We have evolved to the point where we can adequately understand how to track our web success as digital marketers. And there are countless tools and mechanisms that can help us come to these conclusions. If we look closely at Google Analytics, we can develop a clear understanding of how well our website is doing based on metrics like user rates, page-views, bounce rates, page sessions, and more. If we evaluate AdWords we can easily determine the effectiveness of our efforts by evaluating the CTR, conversion rates, Quality Score, and Cost per Conversion of our ad-campaigns. While it’s important to fully understand our current progress, it does not necessarily indicate how we should maneuver in the future, so it’s important to consider what actions should be taken in order to draw actionable insights from our current data so we can make intelligent business decisions in the future.

As we’ve mentioned previously, there are many ways to measure your website success, most notably with Google Analytics and Google AdWords. However many other tactics and methods do exist that can adequately measure the progress of your website. Many social media tools offer analytical features that indicate how well certain posts are received and the kinds of audiences these posts have appealed most to. For example Twitter Analytics specifies the number of impressions each Tweet receives, as well as number of likes, retweets, and mentions, and indicates which individuals and/or businesses have made these actions. Facebook Insights also allows advertisers and other Facebook users to evaluate the likes, overall reach, and type of audiences that posts appeal most to, giving advertisers the opportunity to assess the effectiveness of their content. Even third party tools like LXRMarketplace’s SEO Webpage Monitor Tool can help advertisers develop insight into how effective their on-page factors like content and keywords are to audiences, even in relation to competitors with our Competitor Webpage Monitor as well.

All this is good and well, but it doesn’t necessary explain how users should maneuver in the future, so it’s crucially important to understand how to draw actionable insights from your current data in order to experience future success. So how can you gain these insights?

Trial and error.

In order to truly make the right analytical decisions, it’s crucially important to test, assess, and repeat performance trends and determine how you will accomplish future success based on the goals you’ve made from this trial and error process so you can fully optimize your ad campaigns even more so moving forward.

For example, you may notice after testing out several different types of ads in Google AdWords that audiences most likely to convert are African American females within 30 miles of Detroit Michigan. This is likely a target audience that will yield to more success once those ads are even more specifically customized to these audiences, but it’s still questionable as to what AdWords features will help you attract these audiences. And the answer lies in considering what your goals are and the mechanisms that will help you accomplish those goals based on the insights you’ve drawn. So in this example, we know by trial and error that our goal is to customize our ads to African American females within 30 miles of Detroit, and by careful evaluation, we can determine that AdWords features like ad scheduling and location targeting can help us yield to more of those conversions. Perhaps using the AdWords IF Functionality to appeal these audiences on mobile phones would be another good option, especially if conversion rates are highest for those users on mobile phones. Or if you’ve noticed through Twitter Analytics or Facebook Insights that target audiences are similar for the same types of product promotions you’ve made with your AdWords ad campaigns, you can make the appropriate modifications to content and graphics based on the conclusions you’ve drawn from this data. There are many other features which could help you accomplish these goals, it just requires thought and deliberation into the types of tools that can help you reach those goals based on what you’ve evaluated in the trial and error process.

So essentially it boils down to identifying relevant performance trends through trial and error and determining the types of features that will help you reach the goals you’ve made based on those performance trends. It’s certainly no easy feat but if you put effort into the test and assess part, the repeat aspect of the process will surely yield to the types of results you’re looking for, and give you the affirmation you need to have faith that this process will bring you even more success in the future.