The 3 most important tools for your digital performance (+1 as a gift)

Nowadays there is a large amount of data that companies must pay attention to, but do we know which are the most important? What should we focus on to achieve our objectives? Some companies make the mistake of wanting to address all the data.

At the same time, surely in your company there are many wishes and orders of tasks, but there is no time or the necessary equipment is not required to carry them out.

What is the most important thing? Where should you focus? And how do you make sure that what you do ends up producing results?

Next We recommend 3 tools (+ 1 as a gift because today we woke up motivated) that if you use them daily, they will ensure that you invest time and resources in the place where the most value is created for your business.

Tool #1: KPIs and PIs

Surely you are thinking that the KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) And the PiS (Performance Indicators) they are not a tool. But call it a prerequisite. And the first point you need to know are the key performance indicators, because in order to act, you'll need to know what you really want to measure.

And then I promise you that in combination with tools 2 and 3, your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and your Performance Indicators (PIs) will be a crucial daily tool for you.

Your KPIs are your compass

If you still don't know what your KPIs are, be sure to talk about them with the director of your company, about how they will help improve the business and achieve general objectives of the company.

We all want to know what are the optimal KPIs to help our company achieve its business objectives.

In this way, KPIs help you ensure that you use your resources in actions that truly create value for the business. So it's important to know the relationship between where you should focus your bets and what results you should be looking for.

KPIs also help you meet the expectations of your employees who want you to prioritize their area and ideas. If that idea is held in a completely different direction than the established KPIs, then that's not what you have to bet on.

Typically, the classic KPIs for digital channels are sales and potential customers. If you work with B2B companies, you probably won't have direct sales on the channel, but you will certainly generate leads. If you don't work in a classic commercial business, your KPIs may be more interested in donations, new students, or members of your association.

The PIs (Key Indicators) are your Dashboard

PIs are the fundamental sub-objectives that serve as a prerequisite for realizing your KPIs. A precondition is, for example:

• What attracts traffic to the site (PI = site visits)
• That the site manages to convert visits to, for example, sales or leads (PI = conversion rate)
• Or that you create contact forms so that users can subscribe to the newsletter and get new leads, so you have the opportunity to continue the dialogue with them and encourage and motivate them until they are ready to return and complete the final conversion (PI = subscribe to the newsletter).
• A Key Indicator could also be that you are successful in directing traffic to a specific landing page or a particular sales page, which is practically a success if you convince visitors to switch to your shopping flow or fill out a potential customer form (PI = visit a specific page).

When you sit in your car to drive to a meeting to a specific destination that you don't know, and you know that the meeting starts at 11 in the morning, you'll probably use your car's GPS or mobile phone to make sure you're driving in the right direction. In addition, I'm sure you also check your vehicle's dashboard to know that you have enough fuel, that there's oil in the car and that you're maintaining the correct speed to make sure you arrive on time.

In the same way, PIs are your digital dashboard, showing you, for example, that you don't get enough traffic on the site, that you need to accelerate conversion, or that you need to take a new path (try new initiatives) to reach your KPIs on time.

Tool #2: Sense of Urgency

Another tool that is not a tool as such. In fact, it's more of a way of thinking... But keep reading to learn how it will benefit your performance.

First, make sure that the objectives (or budget goals, or whatever they call it in your company) are defined in each KPI and PI. Otherwise, you still don't really know what results you need to create.

After all, you know that you have to get leads for the company, but not the exact number. And when you don't know how many, how can you tell if it's been a success? Or if, on the contrary, new efforts need to be launched? If you don't have goals, you won't be able to know.

Once you have established the objectives of your KPIs and PIs, be sure to break them down into daily objectives.

Why are daily goals right?

It is necessary, because otherwise, you will not be able to know if you have reached the objectives set for the end of the year. And by then it will be almost impossible to achieve the optimization of your forecasts so that you can catch up with the ones you are missing.

Your new mantra!

By breaking down your objectives into daily objectives, you have the opportunity to monitor your daily performance and determine if you are achieving the results or if you are falling short. And you need to know if you need to show a “sense of urgency”.

