The State of Analytics

Analytics & Marketing Data Is NOT “Set It and Forget It”When it comes to Marketing Data, perception is NOT reality. If you're the user of web analytics data, you probably assume things work correctly. At some point in the past, analytics was set up and has never been revisited - other than for random implementations of inaccurate "conversion tracking" on new platforms.  Do you trust that your data strategy is accurate and up to date, or have you fallen into the false belief that measurement is set up once and works forever? 3 Reasons You Shouldn’t View Analytics & Measurement As Set It and Forget It:Reason #1: Your initial setup was not comprehensive and lacked planning and documentation. If you had comprehensive planning, and monitoring in place, you might be able to achieve a "set it and forget it" mindset.  Reason #2: Your website is constantly changing. You need a process to ensure analytics is configured correctly and evolves with your website.  Reason #3: You're making decisions based on this data. Have You Achieved a Trust (but Verify) Status?You should be able to trust your data, but also be able to periodically verify that it's trustworthy. If you haven't achieved this, then you're not going to be able to "set it and forget it."  3 Common Pitfalls From a “Set It and Forget It” Analytics StrategyCritical KPIs (conversions, leads, goals, eCommerce) are tracking inaccurately Significant elements are simply NOT tracking (like chat tools or popup forms) Marketing analytics platforms are not set up consistently Not only is the data completely unreliable and not comprehensive, but nothing meaningful is being done enrich or enhance the data! How To Fix the Your “Set It and Forget It” Analytics MentalityMake a simple list of the critical actions across your website. Then make it more specific.  Track your KPIs accurately with automation, and comprehensively across platforms. Create centralized documentation across all of your marketing analytics platforms  Setup monitoring to receive automated alerts when something goes wrong

Your marketing data isn't free! It's time to start treating it like it's valuable again. In this episode, we explore the "Free Fallacy," the idea that when something has been free for an extended period of time, the perceived value of that thing goes down. Visit listenlayer.com/pod to learn more about the pod and download the list of false beliefs. How we value web analyticsThe true value of something is only what we perceive it to be. Web analytics and marketing data are extremely valuable, yet we now treat them as commonplace because our perceived value has declined. Why has this happened? Because Google Analytics has made marketing data "free" for nearly 15 years! - but it's not actually free, a you should stop treating it that way. The Value of Free + NoveltyWhen something is free and a novelty, the perceived value will go up, at least in the short term. The Value of Free + Prolific (commonplace) When something is free, readily available, and common for an extended period of time, the perceived value will go down. Your Web Analytics & Marketing Data is NOT FreeBusinesses and organizations invest significant resources into their product development and go-to-market strategies. The fruition of these things is you marketing strategy and tactics. The data that this generates is extremely valuable to your feedback loop and it's NOT free for you to generate. Google, and other tools, give you these insights for "free" because they profit from your use of their platforms (and their use of the data) in other ways. You pay for your data, one way or another. The Outcome of "Free" AnalyticsMarketers across all organizations and seniority levels suffer form the free fallacy. Marketing data and web analytics has become a complete afterthought with no budget allocated, no planning in place, and now clear accountability. Three Ways to Combat the "Free Fallacy"Accountability - Put together an initiative inside your organization called the "analytics accountability initiative" with the goal of establishing true accountability around the quality and integrity of your data. Establish Novelty - Combat the "free fallacy" by finding small ways you a push the envelope and implement novel things within your marketing data strategy. Stop simply doing what everyone does and work to implement something unique and useful to your business. Alternatives - Increase the importance of your alternative marketing data platforms. For example, improve your conversion tracking across other marketing platforms you might be using (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Linkedin Ads). Join us for the next episode: Should Marketing Data Really be “Set It and Forget It?”

Your growth is being hindered by a poor Measurement Mindset. In this episode, we review the various roles involved in marketing data & analytics and how their mindsets around data limit your organization's marketing success. MarketersPoor Mindset: My agency handles our web analytics; they are the primary user Better Mindset: I need a dedicated "owner" of analytics, and I need to start using the data internally to drive marketing insights and help other teams (HR, Sales, Customer Success, etc.). Marketer's Analytics Mandate: Your data should be driving cross-organization insights.  Measurement Pros, Analytics, AgenciesPoor Mindset: Just give us GTM, and we'll throw together your tracking as we get the engagement going. Better Mindset: Data is foundational to everything we will be doing moving forward. Let's set aside dedicated time to get it right and implement it correctly. DevelopersPoor Mindset: I need to get this off my plate to move to the next thing.  Better Mindset: How can I configure and document this for longevity. How can I add strategy to this request?   Developers should want to reduce the amount of code they write and maintain. Marketing OperationsPoor Mindset: Our marketing automation platform contains all the data we need. Better Mindset: How can we implement a process that allows marketing operations to serve other areas of the business by integrating data from other sources. Sales Poor Mindset: Web analytics creates data for marketing Better Mindset: Web & marketing analytics should generate data influencing sales planning and execution. Sales leaders should know how web analytics and lead data correlate to historical sales performance. Join us for the next episode: The Consequences of "Free" Marketing Data

The State of Analytics... is broken. In our first episode, we briefly discuss each of the 11 beliefs marketers and analytics professionals have that ruin analytics. Then, after a brief introduction to the podcast, we discuss each of the 11 items, breaking them down so you can begin to understand how to combat them (within yourself and your team). If you've ever wondered why your analytics data is broken and seems impossible to fix, now you know why. Visit listenlayer.com/pod to learn more about the pod and download the list of false beliefs. Here are the False beliefs we discuss in the episode so you can follow along! The "Free" Fallacy Set It & Forget It Zero Accountability Cookie Confusion The Afterthought "Thank You Page" trap GTM Will Save the Day! Server Side Superhero Dashboard Delusion Ownership is Overrated PII is Evil Join us for our next episode: "Measurement Mindset: How to approach analytics & data differently."