The Seotistics newsletter is written by Marco Giordano, a Data/Web Analyst with the goal of combining business and web data. Tired of the usual boring Analytics content without any business impact? Seotistics teaches you how to use Analytics, web data and even content in your workflow while helping you with Strategy.
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The Analytics ROI Your CFO Won't See
Published about 2 months agoΒ β’Β 6 min read
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Use Data Or Be Used By Data!
The May 25 issue of Seotistics is here for you!
Data, data and data... but is it even true that Analytics helps with making money?
You see, there are many ways Analytics helps you.
And I will show you how data goes far beyond simple advice.
The term ROI in the email subject is improper but most of you use it soooo.
Please move this email to your Primary inbox or reply to it. This is to prevent Seotistics goes into spam by accident. Gmail users can read this tutorial to do it.
This will be for Analysts or everyone wanting to explore Web Data in general, not only SEO.
The course is split in 4 amazing modules: β β GA4, GSC and other data sources: how to use them β LLM Workflows, BigQuery, SQL & Python β Dataform & Pipelines β Real Use Cases at work
I will talk about Data Modeling at WAW and for MeasureCamp... let's see!
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I am back from my "holiday" so expect more to come soon π
The "Stereotypical" View
The wrong view of data, especially from marketers, is that you use data to drive "data-driven" decisions.
Well, this isn't wrong! The problem is that data-driven doesn't mean anything.
That's because data doesn't decide anything, it's YOU still doing the work.
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And not only that, automation is often measured incorrectly or disregarded in favor of "revenue".
We should all know that revenue is often misreported or attributed to the wrong model.
Automation Example
The real power in automation is when you actually measure it.
It's easy to underestimate the impact of a data product like a dashboard and call it useless.
But you have to remember that manual data extraction is one of the most common causes of time waste.
How do I know? Well I've done it for years, I lived that feeling.
Leadership obsesses over "direct" revenue. Except data can be used for a lot more things!
Let's consider the most common scenario:
data extraction happens manually
no storage of data whatsoever
no processes in place
By running some simple Math, we can deduce that you are wasting hours of a work week doing useless activities.
Yes manual data extraction doesn't bring any benefit, it's just a hurdle.
One of the first things I do with a new project is reduce this hurdle and work on adding value ASAP.
A simple way to measure the success of automation is with efficiency gains.
So if your solution saves 40 hours a week, you can reinvest those in better activities.
Not only that, each hour has a price since you are paying someone to work.
And even though (most) managers don't care, the most important argument is psychological. β Not having to hate your jobs with manual task is a HUGE boost for productivity.
Example 1: Data Pipelines
The most important example is having your web data available.
Only a few organizations can boast having usable data that is used for something.
Yes maybe you can see that Data Studio dashboard but the backend is terrible.
A data pipeline is a series of transformations on your data.
In our case, it looks something like this:
Yes also need to update this graphic to have Data Studio again.
Your stakeholders don't care about the steps but the final output, which in this case is saving TIME.
Extracting data from the Google APIs, combining them and all takes time.
You also don't have a solid way to compare results, unlike an actual pipeline.
In most of my projects, this alone saved dozens of hours of weekly work and tool subscriptions.
Assuming 20 hours saved for one person, priced at $20/hour, you would have $400/month in savings. β But this isn't how it works normally, consider a whole company, like one with 500 employees using web data:
500 x $400/month = $200K/month
For sure, this amount of money doesn't mean you spent $200K less!!!
It's just an estimation of wasted work you saved, it's not like you will get $200K back in your P&L.
So it's better to consider them as CAPACITY you save for people to work on better opportunities.
The Price Of Mistakes
Let's consider a big Ecommerce or an aggregator of hotels...
we agree both businesses heavily rely on data, right?
Now what happens if you don't have a proper process or if something breaks and you don't catch it in time?
Yes, you lot an immense amount of money!
Negativity sells better than positive emotions. β In this case the math also makes sense, Analytics can help you prevent costly mistakes.
I helped a LOT with website migrations and their assessment.
Recently, I noticed that a B2B SaaS brand redirected a home page to the wrong URL on the new website...
You can imagine this had a huge negative impact on their traffic.
Example 2: Content Automation
We all know (I hope) that good content makes you money and keeps your company alive.
This is especially true for B2B as potential clients need to trust you first and usually go through multiple touchpoints.
Content helps at all stages by the way.
Think about companies like Ahrefs, Stape or Semrush...
why do you think they invest in offline events and a LOT of content?
So proper content automation is one of the best use cases for companies.
The Seotistics newsletter is written by Marco Giordano, a Data/Web Analyst with the goal of combining business and web data. Tired of the usual boring Analytics content without any business impact? Seotistics teaches you how to use Analytics, web data and even content in your workflow while helping you with Strategy.
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