INBOX INSIGHTS, June 21, 2023: Monthly Reporting Part 3, Instagram for Influencers - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

INBOX INSIGHTS: Monthly Reporting Part 3, Instagram for Influencers (6/21) :: View in browser

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Monthly Reports, Part 3: Process and Platform

If you’re following along. we’re talking about creating better monthly reports using the 5P framework. The previous two posts covered Purpose and People. This time, we want to dig into Process and Platform.

As a refresher, we started with Purpose where we created this user story:

“As a marketing manager, I want to measure my content marketing, so that I know where to allocate budget.”

We then drilled down into the People we created more user stories:

“As the content writer, I want to know what topics our customers care about, so that I can write valuable content.”
“As the content editor, I want to publish clear and succinct content, so that bounce rate is low.”
“As the analyst, I want to measure page views, so that I know what content resonates with our audience.”
“As a customer, I want to consume content that demonstrates authority, so that I know which company to hire”
“As a customer, I want to consume content that answers an immediate question, so that I know this company can help me”

Now we’re ready to start outlining the Process and choosing Platforms. I’ll let you in on a really terrible secret. Many companies choose their platforms first and then try to back into their user stories. This is the wrong way to go about measurement. That said, sometimes you inherit or are stuck with a platform you didn’t choose. We can talk through that as well.

Back to the user stories – what we’re seeing as that everyone has a different need. This is your opportunity to develop a repeatable process for your monthly reports that allows you to extract and analyze the data requested. This is also where you start to select your platforms. In this instance, you’ll be working with a few different platforms.

When developing your process, ideally you’d be thinking about as much automation as possible. This could and should influence your platform selection. Let’s say you need to extract data on a weekly basis for your monthly report. You’d want a platform that allows for scheduled data exports, or even connection to an API that will allow for automated data extraction into your sheets or database.

I’ve seen time and time again, teams spending A LOT of time on monthly reports because of how manual the process is. Perhaps you don’t have the resources to automate the whole process, but I’d bet you could automate at least some of it.

For example, if you’re not using a platform like Looker Studio, you’re missing out. Especially if the data you’re using to power your reports comes from Google Analytics and Search Console. When we go back to the user stories, we can see that the data, in fact, does come from those sources.

“I want to measure pageviews” – that is a metric you can find in Google Analytics
“I want to know what topics our customers care about” – that is data you can get from Google Search Console and Google Analytics
“I want to consume content that answers an immediate question” – that is data you can get from Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

What I would do with this information is open a blank Looker Studio book and start connecting my data sources. Then I can build out the tables and charts that answer the questions asked in the user stories. Now, you’ve automated the process of pulling the data, and the platforms are Looker Studio, Google Analytics, and Search Console.

That’s not nearly as painful as you thought, right? Once the reports is set up, part of your process should be to monitor the data to make sure there are no anomalies and the at the connections between platforms don’t break.

If you’re in a situation where all your tools don’t play as nicely together as the example above – don’t fret! Your best bet will be to establish a repeatable process to extract, clean, and analyze the data. This will allow you to scale and eventually automate your process. You make find new platforms down the line that can do this for you, but you need to have the process nailed down first.

In the next edition, we’ll tie it all together with Performance.

Are you creating repeatable processes? Reply to this email, or come join the conversation in our Free Slack Group, Analytics for Marketers.

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In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss the challenge of marketing products and services that are considered boring or mundane. They emphasize the importance of identifying the right audience for such products and reframing the marketing approach to make it more appealing to that specific audience. They provide examples like industrial concrete and ball bearings, highlighting the need to showcase the practical applications and benefits of these seemingly dull products. Katie and Chris also discuss the significance of differentiation and storytelling in marketing, emphasizing the need to communicate specific value propositions and address the pain points of potential customers. They mention the Heaven and Hell exercise, where businesses should articulate the positive and negative experiences customers can expect from their product or service. They also stress the importance of understanding the customer’s perspective and stepping out of the curse of knowledge to develop effective marketing strategies. Tune in to the full episode for more insights and strategies on marketing “boring” products successfully.

Watch/listen to this episode of In-Ear Insights here »

Last week on So What? The Marketing Analytics and Insights Livestream, we discussed podcast launch strategy. Catch the episode replay here!

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In this week’s Data Diaries, let’s check in on our old friend Instagram again. Last week, we looked at how brands were doing on Instagram. This week, let’s take a look at influencers.

First, the overall picture:

We see influencer engagement falling to about 0.5%. Taking a step back, just before the pandemic, influencer engagement hovered around 2%, about 4x more than it is today. While influencers still have about 2x more engagement than brands, they’ve fallen further from grace.

Next, let’s examine media types:

Unlike brands, influencers have held steady on video over the last 6 months, though it’s noteworthy that video (including Reels) continues to underperform compared to other media types. The engagement of carousels/albums and photos is much closer for influencers than it is for brands as well – both media types perform very similarly.

So what is the key takeaway here? If your business relies on Instagram, either directly as a brand or through an influencer, performance overall is continuing to decay. If you are exceeding these benchmarks, congratulations! You’re doing better than thousands of brands and tens of thousands of influencers.

If you’re using influencers, the type of content they produce will likely perform differently. Be sure to provide influencers with as many content assets in as many different formats as you’re capable of producing, to increase the likelihood that a campaign’s content lands with the audience.

As with brands, your results will vary widely based on your influencer’s audience, how loyal they are, and how compelling your collaborative content is. Be sure to compare Instagram to other social media channels and allocate your resources proportionally to the results you get, ideally derived from a social media mix model.

Here’s a roundup of who’s hiring, based on positions shared in the Analytics for Marketers Slack group and other communities.

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Believe it or not, July 1st, 2023 – and Google’s shutdown of Universal Analytics in favor of Google Analytics 4 – is in less than 11 calendar days. This means that in 11 days, you will no longer be able to capture data in Universal Analytics – it will just stop collecting data. If you haven’t already switched over, it’s urgent you do so right now. So, let’s get you moving.

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