If you are engaged in digital marketing, you have access to a massive amount of available data. However, if you don’t utilize technology and methods to find, research, and explain this info, then you are going without a compass.
Why marketing analytics is important
Marketing analytics can provide answers to essential questions, regardless of the size of the business. What are the outcomes of our promotional initiatives? Are we spending money on the right marketing channels? How do we compare to our competitors?
Realizing those facts is fantastic, but it gets even better. Measuring marketing performance opens the door to improving it. If you start to discover that your PPC campaigns on Facebook are no longer as effective as they once were, you can take steps to adjust it. You can attempt to make the ads better or allocate your marketing resources somewhere else and then compare the outcomes.
It’s possible that you find yourself in a position where you are required to designate objectives for yourself, your group, or your contractors. You can develop those objectives based on examining past results and get a number that can be measured. What do you think about the possibility of a 15% increase in website traffic during a single month? Is this goal attainable?
In the end, facts and figures can help to persuade people of your argument because numerical information is powerful. You can demonstrate that you are making a beneficial influence on the enterprise by providing factual figures from your previous promotional campaigns. Marketing analytics can be used to make smart predictions that can be used to shape the marketing strategy going forward, such as striving for a higher budget for the upcoming quarter.
Let’s investigate a few of the approaches you can utilize marketing analytics to promote business expansion.
Report on the past
The past is super important to marketers. The usual cycle of marketing is this: You start by deploying a marketing technique. Then you give it some time to generate results. Finally, you check on those results.
On that note, marketing analytics will help you answer questions such as:
- How much organic traffic did our content generate last quarter?
- How many new leads did Campaign A generate compared to Campaign B?
- What was the conversion rate from trial sign-ups to paid subscriptions?
- What was the average cart abandonment rate last year?
It is encouraging to note that in many cases, marketing analytics software takes care of the tracking and recording of the most widespread metrics spontaneously. It’s critical to get those tools in place promptly in order to avoid missing any data.
Analyze the present
Marketing analytics can answer some more “timely” questions too, such as things related to patterns in customer behaviors, trends, current budget spending, etc. For example:
- Why is organic traffic to our blog decreasing?
- What percentage of our customers use the [feature] of our product?
- What is the lifetime value of our customers?
- What is our current ranking for [query] in Google?
When you comprehend your prior accomplishments and present situation, you are prepared to take on the responsibility marketers are constantly questioned to do, yet few can succeed at: anticipating what is to come.
Predict the future
Using predictive analytics, data can be used to make predictions about what might occur in the future. Marketers are not content to just present information; they are focused on foreseeing what the future may hold.
An example of this would be if a marketer is able to demonstrate a good return from a marketing approach based on what has happened in the past, then they can use that to anticipate how it will do in the future with a good level of accuracy. In many instances, this is sufficient to acquire the needed marketing fund.
Here, we also enter the realm of prescriptive analytics, the type of analytics that answers the question, “What should be done?” For example:
- Which type of page layout should we use? You can use an A/B testing software to test your options.
- What type of message should we send to a prospect to increase our chances of converting them? Marketers can build models of optimal conversion paths and then test them by setting up automated email workflows.
- What keywords should we target in our content? SEOs and content marketers do keyword research for that.
Compare with competitors
Marketing analytics may make it possible for you to essentially convert your opponents into allies. Gathering info from different competitive analysis methods enables one to either benefit from the mistakes of others or replicate the success of someone else.
This four-step approach can assist you in concentrating on the primary elements, whether you are looking to conduct special analytics or create recurrent metrics to be featured in reports.
1. Identify what you want to measure
It is evident from the text above that marketing analytics software has the capability to monitor and assess multiple aspects. But this encourages people to jump right in and search for any meaningful understanding.
It is better to decide what you want before you start your search than to leave it up to luck. If your analytics tool were a person, what queries would you ask them to resolve?
For instance, suppose you are spending a great deal of money on developing material intended to place high up in Google Search engine results. How can I make sure my content is more visible than my rivals’ on search engine result pages? This is referred to as the share of voice metric.
Now that our example research inquiry is established, we can progress onward with the next step.
2. Assess your capabilities
There are two questions to ask here:
- Do you have access to quality data?
- Do you have the skill to extract and process the data?
The only way to respond to these questions is to gain more insight into your research inquiry.
Despite seeming insignificant, this is essential. If you try to tackle an analytics endeavor without the right expertise needed, you may end up wasting time that could be used more productively elsewhere. It could be better to leave such matters to either a data scientist or to an external consultant.
And this is a common problem among marketing teams. Analysis showed that a meager 1.9% of marketing executives believed their business had the right personnel to make use of marketing analytics.
See what you can discover by Googling your research question. It is probable that somebody has already devised a product or service that can address your issue.
3. Gather data using marketing analytics tools
To figure out the SOV in this circumstance, you don’t need any particular expertise or knowledge. You can just utilize an SEO instrument, for example, Ahrefs, to get the job done quickly.
4. Draw conclusions
The Visibility report in Rank Tracker provides an opportunity to review progress against the competition and assess how the current Search Enginer Ranking Volume (SOV) has changed over time. Search for the motivation behind the numbers and devise some solutions for potential improvements for the future. Even if you are doing better than your competitors currently, this still holds true.
