An important task in organizing a business is to build your own automated system for making a profit. We are talking about a sales funnel that works through advertising, then finalizing the deal, and, in fact, the sale itself, with the transition to repeat sales.
This is the minimum and obligatory set of analytics tools that a startup needs already at the MVP stage of the project. These tools are the building blocks of a funnel for any startup.
We’re convinced that all entrepreneurs, startups, executives, and marketers can’t do without them. With that said, let’s move on to the tools themselves.
Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is known for every website-related activity in one way or another. It’s a tag that is installed once on the website (or mobile app) and allows the GTM interface to integrate all the necessary analytics service codes into the website or app.
It’s like a container where, after installing, you can drop the codes of different services, most of which are set up automatically when synchronizing with GTM.
You don’t need to bother your coders every time you want to install new code in a certain place and in a certain way. Moreover, with GTM, you will be able to set the tracking of user activities, such as visits to specific web pages, clicks, form submissions, events, and online sales conversions.
After that, you can send the collected information to the appropriate analytics services.
We recommend integrating all the services below into your website or mobile app through pre-installed GTM.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) is the main web analytics tool that collects information about users, audiences, actions, traffic sources, conversions on a website or in a mobile app.
The link to the advertising cabinet allows you to link Google Ad campaigns to targeted actions on the site or in the app and set up effective ad campaigns with optimization on conversions, analyze the effectiveness of various ad sources, channels, and targeting settings.
GA features:
- Traffic analysis;
- SEO data tracking;
- Target audience analysis and segmentation;
- Target action and event tracking + conversion settings;
- Reporting system, etc.
Essentially, GA is the center of all site information, visitors, eCommerce, and promotion. For a newcomer, however, this tool may seem complicated so one will need the help of a web analytics specialist. Although, usually, such help is free.
Say, we set up all the processes in Google Analytics that are needed to get conversions on Google Ads or Facebook Ads for free. To learn more about GA and how to set it up, check out this beginner-friendly guide on Google Analytics for Ecommerce.
EmailAnalytics
Speaking of analytics, if your team uses email to communicate, then you need EmailAnalytics. It visualizes your team’s email activity so you can see who sends and receives the most emails on your team.
You can even see each team member’s average email response time, which is a critical KPI for sales and customer service teams. In fact, 35-50% of all sales go to the vendor that responds first, and EmailAnalytics customers respond, on average, 42.5% faster than non-EmailAnalytics customers.
Why? Because that which gets measured gets improved. So if your team uses email to communicate with vendors, leads, prospects, or customers, go get EmailAnalytics and start improving your team’s email productivity.
Customer Feedback Software
Especially in the MVP stage of building your product, how do you know you’re building the right things? No better way to find out than to combine your quantitative data from GA with qualitative data from customer feedback software.
When it comes to the various out there, here are some of the big things you’re going to want to be able to do:
- Collect feature requests
- Prioritize feedback with community boards and upvoting
- Interact with customers via mini-surveys
- Give customers a chance to send screen recordings and screen captures
- Follow-up with feedback personally, and close the feedback loop
Facebook Pixel
FB Pixel connects your Facebook ads account and respectively Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns with targeted actions on your website or mobile app.
FB Pixel allows you to set up one of the most effective types of advertising campaigns, in which FB and Instagram serve as traffic sources. In its turn, the website, online store, or webpage converts traffic into orders, sales, subscriptions, mobile app downloads, and the like.
FB Pixel is used to collect data on advertising effectiveness, conversions, and clicks, as well as customize reports.
Pixel creation takes place in Facebook Events Manager – this is where you can find the desired version of code, then integrate it into the website using GTM (manually or through any other affiliate service). After installing FB Pixel, you can go to the event settings in FB.
It’s a powerful tool for improving advertising effectiveness. Pixel collects and segments audiences, which can then be used for retargeting and building similar audiences for your ads.
Call Tracking
Every day, more and more business communications are moving to social networks and messengers. However, phone calls remain an important communication and sales channel for business. Call tracking is designed to track incoming calls in the context of their sources and promotional activities.
Call-tracking is about recording your business calls and helping sales managers to qualify them.
This tool is most effective when fully integrated with the entire analytics system: Google Analytics, Google ads, Facebook Ads, and CRM systems.
The system works due to the code placed on the page of the site, where the working phone number is indicated. When a buyer dials the number, the system replaces it with another.
This way, it’s getting clear where the client came from and at what stage of the sales funnel he/she is. This, in turn, allows you to do the following things:
- Select the most effective advertising channels;
- Get feedback from buyers;
- Control the work of operators;
- Handle customer complaints;
- Experiment with marketing tools, arrange automated calls, etc.
Call-tracking as a part of a sales funnel is easily integrated with analytics and CRM. It’s undoubtedly an important part of the sales system.
CRM
CRM is a technology for automating and managing your business processes by providing communication between the company and your (potential) customers, maintaining your client database, and organizing the connection of marketing and analytics tools.
CRM software must record all actions, relationships, and contacts with potential customers (leads), their qualifications, and communication at all stages of the sales process.
To understand what it is and how it works, imagine a database that stores customer info, with all their phone numbers, social media profiles, messengers, order history, likes, and dislikes. This also includes their advertising conversions, time spent on different product pages, and the like.
CRM opens up a lot of possibilities as follows:
- Project management;
- Client reservation;
- Auto-issuing of document forms;
- Bookkeeping;
- Integration with telephony and much more.
- SMS automation for lead nurturing
- Newer eCommerce CRM systems are a must-have for e-tail startups.
End-to-End Analytics
End-to-end analytics is a system for monitoring the sales funnel at all stages. The task of the system is to collect data from different tools like example translational, and services, aggregate and provide comprehensive data for ad campaigns and sales analytics, including the financial results of sales.
You can set up end-to-end analytics based on Google Analytics through deep integration and data import from other services and CRM systems, or by using special services.
Such services are used in the following processes:
- Statistics collection from different ad systems;
- Tracking and analyzing intermediate conversions;
- Pulling data from CRMs;
- Analyzing marketing channels (social networks, search, messengers) and much more.
Users get comprehensive data in the form of charts, reports, revenue, and ROI metrics, as well as the ability to sort by channel, time period, and audience. All the essential SaaS metrics for your startup can be collected through these analytics services.
End-to-end analytics is becoming a must-have for business owners who want to stay up to date, know where leads are coming from, and understand how to influence them.
Social Media Scheduler
With everything else that’s going on at your startup, social might be the last thing on your mind. But your ideal audience is out there, and giving them the chance to follow your story at its first steps is a great way to build lifelong brand awareness.
The trick is to create and schedule content in bulk. That way, you’re not fiddling with your phone every other day to throw content onto different platforms – you can start to craft a narrative.
Depending on where your audience is, you might look for a scheduler that specializes in Instagram scheduling, or is better suited to forum posting (like Reddit and Quora), or is strictly used for one channel.
Conclusion
Every startup is unique and requires additional analytics tools, unique customization, and integration.
Internet marketing for a startup is not so much a theory as it is a practical process, based on using these and similar services and tools as part of the sales funnel. In this case, the point of the business is to maximize profit while minimizing costs. These can be products or services, and it’s important to understand what, why, and how we use them.
Even if you plan to outsource promotion, every business owner should understand what he/she is paying for and how services work in the sales funnel.
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