73 BUSINESS called “the forgotten cousin”, provides insight into organic search performance, site speed and mobile usability. “Ads are for your ads. Analytics is for your website data. Search Console is about how you appear in search,” she explained. SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY: MOVING BEYOND VANITY METRICS Kavanagh shared a personal anecdote that illustrated the danger of focusing on vanity metrics. She posted a Marilyn Monroe filter on Instagram with the caption “Do I look like Marilyn Monroe or the drag queen from Shrek? The result? “50 million views and endless comments.” But she asked: “Did it get me more work? Absolutely not. Nothing to do with what I do.” Her point was clear: “It’s not about followers. It’s not about getting all the likes, going viral. It’s about impact in your business.” It’s all about measurement beyond surface metrics. She instructed: “When you measure those metrics, those likes, those shares, those comments, really what you want to look at is over that same period of time what else has happened in your business further down the funnel. Otherwise, you fall into the trap of measuring just what we call vanity metrics and actually the impact is more important.” Kavanagh encouraged detective work: “If you have had a really great campaign on whatever social platform you’ve chosen to do and it’s gone really well and the metrics are super high and then you look down that funnel, you think, well, we’ve been getting loads of comments, loads of shares, loads of likes, new followers, but when we come down to sales, we’ve not had any increase. Your job as the detective, what’s missing?” GOOGLE ANALYTICS: MAKING SENSE OF YOUR DATA Kavanagh addressed a common frustration about Google Analytics. When she asked who “opens Google Analytics and every time they open it know exactly what they want and where to go to find that information,” only one person raised their hand. “It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because it’s a tool that we’ve all heard of, but when it comes to actually using it, we sort of know it’s useful, but we don’t know how.” She outlined the Life Cycle reporting structure, explaining it through the traditional marketing funnel. Using the framework of “See, think, do, care,” she broke down the four reports: “Acquisition: if you are trying to answer the question how did my customers find me that is going to be an acquisition top of the funnel how did they see me.” “Engagement: everything in engagement is going to answer that question, when they found me what did they do and is the consideration phase of your funnel.” “Monetisation: it’s the action. It’s the do part of your sales funnel. And you’re answering the question, what’s bringing value into my business? What are people buying? What are they clicking? Retention sits within that care and it’s answering the question, how are people coming back? When are they coming back?” On the AI features, she noted: “Google Analytics 4 is built with machine learning from the ground up. What that means for you in a practical sense is now you can use the AI powered search bar to look for very specific things. So just like a search engine, you can say how many people are on an iPhone in the past seven days and then it’ll find you that report using AI and based on your information in your account.” CORE PRINCIPLES FOR DIGITAL SUCCESS Throughout both sessions, Kavanagh emphasised three core principles for digital presence. Be helpful: She stressed the importance of focusing on humans. “Far too many times, I have a lot of people come to me and say, ‘Oh, but I just need to write for a search engine or more recently, I need to write for AI.’ Remember, the purpose of all of those tools, is to provide the most relevant, most useful information to you as a user. So, it doesn’t matter how you’re writing. We’re not writing for machines. We’re writing for human queries on the other side of the machine.” On algorithms, she was blunt: “That dreaded word, the algorithm. If you meet any gurus and they say, ‘Oh, I’ll help you beat the algorithm.’ Tell them where to go as algorithms change hourly, daily. We’re not beating any algorithms here. We’re writing for humans on the other side.” Be easy to use: Technical requirements matter. She referenced usertesting. com as a resource, explaining: “You can sign up, they’ll pay you to do it as well. Just do one thing as a user tester and understand what you are asked to look for on an app or a website and then do that for yourself. Because if people go on your website and they can’t find the navigation, they can’t find the returns policy, there’s so many simple things. If they can’t do what they need to do on your website, how are you making a connection?” Be up to date: She emphasised consistency. “Long gone are the days of build a site and they will come put it up there and they’ll find me. Doesn’t work like that. It is a consistent cycle of work and it’s a lot of work.” KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR RETAILERS Kavanagh left attendees with specific homework assignments. On platform audits, she instructed: “Go away and look at all the platforms that you’re on for your business and next to each platform write why you’re there. And if you struggle why you’re there,” she reminded them of the time riddle, emphasising that if you can’t write why you’re there, “think of all that time you could be putting strategically elsewhere in your business.” Visit: www.springfair.com
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