing, More people are not, are not using Google search console.

[00:09:59] So I'd say nine out [00:10:00] of 10 people are not using Google search console. So your first step is to go in and install it into your website and get Google looking at it. I would then say, I look at Google search console every week or so, depending on it, well, technically every day with our clients that we're working and building this out for, but for this.

[00:10:17] Like I said, I've been looking at this monitoring a little bit on and off and seeing what's going on the last couple of months, but that was the, when I dug into the data a couple of days ago and saw this, it was like, yeah, we need to really revamp this and really look at this information. 

[00:10:31] Andrew Wallis: I guess everybody's busy and you know, we drop the ball.

[00:10:35] In a number of places, and you shouldn't be dropping the ball when it comes to analyzing your data. So, like anything, I guess it's consistency. Find a consistent frequency that works for you and stick to that. Because as we're showing here, or hopefully showing here that, you know, there's, it's For those that struggle with what content am I going to [00:11:00] create?

[00:11:00] Well, you've just shown that on for Cricut Matters. We know that content around stamina is, is going to be something that we address. 

[00:11:07] James Breese: I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. I just literally, and there's other stuff that comes out when we start to build all this information out. But again, until we get the real, the good website live, that's integrating to Google and see all that state data and stuff that comes in.

[00:11:22] We're not going to be able to make the best use of it yet. So we're going to do is like. We probably need to do a separate episode on how we're going to start creating content. Maybe that's something we do. In the next episode is almost like our model for creating content for Cricket Matters. Now I know you guys may have, we have no idea about cricket at all, but the point is you can use that for your networks and your niche that you're working with too, so there you go.

[00:11:47] There's two areas of data that we're using to make better marketing decisions for us. So we now know more content around stamina building for cricket is going to be across the Cricket Matters website. [00:12:00] And also. We're going to start focusing on the email and start re engaging people via email to get them back involved and showcase that we're doing this.

[00:12:08] So there you go. Cheers guys. Now, if you want any more information or any help, if you're not quite sure about how to set all this up for your website, go to strengthmans. com forward slash audit. And we'll do a free audit for you to have a look, see what's going on and say what the areas you need to improve, if you'd like some help at all and just bring some ideas, strengthmanners.

[00:12:26] com forward slash strategy to brainstorm and shoot the shit basically. So cool guys, speak to you next time and we'll share more quick about us soon.