Base your marketing decisions on solid data from Google Analytics.

Before the internet came along, business owners had very little information about how their customers found them. You’d simply spend your marketing budget on newspaper ads, radio ads, or TV commercials, and then hope that all the extra exposure would help you in the long run.

Which of your ads was more successful? Did people respond better to this angle or that one? What was holding them back from making a purchase? You had no idea. Marketing back then was a bit like shooting at a target while blindfolded.

These days, with Google Analytics, you can base your marketing decisions on beliefs that are backed up by solid data. For example, you can see exactly how many people are brought to your site by an email campaign. If a given email performs much better than the previous ones, you can use this insight to tailor future email outreach.

Or maybe you’ll find that most of your traffic comes to you from Google. If that’s the case, you can spend extra time and effort promoting your business on search engines. By improving your SEO, you’ll be able to make the most of your existing strengths.

Google Analytics also allows you to review your website, and test any changes you make to it. If you see that a lot of people ‘bounce’ from your website after checking the Returns Policy page, for example, then it might be time to adjust your policy.

Another useful source of insight is the demographic data. This can often be surprising. Let’s say you own a cleaning company. Most of your clients are middle-aged and relatively wealthy, but Google Analytics shows you that a large number of young university students are visiting your site and then leaving as soon as they see your Prices page. Based on that, you might introduce a temporary 30% discount for students, and then see how it influences your website’s bounce rate and conversion rate.