Here are three easy analytics habits your marketing and BD team should consider as essential follow-up in your firm's content marketing efforts.
If you're trying to answer the oft-asked question "What should we do with our reader data to support business growth?" start here, with these smart practices.
1. Schedule Time to Look at Analytics
Simple as that — and yet, I hear from many folks that their time looking at analytics is sporadic, occasional, and unplanned. Every story I've heard from JD Supra clients about how they successfully leveraged reader analytics for their marketing and BD efforts always includes this one detail.
And so: Schedule an hour once a month. Or, build a process in which one or two people analyze and curate the most important data points, regularly, and share findings with the entire team (as described in this short video).
However you do it, make accessing analytics a scheduled, ongoing practice.
2. Share the Data Widely With Colleagues In Different Roles (and Solicit Their Insights)
Another key aspect to the successful teams I've encountered: they understand that people in different roles, with varying experiences and perspectives, can bring insights to data that others might miss.
And so: export your reader data regularly and share internally with marketers and BD folks focused on specific industries, practice areas, key clients, or any other strategic initiative. Build a process (a monthly meeting? an intranet conversation? something else?) in which you are able to check in with folks and hear their take, their insights in response to your data.
3. Bring Questions to Your Data
All three of these habits work in tandem and, again, are at the heart of many of the team successes I've tracked over the years. Smart marketers are often looking at their reader data with questions in mind. Therein lies some of your best insights.
And so: ask questions and encourage others to do the same. What are our clients reading (and does it relate to how we are serving them)? What do companies in our most strategic industries care about most right now? Are we being read in industries in which we don't operate, but could?
I plan a post listing many such questions that every team should bring to their analytics. Suffice to say, your questions (limitless in scope) can shed light on the interests of clients, prospects, and others in the industries and sectors in which you operate — as well as any others in which you might well be missing opportunities.
Your Analytics Process: What Success Look Like
As I said above, these habits work in tandem. Your successful leveraging of analytics begins with some combination of the above.
Details may change depending on the size of your team and resources available to you — however, regardless of size, at the heart of it is a clear, internal process:
Schedule time to access and gather your reader data. Share the data internally. Gather insights based on questions everyone brings to your reports. Share those insights with key stakeholders.
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Paul Ryplewski is JD Supra's VP of Client Services