Revisiting old marketing tactics and strategies

This data was originally featured in the September 20, 2023 newsletter found here: https://www.trustinsights.ai/blog/2023/09/inbox-insights-september-20-2023-revisiting-marketing-tactics-and-strategies/.

In the cold open, Katie recommended taking a new look at old marketing tactics and strategies, revisiting things that you haven’t looked at in a while. This is an excellent idea and one to do on a regular basis, perhaps quarterly. But how do you decide what to revisit, what to take another look at? As she pointed out, there are so many choices, so many options to consider.

Here’s a straightforward answer: take a look at what’s working without any effort on your part. If you have access to your digital analytics, start looking at the unturned stones. There are three ways to do this, in increasing order of difficulty.

RAW TRAFFIC

In the web analytics software of your choice, look at the source/medium (or equivalent) combinations that are currently sending you traffic. Are there channels that are sending you traffic that you’re not marketing on?

Here’s an example, from our Google Analytics 4 Explore:

 

What I see that’s interesting is the amount of traffic we’re getting from Bing. We don’t do much with Bing. We have Bing Webmaster Tools, but it’s not like we spend a lot of time optimizing for Bing – and yet it’s the #6 traffic source on our site. Maybe it’s time to take another look at Bing for us.

CONVERTING TRAFFIC

Next, take a look at converting traffic. There are two ways of doing this. If your web analytics is set up well, you should have conversions as a metric available for analysis. You can use just a simple chart, or you can use a built-in attribution model.

 

When we look at the converting sources (this is why thorough tracking governance is essential!), we see that Bing itself has vanished – it sends traffic, but that traffic doesn’t necessarily convert. However, LinkedIn is now the #5 source of conversions. Again, do we do a ton of stuff with LinkedIn? Yes, more than Bing for sure, but there might be an opportunity to revisit our strategy there.

FULL ATTRIBUTION MODELING

While the built-in conversion reports in Google Analytics 4 are a good start, they’re not quite as comprehensive or as detailed as we would like. If we are hunting for new opportunities, let’s dig deeper. Using our own attribution modeling software, let’s see what our data looks like:

 

LinkedIn again makes the cut, so we should pay attention to that. However, there are a few other sources on here that we haven’t been seeing in other places, like Coda.io, and a few smaller referring sites. These sites may not be sending us large amounts of traffic or conversions, but what they are sending is high quality, high converting traffic.

This is where we find the hidden opportunities. What’s working without us trying? What could we potentially do more of, or build relationships that don’t currently exist?

Marketers spend a lot of time trying to build new audiences, increase reach, and drive traffic, often at very high costs. When you see places that are already sending you traffic – and converting traffic at that – you’ll probably have an easier time doing outreach and relationship building because someone already knows who you are. Use all of these techniques to identify those hidden opportunities lurking beneath the surface of your existing marketing programs.