Marketing Analytics, How to Put the Pieces Together:
In our modern age of digital marketing, it’s no secret that the key to great online marketing lies in understanding the analytics around your web content, social media and other promotional efforts, and taking action based on those insights. Marketing analytics are something that most companies know they need to pay attention to, but many aren’t sure how to use them or what the data even means.
This confusion has led to a widespread embrace of people using well-known reporting tools like Google Analytics (and lesser-known tools like Raven Tools) without the uber-necessary know how of what to do with the data when they get their hands on it.
The problem is the same as it ever was for the tech era: marketing tools and social media are evolving at such a rapid pace, even though the analytics tools to accompany them can keep up, many of the rest of us are left standing in the dust.
Well, worry not fellow marketers – below we provide the best-known tips in digital marketing to help you make sure your analytics are working the way they should be.
Lesson 1: Start With Google
Depending on your experience with marketing analytics, you may need to start with the basics when it comes to understanding how analytics work and what they mean. There are many resources for marketers that detail what the numbers mean and how to pull them, but the best idea is to start by learning more about Google Analytics, as that is one of the most popular and high performing tools in the industry.
Why use Google Analytics? Simple – because this tool will help you make your marketing better and more effective. That means your business will be more successful and you will clear a higher profit. What’s not to love?
Do you know who your target market is? If you don’t – big mistake – you should. Either way, Google Analytics can help you figure it out. And if you know who your target market is (great job!), Google’s acquisition reports will help you figure out where they are online (and where they are coming from when they visit your website) so you can focus your approach on catering to those areas.
This should help you increase traffic to your website which will improve visibility, increase your brand reach and ultimately help you get the word out about your products or services.
And that’s just the beginning. Getting down to the nitty gritty of how each page of your website performs and where you can tweak things to make improvements is what real marketing analytics are all about. Use these data-driven insights to make your marketing better by optimizing content, including strong calls to action, or even go a step further and create buyer personas.
You don’t have to stop there, either. Google Analytics can help you up the ante on your Facebook conversions or run a social media split test, both of which can help you understand more about what your customer base wants from you and what they respond to the most.
Lesson 2: Branch Into Social
There may be nothing more challenging than trying to prove the ROI (return on investment) when it comes to your social media marketing. This is where marketing analytics come in extremely handy for marketers of all shapes and sizes. Marketers spending as little as six hours per week on social media are reporting lead generation increases, despite their admitted lack of ability to trace ROI effectively.
However, this is a problem that can most certainly be remedied.
Raven Tools, just one example of many analytics tools on the market, has a social metrics and reporting function that helps marketers glean consistent, usable data so that they can understand not only more about what their fans and followers engage with and like, but also so they are able to relate those key insights to the C-suite in order to prove their worth and effectiveness as digital marketers.
Online marketing reports can be built in a matter of minutes with Raven Tools. This conveniently leaves more time for the analysis of the data pulled from those reports as well as time for much-needed brainstorming on how to better align marketing objectives and goals with the data being presented.
Once you align your digital marketing strategies and social media campaigns with the key insights you get from your marketing analytics, you will be essentially giving customers, fans and followers more of what they want, which in turn will give you more of what you want: sales.
At the end of the day, it’s all about connecting the dots to see the bigger picture.
