Analytics, the thing that keeps our business’ Internet presence vital, functioning. Of course, its full potential might be waiting in the wings. Some businesses might have a digital presence, but they might be floating on the web in order to appear more serious. What if you can utilize your analytics? What if you can expand upon an already successful campaign? Are you taking full advantage of your google analytics reporting tools?

1. Target Audience. Finding your target audience is the driving force for your analytics. Your business, in a sense, caters to these people. Your target audience should be specific. Extremely specific. Females in their 20s won’t cut it, you have to go beyond that. Google Analytics has tools that can make one understand their customers. Google has Affinity and In-Market audiences. The Affinity audience is Google’s way of analyzing a customer’s interests, their habits, even lifestyle in order to grasp their overall identity. In-Marketing is the people who are on the prowl to purchase your service or product, comparing that said service. With Google Analytics, you can filter your audience, checking your highest converting audience. Once you find that target audience you can strategize and compose campaigns that can benefit your business.

2. Repeat Customers. If your site has a flow of repeat customers, it’s a sign that your campaign efforts, on all sorts of Internet platforms, are working. You’ve done something right in order for them to come back and make a purchase. Look at the length of their stay on your site, specifically on certain pages. That data is an indicator to produce similar content to keep those customers coming back.

3. Landing Pages. As a business, you’ve created this campaign, pumping money into ads on Facebook, venturing your target audience onto your landing page. The landing page, most of the time, is your company’s homepage. What if the user exits the page moments after clicking the link? You’re seeing no results from this effort. This could be the campaign itself, which in turn needs a rework, or it can be the landing page itself. The content can be lackluster causing turn over. Find the problem and fix it, in order to see the fruits of your labor.

4. Focus on Successful Campaigns. If your social media campaign is a success, it’s time to amp it up. Same goes for referral sites or a basic search. It’s all about finding what works and what’s bringing in consumers. If these hyperlinks and social media blasts are attracting your target audience, maintain that momentum.

5. Tag Clouds. Tag clouds are this magical invention that gathers keywords and display them, the bigger the word, the more it’s used. You can take keywords people use the most to find your site and input them into the cloud. The same can be done with internal search keywords. You can create more site content based on these words, driving traffic.

6. Abandoned Carts. What causes your users to abandon their carts, leaving their virtual items to collect dust? Is it the shipping cost? A form of payment? By checking your data, you should be able to pinpoint the problem. Same can be said about forms. A user can be in the middle of filling out a form and just drop it. They exit your site. Why? Does the form contain a multitude of questions that seem repetitive? Is it asking for too much? It’s all about sifting through the data and finding the issue.

7. Traffic Sources. Pay attention to traffic sources. See which sources are providing customers that stay on your site for a long duration of time. Plus, those users should result in a purchase. Your social media campaign may be drawing in those paying customers, while internal searches are providing the opposite results. You want those customers to stay, just like those from your social media campaign. It may be best to fix your SEO strategy in order to attract higher, paying, traffic while furthering your social media efforts.

In this day and age, analytics is all about the now. You have to check your data constantly in order to see success. For your business to experience growth, you must have the ability to adapt to the momentum and ever-changing environment of marketing.

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About the Author: Brittany Torano writes creative content on behalf of the digital marketing experts at Marketing Zen. On her downtime you can see her swimming laps in a pool, running around her neighborhood, or holed up in a movie theater with a bucket of popcorn. You can connect with Brittany on LinkedIn.