The sense of urgency is your new mantra. That includes you:

• Respond early when you find that you're falling behind on a goal.
• Because you know that if you don't react quickly today, then you have an even higher goal to arrive tomorrow.

If you only check Google Analytics once a week, or even worse, once a month, then you won't be able to react quickly enough, with the urgency required. You will simply discover too late that you are behind schedule and that you are having trouble achieving the objectives set.

Tool #3: Marketing Dashboards

If you need to ensure performance and results, and if you need an opportunity to respond quickly, then you need easy access to an overview of your performance across multiple objectives.

Okay, you've achieved all the goals set for today. But if the numbers are only stored inside the analysis tool, and you need help getting the most relevant numbers out every time you want to see or analyze them, then you're still a long way off!

Dashboards on the wall

The best thing for your performance and for your ability to improve results is to obtain one or more clear dashboards that collect your objectives and results to date. Our recommendation is to have a large screen hanging on the wall of your office where everyone can see it, and there you place the Marketing Dashboards.

With the Accessible and visible web dashboard for everyone in the office, at all times you will know the performance of your actions. You can see it just by looking at the screen.

• Where there are green numbers

(When you see the green numbers you can relax and you won't need to pay much attention at that time, because it means that you have achieved the objectives set out in your KPIs and PIs.)

• Where there are red numbers

(At this point, more attention should be paid because it means that the objectives set are not being achieved. This is where you'll need to prioritize your time and resources.)

In addition to ensuring the attention and admiration of your colleagues from other departments (it seems quite profitable with such a screen!) , you now have the optimal combination of tools to help you prioritize your efforts and resources where they're most needed:

• Your KPIs and PIs
• Sense of Urgency Mentality
• And your screen with the Dashboards (dashboards)

Your KPIs will show you which of your main objectives you need to pay more attention to.

The underlying PIs tell you the cause.

For example, it may be that the number of visits has decreased.

Or maybe the PIs show that your visits don't convert - that is, the site's conversion rate has dropped.

It can also appear that PIs show a lot of abandonment between the first and second steps in your Customer Journey.

Or you have an unusually high bounce rate in the new campaign that just launched.

And they will surely show you which of your traffic sources are generating the most value for the business (through sales, potential customers, or whatever your KPIs are about).

With the 3 tools and the overview they offer you, you'll always know what “nuts you need to tighten” to improve results and achieve your goals.

An extra tool: The Optimization Wheel

Would you like to improve your results? Do you want to see if your optimization efforts actually create the desired results? Then I recommend that you introduce a fixed procedure for continuous optimization.

It means that:

• You have set aside time each week to select the site (s) on the site where you most pursue your objectives and to optimize that particular area.
• Let's say, for example, that you discover that your Landing Page doesn't send enough users to buy from your website. Therefore, it will be necessary to take some improvement measures on this page.
• Then you'll brainstorm with some of your colleagues to find different hypotheses as to why this landing page isn't successful in sending people farther away. And then, you'll choose a hypothesis that you think is the reason.
• Based on this hypothesis about why the Landing Page isn't successful, you'll prepare a list of ideas to determine what needs to be changed. You might need a better headline, or you might think that the CTA button should be higher up the page and be clearer. Of course, the solution depends on your hypothesis about the cause.
• An A/B Test will be performed. Then, you'll create and publish the new Landing Page variant - at the same time as the “old” variant. In other words, a split test is executed where both landing page variants are online (the only difference will be, for example, the change of headline).
• In the future, we will allow both pages to be published. When you see that there is one of the two that works more than the other, you will choose to continue with that one alone.

Depending on the amount of traffic on the tested site, it may take a few weeks or more before you have a valid result. And while you wait, select the next area of the site to be optimized and divided. And repeat this process every week.

This method is the most effective way to continuously increase your performance and achieve better results. And to determine as soon as possible if the bets you place really have the desired effect.

When you actively use your Dashboard - the effect is continuously monitored and evaluated.

Your forecasts and the execution of continuous division tests will allow you to get more and more power from the resources you have available.

These are some of the tools we recommend for your digital performance.