A look at Trust Insights inbound links in honor of our 5th birthday

This data was originally featured in the March 15, 2023 newsletter found here: https://www.trustinsights.ai/blog/2023/03/inbox-insights-march-15-2023-happy-fifth-birthday-trust-insights/

In this week’s Data Diaries, let’s take a walk down memory lane as part of our five year celebration and look at the total number of inbound links to the Trust Insights website over the years.

In this seemingly simple chart, there are a couple of critical lessons. First, it’s important to take a step back and look at the big picture from time to time. When we are focused on the execution of our marketing, we tend to get stuck in the weeds. We look at changes week over week or month over month, and we miss the big picture. In this case, 2022 really was our year in terms of inbound links; we earned more links in 2022 than we did in the first four years of the company’s business.

Here’s the gotcha: we didn’t necessarily notice that during the year, during the work each month. But when we stop and step back, it’s… a big difference. A really big difference!

A key takeaway for us is perhaps we need to start looking at the big picture more than once every five years or so. In seriousness, though, this sort of macro look at your data is what belongs in annual reviews of how marketing is going. Looking at this chart on a weekly or monthly basis doesn’t make a lot of sense, but looking at it as part of your annual marketing review makes a great deal of sense.

When we look at the big picture, we see a lot of inbound links early on, from the announcement about the launch of the company. Then over the years, we see a steady drumbeat of links from our content marketing, despite the many challenges we all faced during those years. After all, for three of the five years we’ve been in business, we’ve been in a global pandemic and several regional conflicts.

What changed in 2022 is the question almost anyone with even basic analytics skills would ask, looking at our inbound links. First, we debuted our academy and we spent a lot of time marketing it. Second, during 2022, we made growing our Analytics for Marketers community an absolute pillar, a centerpiece of our marketing strategy. In fact, our community is the second most-linked page on our site besides the homepage.

This speaks to the overall strategy we’ve been pursuing for some time now – market a few things really well. We can’t and shouldn’t be everything to everyone, or ask people to pay attention and act on dozens of different initiatives. Instead, we focus on just a couple of things but put our effort and energy into those things specifically – and we see the results of those efforts.

As we celebrate this week, we’ll take these lessons and operationalize them – to check in on major metrics at a macro scale at least once a year, and to stay the course on marketing a few things really well, rather than try to be everything to everyone.