Imagine the way a grocery store tracks the traffic through the aisles of their store.
If they place a product, say, cans of tuna fish, at three positions and position C has the highest sales, the store knows how to better interact with customers to increase sales-- place tuna fish in position C where customers are most likely to pick up a can.But, what if they do that, and suddenly sales drop in that aisle, but pick up in position A? What's changed?
It could be the timing. Position C may work really well prior to a snow storm, when people are stocking up on canned goods. But, on a lovely spring day when customers are salad focused? It might be time to go out on a limb and put more cans of tuna in position A, near the celery (which, in our opinion, is key to great tuna salad. Don't judge.)
Content marketing is like stocking cans of tuna fish. You have to track what works, what gets your customers to take action-- such as filling out a contact form or making an appointment- in order to be effective.
This requires tracking customer behavior, which isn't always easy. With the tuna, you can just monitor inventory, which takes one guy about ten minutes at the end of a day. Empty shelf? Tuna sold. Full shelf? Cans of tuna not selling. (Yes, we know grocery stores have sophisticated software too. How else would they print out all those coupons at the register?)
How customers behave electronically is a little trickier. There's algorithms and analytics that create charts and graphs and...stuff. Stuff that can look really complicated.
But, it doesn't have to be.
A good platform, pulls all the information from all your digital marketing platforms and displays them on one management dashboard. Imagine seeing the hits that come to your website from Facebook posts, the Tweets that drove traffic to your blog, the email that sent people to your website...all in one clear, at a glance, screen.
Just like seeing that empty shelf where the tuna used to be, right?
At Business Actualization we are so dedicated to inbound marketing and tracking customer behavior that we are tracking our own customer's reactions to digital marketing and creative content on one platform.
We are using marketing automation software to track how well folks like our tuna salad from now on, whether it's Nicoise or standard mayo and celery. Or both, depending on the timing. But, if you don't want intelligence in your marketing, we won't twist your arm (although, we will offer a 15 Minute free digital marketing consultation) But, remember, you won't ever know what content is working for you if you don't track customer behavior. Make it happen.
