The ball in Times Square has dropped, the confetti is damp, the champage bottles dry. The new year is upon us, and we welcome it as either a chance to pivot away from what didn’t work, or to double down on what did work. Here are our 9 suggestions for ways to start your marketing analytics year off well.

Clean

• Update your passwords. You know, that one password you haven’t changed since 2017? This is the time to change it. It’s a minor inconvenience for a major benefit.
• Back up your data. Data’s no good if you lose it all.
• Archive stuff you don’t need. Whether it’s in your inbox or your dashboards, take a hard look at everything and put away what isn’t working for you.

Analyze

• Review your goals. What business outcomes are you aiming for this year? Is everyone clear on how their work relates to those goals?
• Review your KPIs. A KPI is a number for which you get a bonus or fired for. Everything else is a metric.
• Review your reporting. Scrutinize every report and dashboard. Does the information being shown help you make a decision? If not, archive it.

Plan

• Forecast your KPIs and metrics using predictive analytics to identify which goals will be easier or harder to achieve.
• Build a one-page plan for every KPI. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, “A goal without a plan is a wish.”
• Set monthly milestones for your plan.

Finally, remember to set your own professional development goals for 2020. What do you want to learn? Where will you learn it? Make investing in yourself a priority this year – as AI and machine learning advance, the only way to continue adding value is to always be growing. If you haven’t already joined our free Slack community, Analytics for Marketers, now’s a great time to become a member.

Happy New Year from all of us at Trust Insights.

This week’s Bright Idea is a repeat, as many folks were out of the office by the 21st of December. It’s an 8-minute tutorial, no form or registration, on how to set up click tracking for MP3 files on your website in Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics to see what MP3s are earning clicks – and how to set them up as goals in your Google Analytics. For folks trying their hand at podcasting, this will help you find out how much traffic the MP3s linked in your site deliver.

Watch the video on YouTube now »

If you missed it over the holidays (and many folks did), we published 12 days of data on major topics of 2019 such as SEO, email marketing, PR, and social media. Catch the data for each of the 12 days here:

1. Facebook Brands Stats for 2019
2. Facebook Influencers Stats for 2019
3. Instagram Brands Stats for 2019
4. Instagram Influencers Stats for 2019
5. YouTube Top Viewed Content for 2019
6. YouTube Influencers Stats for 2019
7. Most Overused PR Words for 2019
8. Press Releases Stats for 2019
9. News Stories Stats for 2019
10. Content Republishing in 2019
11. SEO Link Decay in 2019
12. Email marketing forecast 2020

• {PODCAST} In-Ear Insights: Two Must-Have Strategies in 2020
• {PODCAST} In-Ear Insights: Email Marketing List Growth and List Decay
• {PODCAST} In-Ear Insights: Data-Driven Thought Leadership
• How To Build An Entire Year’s Content Marketing Calendar With Predictive Analytics
• 5 Applications of AI & ML for Marketing Campaigns #MTechSummit
• Instant Insights: Traditional News Volume By Year

Shiny Objects is a roundup of the best content you and others have written and shared in the last week.

Social Media Marketing

• Social Media Resume Example & Writing Tips via Resume Genius
• Facebook to combat fake news with this new fact-checking program: Know how via Business Standard News
• Facebook Artificial Intelligence to take the place of its Content Moderators / Digital Information World

Media and Content

• 2020 Color Trends: The Worlds Most Popular Colors
• How Companies Can Mine Online Reviews for Product-Development Gold
• Clorox Approaches DTC Very Differently Than Its Competitors Adweek

Tools, Machine Learning, and AI

• Apple attending & presenting at NeurIPS Machine Learning conference
• Cloudy with a chance of neurons: The tools that make neural networks work via Ars Technica
• Delivering Next Best Action with Artificial Intelligence

Analytics, Stats, and Data Science

• How the Auth0 Data Team Uses R and Python
• How to Blend Web Analytics and Digital Marketing Analytics to Grow Better
• Predictive Analytics for Marketing Whats Possible and How it Works via Emerj

SEO, Google, and Paid Media

• Are Long Blog Posts The Key To An Unfair SEO Advantage? via By Mason Pelt
• How to Use Keywords Throughout Your Marketing Strategy via Moz
• Ok, Google: Scale my SaaS business via Inside Intercom

Business and Leadership

• Startup Growth and Venture Returns: What We Found When We Analyzed Thousands of VC Deals via AngelList
• 10 Eye-Opening Facts About Marketing Budget Allocation
• Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Trends Impacting Infrastructure and Operations for 2020

Join the Club

Are you a member of our free Slack group, Analytics for Marketers? Join 800 like-minded marketers who care about data and measuring their success. Membership is free – join today.

Upcoming Events

Where can you find us in person?

• Social Media Marketing World, March 2020, San Diego, CA
• MarTech West, April 2020, San Jose, CA
• ContentTech Summit, April 2020, San Diega, CA
• HELLO Conference, April 2020, New Jersey
• Women in Analytics, June 2020, Columbus, OH
• MAICON 2020, July 2020, Cleveland, OH

Going to a conference we should know about? Reach out!

Want some private training at your company? Ask us!

In Your Ears

Would you rather listen to our content? Follow the Trust Insights show, In-Ear Insights in the podcast listening software of your choice:

• In-Ear Insights on iTunes/Apple
• In-Ear Insights on Google Podcasts
• In-Ear Insights on all other podcasting software

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Make sure you don’t miss a thing! Follow Trust Insights on the social channels of your choice:

Required FTC Disclosures

Events with links have purchased sponsorships in this newsletter and as a result, Trust Insights receives financial compensation for promoting them.

Trust Insights maintains business partnerships with companies including, but not limited to, IBM, Talkwalker, Zignal Labs, Agorapulse, and others. While links shared from partners are not explicit endorsements, nor do they directly financially benefit Trust Insights, a commercial relationship exists for which we may receive indirect financial benefit.

Conclusion

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