In part 1, you installed Google Analytics on your consulting website.
In part 2, you set up goal-tracking to track your website’s performance.
In part 3, you created your Consulting Website Performance dashboard.
Now, in part 4, you’ll use this data to make better marketing decisions and improve your consulting website.
In this post, I’ll show you 3 real-life examples of how I used my analytics in my business.
Do More Of What’s Already Working
A good rule of thumb in marketing is to do more of what’s working, and less of what isn’t.
If you’re getting traction with LinkedIn posts, do more LinkedIn posts.
If you’re getting traction with case studies, double down on them.
It’s hard enough to get traction — prospects coming to your website. But once you do get traction, your market is giving you feedback.
They are telling you that what you’re doing is working based on the fact that they are engaging with you. So do more of it.
EXAMPLE:
My top-performing blog post was 22 Best Consultant Websites.
It generated the vast majority of my traffic.
What did this tell me? My audience enjoys list posts — especially with quotes from the consultants listed in the post.
So I did more list articles.
I wrote about the best consulting firm websites, consulting blogs, and consulting podcasts.
These posts generate most of my traffic every month.
I noticed what worked (what was getting the most traffic), and did more of it. You won’t know what’s working without analytics.
Focus Your Attention On The Right Thing
As a solo consultant or small firm, you’re juggling many hats.
With your marketing, two things are critical. Attracting prospects to your website, and converting prospects into leads.
But since you have to focus on delivering projects, you need to spend your time on the right thing.
You can tweak your website all you want, but if you aren’t attracting prospects to it, it’s a waste of time.
And if you’re generating traffic, but your website doesn’t do anything to convert this traffic (or it does so poorly), it’s leaking revenue.
Now that you have Google Analytics installed, you know how much traffic you’re generating. You know what your conversion rates are. You can use this data to focus your attention on the right thing.
EXAMPLE:
I was spending all this time marketing and writing posts. But, my website was already generating a healthy number of sessions per month (6000).
With that much traffic, I should have been generating more consultations and clients.
I focused on increasing traffic instead of improving my conversion rate.
So, I shifted gears. I stopped writing, re-designed my website, and focused on making the website convert.
My traffic stayed the same while I stopped promoting my articles. My conversion rate increased.
I was getting better results from the same number of visitors. Without Google Analytics, your attention is scattered. It’s much harder to focus on the right thing.
Make Technical Improvements To Your Website
It’s natural to obsess about your website’s design and messaging. But remember, your website is a technical asset.
It can break, get slow, and cause a poor experience for your prospects.
Google Analytics can show you your website’s performance from a technical standpoint.
You’ll know how fast your website loads on certain devices, how it’s converting based on what browser or device your prospect is using, and much more.
If you improve your website’s technical performance, you’ll often improve its marketing performance.
EXAMPLE:
I noticed my top-performing article, 22 Best Consultant Websites took twice as long to load as my other articles.
That’s because it was full of images.
A slow-loading website is a conversion killer. I used this data to optimize all of the post’s images.
I minimized the size of the images, making the page load faster.
This meant that less of them hit the back button. More of them visited the website — and converted to my email list.
Action Step: Your Turn — Use Your Website Data
Now it’s your turn.
After a couple of months with Google Analytics installed, goal tracking, and your dashboard, you should have data to work with.
Use your analytics to make a marketing decision.
What are people reading on your site? Can you do more of that?
How many people are coming to your site? Do you need to work on your traffic?
Which pages convert well, and which don’t? Can you improve the messaging on the pages that don’t convert well?
Is there any technical work you can do on the site? What pages can you make faster? Which pages attract a lot of mobile traffic?
With your Google Analytics data, you can answer these questions — and act on them.
If you’re still stuck, I’ll give you a goal: aim to hit 500 website visitors per month.
At 500 website visitors per month, your consulting website will drive real results for your business. And with the 5 marketing habits, you have a system for reaching that goal.
(Read chapter 12 of my book: Your New Daily Marketing Habits. You’ll learn the marketing habits to attract the right prospects to your website)
You don’t need to become mad scientist spending hours in your analytics every day.
What you need is to make incremental, consistent improvements to your website and your marketing — so that you can reach your income goal.
Your analytics show you whether you’re on the right track to your goal — and help you take a better next step towards it.