Now’s the time for your deepest ever digital “Spring Clean”

Coronavirus has thrown ‘business as usual’ out the window. But there’s never been a better time to take stock of your digital performance so you’re ready to spring back into action.

Originally posted on Millimetric.ai’s blog

The COVID-19 crisis that’s wreaked havoc across the globe has brought with it a whole load of unwelcome changes to just about every single business.

Budgets are being slashed and reallocated. Redundancies are rife. Consumer behaviour has become much, much harder to track. Demand for services is dropping. And, for the most part, we’re working from home for the foreseeable — with all the complications this brings with it.

But that doesn’t mean that, for savvy businesses, there aren’t opportunities to be had during this period of mass slowdown. Because there’s never been a better time to do your deepest ever digital spring clean to ensure that you’re ready to jump straight back into action bigger and better than before when we finally, mercifully see this crisis end.

Here’s a few of the ways you can use this time to get ahead of the competition when it comes to your digital performance.

Get ahead with your online advertising

Events and out-of-home advertising are out. Endless scrolling through mobile devices on our sofas is in. And so, in the wake of the pandemic, 84% of businesses have reported having to rethink their marketing approach.

Fortunately for those of us struggling to think of ways to stay productive while working remotely, it’s never been a better time to rethink your online ads — and get ahead while most of the market slows down.

If you’re still running ads, rethinking their content to ensure they are addressing customers current (heightened) concerns is crucial.

Even if, like us, you’ve paused your ads for the time being, now is still a great time to take stock of your online advertising efforts so far (and the best way to ensure you’re staying productive, even if you’re working from the sofa to boot).

So, use this time to:

• Rethink your target market. Sit down and analyse the audiences you’ve been targeting up until now, see which ones are working and which ones aren’t. Talk to your team (via video chat) to get everyone’s perspective, do some research and see if you can build a better sense of who your target market is — and how to reach them.
• Research new strategies for ads. If you’re someone who’s always got a hundred tabs open and never has a moment to read them, the time has finally come. Research might not necessarily bring up anything brand new, but it will likely push you to see your digital marketing approach through a new lens and maybe make a few tweaks you haven’t had the chance to before.
• Go back to the drawing board with messaging. If you’re still running ads, think about how to talk to the market right now. And, if you’ve put a pause on outreach for the time being, you’ve now got a lot of time to craft the perfect messaging when you spring back into action — don’t waste it.
• Take a look at your competitors. It never hurts to take a look at what your competitors are up to, and it might just inspire you to make some tweaks to your ads.
• Conduct an audit of your ads. Take a look at what ads were working best and which ones were underperforming. Try to include elements that have proven to be high-performing into your ads going forward, while leaving out the elements that seem to be responsible for lower ROI.

The most crucial thing to know if you want to get ahead with your online advertising, however, is that you need to truly understand your data.

That means you need to know exactly what KPIs are being hit and where your ROI is slipping — to put it simply.

When you’re using multiple complex data sets to draw these conclusions, this isn’t necessarily an easy task however. We as humans aren’t designed to scan through large sets of data 24/7 and draw actionable conclusions. Often it takes things going wrong to actually understand what the issue was in the first.

But during this period, getting ahead of your competitors by knowing exactly what’s going on in your data is going to make the biggest difference. And a tool like ours that scans through all your data sets 24/7 to identify anomalies, trends and relationships could be your biggest business ally during this crisis.

Optimise your website

With a global population of people with more time on their hands than ever before, consumption of content is through the roof. Which makes now the perfect time to optimise your website.

We’d suggest you start by:

• A/B testing different website elements. Copy, images and CTAs are three obvious ways to A/B test your webpages, but there are a lot of different elements to try this with now you have the time (check out Neil Patel’s list of different elements to A/B test for inspiration).
• Conduct an audit of your webpages. You’ve finally got time to properly sit down and review the copy, imagery, CTAs (and more) of your webpages. Look out for any areas where you could be getting your message across clearer and try and think like your audience to see how your messaging could be more engaging for them.
• Test the speed of your webpages. Slow loading pages can have a huge impact on your ability to convert customers who’ve landed on your webpage. Remember, 47% of customers expect a website to load in two seconds at the very most and 40% will abandon it altogether if it takes longer than three.

Once again, whipping your website into shape requires a deep understanding of your data. And constantly scanning through datasets for KPIs, trends and anomalies for insights can become overwhelming when a human is tasked with it.

This brings us to our next — and potentially must crucial — point in getting your digital performance into its best place yet: Getting all of your data in one place where you can understand it really clearly.

Get all your data in one place

One of the biggest challenges for any company today is simply wading through the vast amounts of data they now hold (on just about everything). Finding meaningful insights which we can actually action can feel utterly impossible when we’re stuck trying to juggle so much information.

That’s why the biggest difference you can make over the coming months to get your company into shape is investing in a tool that gets all your data in one place, and is able to analyse it and deliver results in real time.

Millimetric’s machine learning platform does just that. It seamlessly integrates with all of your data sources allows the platform to analyse thousands of metrics in real time, 24/7. We’ll then automatically let you know when an anomaly is detected and our root cause diagnostics enable you to take action straight away before it impacts your KPIs.

In other words, you’ll be able to truly understand all of the ways you can improve your digital performance immediately: When there’s an issue, you’ll know straight away why it happened and how to fix it.

Try the software for free today, and get your deepest ever digital spring clean underway so you’re ready to spring back into action bigger and better than ever.