Marketing Analytics
- Marketing Guideline
- Oct 15
- 7 min read
Updated: Dec 3
The Third Pillar of Your Marketing Foundation
You’ve set your business Goals. You’ve defined your Audience. Now it’s time to add the final piece of the puzzle: Analytics.
Analytics is what turns marketing from guesswork into growth. It shows you what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus your time and budget. Without it, you’re flying blind. With it, you gain valuable insights in order to make smarter business decisions and grow more efficiently.
Think of Analytics as your truth-teller. Numbers don’t lie, they’ll confirm whether your marketing efforts are actually moving the needle.
Goals + Audience + Analytics = Marketing Success
I get it, most of you reading this article are going to be reluctant about this entire process. Even though I love analytics, most people don’t. It can be very intimidating. As my statistics professor told our class on the first day - I’m going to make this as painless as possible for you. So let’s begin.
Why Analytics Matters
Instead of tossing ideas at the wall and hoping something sticks, analytics gives you clarity.
You will find that data analytics:
Keeps you accountable (are your efforts moving you toward your goals?).
Reveals what’s working (and what’s not) so you can double down or adjust.
Helps you spend smarter, putting money where it makes the biggest impact.
Builds your confidence in decision-making.
In short: Analytics saves you time, money, and stress.
Your Analytics Roadmap (Simplified)
Before you worry about your analytics dashboard or complicated website analytics tools, here’s the 3-step system to get started:
Know your goals → What do you want to achieve? This is what success looks like.
Pick a few things to measure → These are your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). A KPI is just a measurable value that shows whether you’re on track to reaching your goal.
Check & adjust → Review your numbers regularly. Are they moving closer to your goal, showing steady progress, or stalling out? Use that insight to double down on what’s working and tweak what’s not.
That’s it. No fancy spreadsheets needed (unless you love spreadsheets, I don’t want to take away your joy), just a repeatable process you can build on to give you valuable information for your business.
Starter Metrics Every Business Should Track
There are endless data points out there, and you don’t need to track everything. Data tells a story, and you will want to select the right KPIs and measurements that will actually let you know if you are getting closer to your goal. Don’t know where to start? Try one of these core metrics across your main channels:
Website: Visitors/users (how many people are finding you), Page views (how many views certain pages are receiving), Landing pages (which pages visitors are entering your site on), Sessions (the number of sessions - a visit to your website), Conversions (how many users are taking action), Conversion rate (what percentage of your users are taking action).
Email: Open rates (are people reading?), Click rates (are they engaging?).
Social Media: Engagement (likes, comments, shares—not just follower count).
Sales: Revenue, repeat customers, and customer lifetime value.
Jargon watch: There are so many marketing terms out there, I often lose track. You will find that I pepper the most common ones throughout my articles so you can get to know them. When in doubt just google them or ask ChatGPT what they mean (we all do it - congrats, you’re officially in on the industry’s not-so-secret secret).
Quick Analytics Term Cheatsheet:
Users – Visitors to your website. You’ll often see total users and unique users (unique visitors excludes repeat visits).
Clicks & Click Rates – How many times (or how often) user behavior leads to a link or button is clicked. Common across platforms, and you can often choose which links or buttons to track.
Conversions – A specific action you define as success. For eCommerce, this could be customer behavior such as adding to cart or completing a sale. For lead generation, an email sign-up. For content sites, reading an article or watching a video.
Lifetime Value (LTV) – The total revenue a customer brings over time. Great for determining which target audience segments are more valuable to your business. Example: Women ages 35–40 average $250 LTV vs. $100 for ages 18–25, showing higher ROI in the older group.
Analytics + Your Marketing Funnel
Your marketing funnel shows the journey people take from potential customers - discovering you, trusting you - to finally becoming actual customers. Analytics lets you see how well that journey is working and where it’s breaking down. When you connect these two ideas, you’ll stop guessing and start making smart, data-driven decisions.
Think of it like this:
The Funnel = The map of your customer’s journey.
Analytics = The compass that shows you where people are getting stuck or moving forward.
By tracking the right numbers at each stage, you’ll know whether you need more awareness, stronger engagement, or a better path to conversion. Let’s take a look at the different data points you can track throughout each state to get you started in building out your data sets.
Top of Funnel (Visibility & Awareness)
Goal: Make people aware of your brand. Analytics to Track:
Website traffic (how many new users are finding you)
Traffic source (are they coming from search engines, social, or ads?)
