If you’re reading this at the end of another quarter, you know that this is the time when people start asking about goals or benchmarks.
Instead of just declaring a goal for the quarter ahead, though, now’s the perfect time to review the previous quarter so you can inspire goals for the quarter ahead.
Checking in with your business metrics and basic data can help speed your progress towards your goals, make any improvements or adjustments needed to hit your goals next quarter, and prepare for the upcoming quarter.
Now, if you’re thinking… “Wait, I’ve NEVER reviewed my data before! I don’t know what to look at!” don’t worry. You’re not at all alone in this.
As a business operations specialist, I’m here to help you identify which numbers matter — and show you how to take messy metrics and clean them up so you have simple, accurate information. It all starts with a quarterly data review.
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Why You Should Use a Quarterly Data Review
Have you ever noticed that the different programs, social media platforms, and apps you use to run your business give you access to all sorts of numbers?
All that data won’t benefit your business unless you’re consistently reviewing it, evaluating it, and using it to make decisions!
One of the biggest benefits a data review can do for your business is to help you understand what you’re doing well and what can be improved.
Reviewing your data can reveal information like:
- How customer behaviour has changed from the previous quarter
- Upcoming opportunities in the form of clients, events, connections, etc.
- What products or services underperformed and need adjustments
- How your online presence is performing
- What content is performing well and leading to conversions
- What goals you should set for the next quarter
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! You could have valuable business information hiding in your data, just waiting to be noticed and used to grow your business.
Reviewing your data periodically can help you pinpoint what you need to tweak or improve in your business systems. Think of it as checking in on the health of your business systems. Healthy systems will hold fast when things are super busy or stressful and build a stable foundation for your biz.
Tips for Reviewing Your Data
Now that we’ve covered what a data review is and what reviewing your data can do for your business, let’s talk about how to review your data.
Step one: Make a list of your questions
What questions do you want to answer when you review your data? What do you want to learn or check in on with your business?
For example, you might want to know where most of your site traffic is coming from, what your revenue for the quarter looked like, or where most customers are leaving your sales funnel.
Outlining your questions ahead of time will help you find your answers more easily when you’re actually reviewing your data.
Step two: Review your data
Here we are! Time to actually dive into your data.
How you approach your data review depends on the questions you wrote down and what goals you currently have, but in general, I like to do this:
Check in on your profit and loss statement.
Keeping up-to-date on your bookkeeping is so instrumental for accurately assessing the health of your business. Most business owners have a pretty good understanding of their overall revenue (since that’s the sexy number), but far less have familiarity with what their expenses actually are.
I also like to keep a separate spreadsheet with my recurring expenses (especially annual ones) so I’m not surprised at any point during the year.
Once I’ve reviewed my P&L to see if everything makes sense, I like to narrow down to my sales. This might seem strange, as revenue is revenue, right?
But it’s so valuable to see which products or services are really driving your revenue. This can have a big impact on how you prioritize your marketing and operational activities over the next quarter.
See where traffic is coming from and what actions they take.
Are there certain platforms like Instagram or Facebook that are bringing a lot of traffic to your website or landing pages? Are those users converting in ways that make sense?
When properly installed on your site, Google Analytics does an amazing job of tracking where your traffic is coming from so you can see what is actually working.
Maybe you’re devoting a tonne of time to creating Instagram Reels, but it’s actually your Facebook group posts that are leading people to book discovery calls.
Rather than spending time on marketing activities that aren’t driving traffic or sales, this information allows you to work smarter, not harder.
Review your funnel metrics.
Finally, if you run any kind of online business, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you have at least one funnel.
It might be a freebie to sign up for your email list or be as complex as a sales funnel with an sales page, checkout page, order bump, OTO, and more.
It’s time to take a look at how your people are moving through your funnel, and what your conversion rates are.
Step three: Take action
Your work isn’t done yet! With all that data you analyzed and questions you had to answer, what’s next? Put the information you gathered to use and take action.
You might have uncovered problems that need to be addressed or flaws in your systems that need fixing. You might even have come up with ideas for next quarter or opportunities you’d like to take advantage of.
Create an action plan by jotting down what actions you need to take and when. Some tasks may be quick, like removing an old popup from your website or fixing a dead link. Some may be more involved or time-consuming, like building an emergency business fund or rewriting a welcome email sequence that’s underperforming.
Either way, creating an implementation plan is key so you’re actually doing something with the information you gleaned from your review.
Remember: this is a constant cycle that will remain with you as your business grows. You’ll look to your data for answers to questions that you have, read those results, and decide on changes you want to implement. Then, you track those changes to see the impact they make.
It’s a beautiful circle that continues with consistent improvements that move you closer and closer to your goals!
Ready to Perform Your Own Quarterly Review?
And there you have it! You’ve just learned how to complete your own data review. I recommend that you complete this process at the end of every month, or at least every quarter. This way, you can stay attuned to your business’ vitals and keep it in good health.
These periodic data reviews will help you understand your revenue, offers, marketing, clients, and customers more than ever. Best of all, it will empower you to make data-driven decisions rather than decisions rooted in emotions or guesses.
Do you want to know exactly what questions your data can answer for you? Click here to download my FREE guide, “5 Questions Your Data Can Answer For You.”
You’ll discover exactly how to track and record your monthly metrics, what to look for to optimize conversions, and how to analyze if your marketing efforts are effective!