Marketing Analytics For E-commerce
What is ecommerce analytics?
Examining and revealing data trends associated to virtual trades is what ecommerce analytics is all about. It is a process of interpreting the information presented and disseminating it. Ecommerce analytics aids in the evaluation of how people interact, the evolution of outcomes, and the return on investment.
Marketers employ analytics to demonstrate the profitability of campaigns and to make decisions that will increase sales, lower expenses, and develop the business.
Why ecommerce analytics are important
Now that we understand what marketing analytics entail, let’s go over the primary rationales why an ecommerce business should make use of analytics.
Understand marketing data
A reliable marketing analytics program maintains all of your information in a single location. You can stay informed about all your promotional activities, ranging from social media ads to emails to marketing automation. You can also view statistics in real-time, so you can quickly find out what is effective and make wiser choices regarding where to allocate your marketing budget.
Uncover trends
Today’s ecommerce analytics programs view your details as an interdependent structure, giving you the opportunity to detect tendencies and sequences in your organization. This grants you the capacity to comprehend the current and future state of your business.
To condense data and make it visible in a little time as possible, you can rely on marketing analytics to show:
- The number of visitors to your website by referrals and marketing campaigns
- The actions visitors take on your website over specific periods of time
- Most-visited pages during busy shopping seasons
- What devices people visit your store on
Use customer data
The value of marketing analytics is that companies can gather, organize, and employ customer information. Customers can execute certain activities in your shop, and your promotional analytics will capture every single interaction. Without adequate analysis and reporting for marketing, it is impossible to determine who is visiting your website.
Examining growth, engagement, and revenue figures can assist in obtaining an understanding of customers’ patterns of conduct. You can determine who has engaged with your material and if they have clicked, purchased, or obtained something in order to create material that is appealing to them.
Optimize pricing
The price of goods is the most potent way to raise profitability. Studies indicate that within 12 months, the use of proper pricing strategies can lead to a rise in a business’ profits of between 2-7 percent, delivering a return on investment of 200-350 percent.
Every item should have a price that customers find to be satisfactory. You can employ marketing analytics to gain more knowledge about the influence of pricing on buying behavior among various clientele groups. This will enable you to find the most cost-effective prices for each product, thus allowing you to generate the most profits.
Tips for ecommerce analytics success
Set your objectives beforehand
Prior to beginning any project, it is essential to establish your goals and objectives. The most certain way to make sure that everyone on your team is working as one and that your key performance targets are met is to use this approach.
The aim of your marketing personnel ought to connect to the overarching purpose of your enterprise. What’s the top profit generator for your business? That’s one place to start.
Marketing objectives might be:
- Generate high-quality leads at scale
- Improve checkout conversion rate
- Increase profit margins
- Boost sales through upselling and cross-selling
- Increase customer loyalty
- Reduce abandoned carts
Use the SMART goals framework when deciding on objectives. Your goal should be concise and specific: Aim to decrease abandoned carts by five percent during the first quarter.
Then break down your goals into actionable steps and send them to your teams:
- Decide on the goal you want to achieve.
- Prioritize the tasks you need to fulfill to get there.
- Specify how to fulfill each task.
- Send those marketing objectives to decision-makers and managers
Establish benchmarks
A benchmark is a reference point used to measure something against. Taking into account a specific metric (for instance, abandoned cart, customer acquisition cost, etc.) over a specified period when doing digital marketing and web analytics, and comparing this benchmark to determine conclusions when making decisions. Benchmarks act as a useful source of data that can be used to construct meaningful goals and measure your progress over time.
As an illustration, suppose you are running an SEO campaign to increase website traffic during the month of November. You can monitor figures including the number of pageviews, the amount of time spent on the page, the proportion of people who leave without viewing other pages, and the proportion who leave after viewing one page. You will use October site metrics as your reference point for assessing how well the changes you made in November worked.
If you are utilizing Google Analytics, it is effortless to compare two separate periods to view the outcomes.
Each campaign will have a different benchmark. If you are displaying advertisements, the click-through rate or cost per click from the relevant period may be the determining factor. It’s essential to establish a timeline and measure progress to determine the success of your initiatives.
Incorporate data into your company’s routine
The performance of businesses that utilize data on a regular basis can be seen to be noticeably improved. Merchants who take the time to study and evaluate data, gain understanding from their analytics, and act on their knowledge are the ones who experience the greatest victory.
Making data analytics a habit is simple. Whether working alone or as part of a group, the only thing required is to carry out weekly assessments.
Successful companies focus on solving their biggest bottlenecks first. Begin each week by examining your analytics data and deciding which objectives and advertising campaigns are the most important for you to tackle in the upcoming days.
Final thoughts
As you become more advanced in the realm of marketing analytics, the subject matter will be more intricate than what we’ve discussed. Meanwhile, it gets more intriguing as well. One example is to employ machine learning in prescriptive analytics to determine areas that could benefit from development.
To wrap up, in order for you to use marketing analytics proficiently (especially at a more intricate level) in your institution, you will require the agreement of other interested parties. Essentially, you need to create a positive culture within your organization, often referred to as a data culture. What is done with the data is more important than the data itself.
Leave a Reply