By Brianna Martin, Mighty Citizen

All of the marketing efforts in the world will be ineffective if you don’t know who you’re talking to and how they’re interacting with your organization. The Mighty Citizen team isn’t in the business of trying things without research and testing—and it’s helped us in our 20+ years of assisting mission-driven organizations. A connection to research, analytics, and understanding exactly who your audiences are is key to meeting your organizational goals.

It may not surprise you that, according to benchmarking from The Mighty GPS (a self-assessment to measure marketing effectiveness), mission-driven organizations struggle the most with research & analytics.

It can be hard to step away from our daily tasks to focus on research. What tools do you use? What strategies are best for determining your audiences on a human level? There are so many options and available avenues for learning that you may miss the best strategies to kickstart your efforts.

Our Mighty Citizen team has done the hard work for you and compiled our top resources for Research & Analytics below. Take a look:

Homegrown User Research

User research is the cornerstone that will set your trajectory when you look for how to serve your audience best. However, “user research” is a frigid way to refer to it. The people–the human beings–that your organization serves aren’t just “users.” They’re complex individuals with complicated lives and desires, making it hard to pinpoint what they have in common. You can find more considerations and shortcuts to start your user-research journey in our article, 3 Homegrown User Research Techniques & How To Do Them Right.

Using Surveys to Improve Your Communications

Regularly surveying your target audiences allows for your communications efforts to be focused, efficient, and catered to your organization’s goals. Without it, your communications are a shot in the dark, and you’ll most likely be working off of old or misleading data. Empowering your team with actionable insights gives you the ability to fine-tune your strategy and bring in revenue. Our how-to guide, Using Surveys to Improve Your Communications, is free to download and walks you through creating actionable and effective surveys.

Personas on the Move: The Art of User Journey Mapping

Research-informed personas are the best way to spread a user-focused mindset for your team and your initiatives. Ensuring that you have a “face” for your users is a powerful way to point all of your efforts in the right direction and create journeys for your audience as people. You need to know your users, what they’ve got packed in their emotional suitcases, and map out how they’ll travel through interacting with your organization. Our Senior Director of UX & Research, Mike Steckel, breaks it down in our tell-all user persona article. 

What is Usability Testing?

Your website is your best employee and asset to your organization. It works 24/7 to direct your audiences to critical information, spreads your brand message, and enables your audience to interact with you. So why are you leaving its ability to do its job to chance? Usability testing is the best way to measure your website’s effectiveness and see how well it can do its job. Not sure what usability testing is? Our Senior Information Architect, Lauren Thomas, will run you through this in her insightful article, What is Usability Testing?: Building a User-First Website To Increase Engagement.

Our Resources for Google Analytics 4

By now, you’ve heard the news. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is replacing Universal Analytics (or UA, which is the version you’re likely familiar with) in July 2023. GA4’s bread and butter is to allow multiple streams of data into one place. If your organization manages multiple domains, subdomains, or apps, you can now view cross-device/domain tracking seamlessly in one property. That means a better and more complete visualization of the user journey. Neat, right?

We know change can be scary, especially when it comes to your data, so we’ve been rolling out content to help support you during the transition. You can find it compiled in Our Resources for Google Analytics 4.

Mighty Citizen Can Help

Are you curious about ramping up your research and analytics to better understand your audiences? Give us a shout! We’d love to hear more and be a resource to your team.

About the author: Brianna Martin:
As Director of Brand Marketing, Brianna Martin oversees how Mighty Citizen’s brain trust is presented to the world. She develops opportunities to deliver our expertise at conferences, seminars, and client events. Brianna is also responsible for marrying data, content, and communication strategies to introduce Mighty Citizen to the mission-driven organizations we aim to serve.

Mighty Citizen is a Capitol Communicator sponsor.