You know you feel ready to start looking at your data and make more informed decisions about the marketing of your business, but can you DIY your report and analysis, or should you hire someone to help you with it?

My advice: To figure out what route is best for your business and yourself, try to get clear on what it *really* means to implement a comprehensive Marketing Analytics Strategy.

A proper Marketing Analytics Strategy always involves:

1. Defining Success: You want to get clear on your marketing tactics! Define how your tactics support your business goals and what metrics you’ll need to show how these actions are contributing to your business goals. You can do this easily by creating a Marketing Measurement Plan. 

2. Proper Tracking: Once you understand the metrics you’ll be including, you must get accurate tracking into place. Proper monitoring on your website is crucial, especially if this is the location where your key business actions are taking place (i.e. sales, contacts, opt-ins, etc). 

   Depending on the setup of your website and any third-party platform you’re using (Leadpages, Kajabi, Teachable), you may need additional tracking set up to ensure you’re capturing the correct information

3. Reporting & Analysis: To reap the full benefits of your valuable data, you’ve gotta be looking at it! You’ll want to create reports, dashboards and run more in-depth analyses. But in many cases, data is located in multiple locations - some found in your Instagram Insights, your Pinterest or Tailwind analytics, your email marketing tool reports, your Google Analytics, etc. 

   By keeping them in separate locations, it can get difficult to put the bigger picture together and make sense of what is really happening. Creating a centralized view of all your data (think: a main dashboard or report which shows all your key metrics in one spot) is best.
   

Feeling more confused than ever? Check out my recent post that breaks down in-depth each of the above components!

A quick note: Not looking at your data isn’t a valid option as a business owner, especially if you’re spending money on paid ads or paid support for social media management, SEO optimization, and even content creation. Your data is the only thing that can tell you how things are performing + it’s easily the best tool to use when looking to test new ideas, new messages and/or new offerings.

So, should you DIY it or hire out?

I’ve thrown together a few qualifiers to help you figure out the answer!

DIY’ing Your Marketing Analytics

If your business set up is simple and straightforward AND you feel comfortable spending time learning how to use various analytics tools, how to read your metrics, and how to extract data, then, by all means, DIY away!

Just keep in mind when you do decide on doing this yourself:

• You’ll need time to learn how to implement Google Analytics, how to use the tool, and how to pull data

• You should feel super comfortable creating spreadsheets (you’ll be creating a lot of them)

• Your business should be in early stages using simple platforms to host key business actions like purchases, sign-ups and more (if you’re using additional platforms like Kajabi, Leadpages, Clickfunnels, etc. you’ll need outside help!)

• You shouldn't be running paid ads - this can be a complicated and overwhelming one to track and analyze if you’re DIYing
  

The more straightforward your business setup is, the easier it will be to handle your marketing analytics solo. Once you add more complexity to your operations and/or your setup, you move into more complex analytics setups that are better analyzed by a pro!

Outsourcing Your Marketing Analytics

Thinking of hiring out your Marketing Analytics instead? You definitely don’t have to wait until your business is a specific size or complexity - hiring out from an earlier time actually ensures you’re properly set up as the business grows.

It can also help when it comes to implementing third party tools! Choosing the right tools is key to setting up systems and processes that capture the information you need to make informed business decisions. 

A quick note: Your website developer may not be qualified to implement your marketing analytics strategy. Understanding how to properly set up your Google Analytics isn’t the same as developing your website or writing code! 

Your ads manager may also not be qualified to set up your marketing analytics strategy properly. An ads manager’s role and responsibility is often limited to understanding and optimizing your results on the platform you’re using (i.e. Facebook, Google Ads, Pinterest, etc) - not looking at your entire business ecosystem. 

When should you hire out to implement and optimize your marketing analytics? If you:

• Use multiple platforms in your business and they’re all connected. You have a business website + you use third-party tools to host your sales pages or your memberships/courses. If you have links and calls to action on your website that link to sales pages hosted on other platforms with different domains, then you need to have special tracking set up to track your visitors as they move.
  
  Without this tracking, you won’t be able to follow them from one place to another, and you won't be able to attribute sales of those who visited your website from your various marketing sources.

• Don’t have the time or desire to learn about analytics, Google Analytics, how to create spreadsheets and analyze your data! 
  
  The more complex your marketing strategy/business setup is, the more complex your tracking and analyses need to be. Hiring a professional marketing analytics strategist and implementer will ensure you’re set up the right way so you can gather all the appropriate data. A pro also provides comprehensive reports offering fast visibility into your business performance while defining what the data is saying - making it easy for you to make informed business decisions.
  

Remember, learning how to track and analyze your entire business marketing strategy properly is not the same as learning how to look at Instagram stats or understanding Tailwind. 

It’s a nuanced process that can take significant time to learn, but it keeps you from capturing incorrect and incomplete data and puts you on track to make smart decisions for your business. 


Want support with the Marketing Analytics strategy for your business? Reach out, and let’s chat about how to set up a system that gets you the most out of your marketing.