Impressions and reach (how many people see your content)
Insight Example: If traffic is high but conversions are low, your awareness efforts are working, but something is broken further down the funnel.
Middle of Funnel (Engagement & Trust)
Goal: Build relationships and credibility. Analytics to Track:
Email open & click rates (are people interested in your content?)
Social engagement (likes, comments, shares—signals of connection)
Follower growth or email sign-ups (early indicators of awareness turning into interest)
Returning visitors (are people coming back for more?)
Time on site or pages per session (does visitor behavior show that your content is actually being consumed?)
Insight Example: If people are visiting once but not returning, you may need a better user experience, more valuable and consistent content, stronger lead-nurture email, more engaging marketing campaigns.
Bottom of Funnel (Conversions & Revenue)
Conversion rates (what % of visitors take the action you want)
Sales revenue and average order value (Are your sales funnel and your offers working?)
Abandoned cart rate (are people dropping off at the last step?)
Customer lifetime value (are customers sticking around and buying more over time?)
Insight Example: If lots of people add to cart but don’t check out, focus on fixing your checkout process or adding an abandoned cart email. If you have users going through your content but are not signing up for emails or following you on social media, then give them a more powerful incentive to join your community.
Why This Matters for Small Businesses and Personal Brands
By pairing analytics with the different areas of your marketing funnel, you’ll know:
Where to focus – Instead of guessing what’s working, analytics shows you exactly where to make an impact. You’ll see whether the bottleneck is at the top (visibility), the middle (trust and engagement), or the bottom (conversions). From there, you can dive deeper into the data to pinpoint the exact stage of the customer journey that needs attention—so every improvement you make moves the needle.
How to Budget – Every dollar counts, so spend it with purpose. Invest in the stages of your funnel that need the most support and will deliver the biggest return. Analytics helps you avoid guesswork, so you’re not wasting money—you’re directing it where it can actually move the needle.
When to pivot – If the numbers aren’t moving, you’ll have evidence of where and when to change course instead of just guessing.
Pro Tip: Don’t try to measure everything at once. Start your data management strategy by picking one or two key metrics for each stage of the funnel. As you get more comfortable, you can layer in more.
Get Started with Analytics - Without Being Overwhelmed
Most small business owners and personal brands avoid analytics because it’s overwhelming to understand it and they don’t know where to start. Let’s walk through this together and ease you into the pool instead of just diving into the deep end.
Step 1: Picking Metrics
Start small and pick 2-3 metrics that tie into your biggest goals. Choose one platform - it’s best to start with the one you use the most. To make it even easier for you, choose one of the core metrics that was mentioned previously in this article.
Step 2: Set Your Timing
Decide on how often you are going to check your analytics. If this is your first time, I’d recommend every two weeks. You’ll be able to adjust this to fit your actual business needs as time goes on.
Step 3: Analyze Your Data
Start by recording the current value of each data point—this gives you your benchmark. Then, track the same data at the timeframes you set in Step 2. Compare the numbers and watch how they shift over time. Don’t just rely on a single number; look for consistency, trends, or patterns that reveal what’s really working (and what’s not).
Step 4: Adjust One Thing at a Time
When you spot an area to improve, it’s tempting to make big sweeping changes (we’ve all been there). But resist the urge—overhauling everything at once makes it impossible to know what actually worked. So do yourself a favor - make a small change - test, tweak and repeat. This is the best way to clearly see what’s moving the needle and avoid wasted effort and money.
Try It Now: Go through Steps 1 and 2, and then write down your benchmark data points from Step 3. Create a calendar reminder for the next time you need to track your data point values and set up a system to turn your analytics into actionable items.
Pro Tip: Ensure your analytics tools (from your Google Analytics account to platform specific tracking tools) are set up as soon as possible. These tools only start data collection once they are set up, so don’t wait and lose valuable historical data. Even if you are not ready to start analyzing, the data will be there waiting for you when you are.
Next Steps
Analytics is your third pillar to building a solid marketing foundation, when you align them with your Goals and Audience you will have a powerful system that grows your business.
When you use these three pillars together:
It keeps you accountable.
It shows you where to spend your time and money.
It makes your marketing more effective with less guesswork.
It builds an amazing customer experience that drives them to keep coming back.
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