In today’s competitive landscape, planning out your marketing strategy can often feel challenging. At times, it may be difficult to find leads or connect with potential clients, causing you to rethink your entire business strategy. Instead of seeking out additional marketing help, your best advisor might actually be your historical data. By looking back at your past performance, you can use your previous outcomes to help construct future strategies with better results.

Here are some places to look at past performance:

1. Google Analytics

One of the best places to figure out your audience and what they are searching for is Google Analytics. If you don’t have Google Analytics set up on your website, you should create an account and start tracking immediately. Google Analytics provides insight into who is visiting your website, how they arrived there, what pages they are more interested in, and time spent browsing. The dashboard is broken down into eight main categories: Dashboards, Shortcuts, Intelligence Events, Real-Time, Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions. When it comes to planning out your strategy, you should pay close attention to: Acquisition, Audience, and Behavior. By knowing who your main audiences are, you can refocus your content and build a strategy that targets the people who care the most.

2. Historical Revenue and Spending

Your past sales can be extremely helpful in planning your new strategy. Go as far back as you can and chart out each month’s gross revenues and spend. Do you notice any trends? Is there a particular time of year when revenues are significantly higher? How do your year-over-year (YOY) numbers compare? By taking some time to analyze your past data, you can figure out a game plan to increase engagement around particular times of year to try to boost your numbers. When times are particularly slow, think about running some ad campaigns, or reaching out to clients personally to let them know your availability. You also want to take your spending into account. If you’re losing a lot of money during a certain time of year, it may be time to rethink your investments if they’re not worth the return.

3. Social Media Activity

Social media has become a necessity for many businesses, and the data can be extremely helpful in helping you build your marketing plan. If your business is active on social media, look into your analytics dashboards to gain some insights into your activity. Top platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram allow you to view key metrics such as top performing content, reach, audience, impressions, clicks, and much more. Pay close attention to what types of content resonates the most with audience and who exactly is engaging the most. Knowing your customer base is extremely important as it will help you create relevant and compelling content. If your main audience is not beneficial to your business growth and isn’t helping you move forward, it may be time to change your marketing direction and focus on engaging your core audience.

Using your past data performance to build a new marketing strategy can result in increased traffic and profitability. By figuring out your audience and analyzing your past results, you can create a successful roadmap for the future.