Prioritizing Action Over Data in Google Analytics | JJ Reynolds

Ann Kraus: Hello, and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I'm Ann Kraus. Our guest today is JJ Reynolds. JJ is the founder and lead measurement strategist at Mediauthentic. JJ focuses on helping companies make data-driven decisions by setting up systems, structures, and technologies that are going to amplify results. By understanding and using Google Analytics, Looker Studio, and Google Tag Manager, JJ can help companies enhance results by actually celebrating some of those small victories. JJ, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. JJ Reynolds: Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here. Ann Kraus: So, I have to tell you that some of the things that I was reading about you and everything, it seems like you seem to live in the data, which is where a lot of people dread. They dread, "Oh, I got to look at all that." How do you tell agencies that you use the Google Analytics data? JJ Reynolds: Yeah, the biggest thing that most people get wrong with Google Analytics, any type of reporting software, is they just look at it, and they don't actually do anything with that information. They don't actually act on it. And so the easiest way for you to do that if you're an agency consultant, et cetera, is ask yourself what are you trying to do and what is actually happening. The overlap of those two questions of what are you trying to accomplish, what's actually happening, allows you to then take an action. And so don't just look at the default reports, don't look at all these things and try to find an insight. Just overlay what you're trying to do and what's actually happening, and if your outcome is not what's expected, just go back to the drawing board and try again. Ann Kraus: Is there a scenario that you can talk to about that in terms of where an agency might've been looking at the wrong part of the data? JJ Reynolds: Yeah, so most people look at the kind of basic things, page views, add to carts, purchases, et cetera. But what you can do to layer in another level of sophistication that your clients will love and also your teams will be able to more easily find the data and to take an action on and be actually data-driven, is ask yourself, what are you trying to promote? What are you trying to get someone to do? Is that a lead magnet? Is it a sales page? What is it? How many people saw the thing? How many people engaged with it? You could kind of have different metrics for that there, and how many people continued to the next step? So you're not just looking at add to carts, you're looking at this kind of combination of people who saw it, engaged with it, and then did the thing you were trying to get them to do, which is like a little micro conversion. Once you have that, you can then break it down by anything. You can break it down by traffic source, by landing page, by where they came from, what you're trying to do, and it becomes much, much more actionable, as opposed to just, "Oh, hey, we got 812 add to carts." That's not as much useful. Ann Kraus: So instead of focusing on that add to cart, focus on all of the different steps the user would have to go to get there, and see if maybe there's a story there or if there's a break in that chain. JJ Reynolds: Exactly, yes. Smaller conversations can move a bigger needle over time, so if you can break those things down, it's much easier to optimize and improve your results. Ann Kraus: Okay, so that's one of the things that we talked about in your intro is that you help companies capitalize on small improvements. So for agencies that are watching and they want those big improvements right away, they need to know right away, how do you show them those small victories? JJ Reynolds: Yeah, so most of the time, if you're an agency worth your salt, you will see the problems. If a client comes to you and it's blatantly wrong, you're like, "Oh, my goodness," you're not getting any sales and you get 10 million page views a month, there's a problem there. And you can usually just fix it based off of your other clients, anecdotes, et cetera. You can get pretty close to being better. But when it comes to actually improving things, that's where, over time, you have to have these reports built up that you can show, A, the problem, and B, how you propose to fix it. And so we prefer Looker Studio. There's a lot of other tools that visualize things out there, but you can really say, "Hey, what's the expected outcome from this?" Whether that's a percentage conversion rate, whether that's steps in a journey, whatever that might be. And then you can even have color coded of that of saying, green is good, yellow is we need to check on this, and red is bad. Just go the stoplight approach. And you'd be remarkably surprised at how many of your clients will be like, "Oh my goodness, that's useful." Because if you tell someone you've got a 30% conversion rate, they'll look at you like, cool. If you told them you have a 1% conversion rate, you'll also say, cool. There's absolutely no difference. But if you add in a color or a benchmark of what you're trying to achieve, everything comes into context and you'll see the eyes light up on most of your clients. Ann Kraus: So that's funny, but it's actually the visualization of it that really helps anybody look at data. JJ Reynolds: Yeah, even, I would go as far as the minimum visualization you need is, what is your expectation, and then red, yellow, green. Or even red and green, good and bad. If you can do that in a Google Sheet in Looker Studio, it does not matter where, even in a PDF that you send your clients, it doesn't matter. Just, if you can have a benchmark of what's expected and what's not working and what is working, everybody becomes so much more happy and excited about moving forward. Ann Kraus: One of the things that I know that I've talked to some clients and have struggled with is just understanding how Google Analytics works and how to even use the data. How do you, other than the small victories and everything, is there a particular way you guide these agencies even further on how to use that data? JJ Reynolds: We actually have an agency coaching program called Better Than Data, where we talk through that. We just literally say, "Hey, what are you trying to achieve?" And there are different levels of agency. So I'd say if you're a small business, like you work with HVAC companies, that's one level, where you just kind of need the basic pieces and you kind of have to nail your targeting, everything else. Then there's the level of the mid-level business where you have to get more granular, you might have to dive deeper into the platform. And then there's the larger companies where they really have to have more nuance behind it. And so what I would say to that question is, go in with a question. Ask a question of your information first. And what we try to say is ask a question and identify what you're going to do with the result. So if you say, "How many sales did we have yesterday," and I tell you, "812," does that change anything that you're going to do? Does that make any difference to you at all? Is there any action to take? Probably not. And so what might be a better question is say, "Hey, how many of our organic visitors visited our sales page?" And then you're like, "Okay, only like 0.1%." And you're like, "Well, there's a problem. We should probably figure out how to fix that." Ann Kraus: Okay. Okay. Interesting. All right, so you are this data person and you seem to really love this stuff, so I have a silly question for you: If you were the publicist for data, the PR person, for instance, what's the slogan you would come up with for them? JJ Reynolds: I would say action is better than data, honestly, is if you can take an action using the data, the rest of the data, almost you can throw away. And so if you can act on something, it is infinitely more useful than a bajillion charts that someone generates for you. And so it might take a little bit of sifting through that, that's why agencies like us exist, but action is where you really get value over time. Ann Kraus: Okay, action is better than data. We heard it first, right? So we created that one. Be on billboards everywhere soon, I'm sure. So tell me, is there a podcast, or a book, or anything that really kind of speaks to you or got you going in your career that you would recommend to our viewers? JJ Reynolds: Ooh. I really enjoy, I think it's called The Science of Habit. It's a really popular book. I think it's called something like Google Habit Book. I'm sure it's a really common book that's out there. I just really enjoy the fact that a lot of the things that we do are habitual, and so if you can change those either in business, in an agency, in whatever you're doing, it becomes a lot easier to move a bigger rock, because you have all these little things that are moving things forward. I think it's called... The Power of Habit, I think that's what it's called. Ann Kraus: There you go. Okay. Awesome. JJ, this has been great. I really appreciate you taking the time to meet with me here this morning. And if the viewers want to get to know you a little bit more, learn more about you, what's the best way for them to find you? JJ Reynolds: Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, JJ Reynolds. I'm usually one of the first people to pop up there. If you are looking to have this done for you, mediauthentic.com, take your best stab at that spelling and usually we show up. And lastly, betterthandata.com if you are an agency or consultant that wants to actually become data-driven, use data and all those things, betterthandata.com. So any one of those, find me, hit me up. Ann Kraus: Hit you up. All right, awesome. Thank you so much for joining me today. JJ Reynolds: Yeah, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Ann Kraus: And thank you all for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry-leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit Simply.fi. Thanks for joining us, I'm Ann Kraus, and I will see you next time.