A first semester studying Tourism Marketing and Management at UEF showed that most of the tourism companies in Finland are small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs).  These companies are trying to market their offerings to consumers, by directing them to the company’s webpage to increase traffic, and hopefully future profits. In many cases, this is where the focus on the customer journey stops. Nowadays, it’s not enough for the SMEs to direct traffic to their webpage. The companies have to know what potential customers are doing there.

For various reasons, many SMEs have not considered web analytics as something that would be beneficial for future success. Everyone is online nowadays and many make most of their purchase decisions using at least some kind of online materials. For SMEs it is especially important to think long and hard, where and how to spend the marketing budget. Without the use of web analytics, it is next to impossible for them to properly analyse the results of their marketing campaigns.

The traditional view of web analytics is that it is only for giant companies, SMEs should steer away from this kind of thinking. The presumption is entirely misleading. All companies can and should use web analytics tools! Without web analytics tools, it is difficult to see the results of marketing campaigns. Analytics give SMEs insight into what they’re doing right and what could be improved.

There are many different web analytics tool out there. Understandably, it might be confusing for entrepreneurs to get started. For tracking traffic and conversions companies could start using Google Analytics. From Google Analytics, SMEs can get a huge amount of data. This tool is highly beneficial for tracking the success of various marketing campaigns. Web analytics can also be used to track the performance in social media. Many customers nowadays use social media to form an overview of the company that they are buying from. Many social media platforms offer the tools to track the company’s performance. There are no reasons for SMEs not to use these tools.

The use of web analytics tools helps SMEs to understand their customers and this way develop competitive advantage! You can do digital marketing without analytics, but the only way to get the best bang for your buck is to connect your digital marketing efforts to digital analytics.

Get a master’s degree in tourism business

Are you looking for an international tourism-focused master’s degree programme in business? Tourism Marketing and Management programme by University of Eastern Finland provides a unique learning experience for students who have finished their bachelor’s degree and are looking for new skills and knowledge in developing tourism industry in a sustainable way. Read more about the programme at www.uef.fi/tmm.