If you find it challenging to determine whether or not your marketing strategy is working, you’re not alone. According to Merkle, 19 percent of marketers struggle to measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. Luckily, data analytics provides the perfect solution. An invaluable tool for digital marketers in any industry, analytics deliver data-driven insights into how consumers engage with your content, illuminating your campaigns' strengths and weaknesses. Keep reading to learn how to use analytics to understand your target audience better and elevate your current marketing strategy!
What are analytics?
Analytics refers to the process of gathering and interpreting data patterns. Reviewing analytics can provide marketers with insights to aid decision-making and help meet goals. From a digital marketing perspective, analytics involves collecting and interpreting data from marketing channels such as social media, email, websites, search engines, and so on to understand how consumers engage with your online content.
The Benefits of Analytics
Analytics plays a crucial role in refining your marketing strategy. By dissecting data about how consumers interact with your brand, you can better understand what’s working with your current marketing strategy, and what needs improvement. Here are just a handful of benefits analytics afford:
- Data-Informed Decision-Making
Forming strategic decisions can be challenging when you don’t have a concrete understanding of the successes and failures of your past marketing efforts. That’s where analytics comes in. Performance metrics like the number of impressions or the conversion rate on an online advertisement can provide insight into the effectiveness of the ad, allowing you to make adjustments to your strategy that are backed by data.
- Understanding Your Target Audience
Analytics can also shed light on how your target audience feels about the different kinds of content you post. When you understand what type of ads, social media posts, blogs, etc. resonate with your target audience, you can lean into those topics and forms of content to keep your audience engaged.
- Improved ROI
Marketing requires a lot of trial and error to determine which advertising methods and channels are the most effective for the brand. Analytics helps increase return on investment (ROI) from marketing efforts by revealing the best strategies to pursue, ensuring time and resources are well spent.
- Optimized Digital Marketing Campaigns
Analytics are key to enhancing the value of your digital marketing campaigns. The information gained from analytics can help you identify where your past campaigns excelled and where they might’ve fallen short. Using these insights, you can build on your successes and avoid repeating past mistakes.
Important Digital Marketing Metrics
Countless digital marketing metrics can help you refine your marketing practices. Here are a few critical measures to evaluate for some of the most common marketing activities:
Lead Generation
- Conversion rate: the percentage of leads that resulted in a sale
- Lead quality score: a measure of how likely a lead is to turn into a customer
- ROI: a measure of profitability that compares the money invested in a lead generation campaign to the money generated by the campaign
Websites
- Time spent on the site: the total amount of time a consumer spends browsing your website
- Returning visitors: the percentage of consumers who have visited your website more than once
- Referral sources: online sources that have directed traffic to your website (e.g., search engines, promotional emails, other websites, etc.)
Email Campaigns
- Open rate: the percentage of emails opened out of the total amount of emails sent
- Click-through rate: the percentage of people who clicked on at least one link in your email
- Bounce rate: the percentage of emails that didn’t reach their intended recipient because of a technical issue (e.g., wrong email address, full mailbox, delivered to the spam folder, etc.)
Social Media Campaigns
- Reach: the number of unique users who have viewed your ad or post
- Impressions: the total number of times an ad or post was displayed, including repeat views from a single user
- Cost per action: the unit cost paid to an ad provider when users perform a desired action, such as clicking a link or making a purchase
How to Use Analytics to Your Advantage
- Discover Your Audience’s Preferences
One of the best ways to determine which kinds of content your audience prefers is to use A/B testing. This strategy allows you to compare the effectiveness of two versions of a campaign, website design element, or piece of content by showing some users one version and others the alternate version when they view your site. Observing which version performs better can create more powerful marketing materials.
- Personalize Your User Experience
Research has shown that users want personalized customer experiences; a 2021 report from McKinsey & Company revealed that 71 percent of consumers expect personalization from the brands they engage with and that 76 percent of consumers are frustrated when they don’t receive it. Fortunately, analytics can help you deliver on this desire. Through location data, view/purchase history, and more, you can show your customers that you understand their wants and needs, increasing the likelihood that they’ll complete a transaction.
- Improve Your Marketing Strategy
Analytics are an essential part of assessing the effectiveness of your marketing tactics. You can’t make informed changes if you don’t know what content target audiences are connecting with and what is turning them away. Data analytics allow you to identify your most successful marketing channels and campaigns so that you can allocate your resources more strategically and give your target audience what they want to see.
Across all industries, digital marketing is essential for any successful business. Digital marketing establishes a strong relationship with your target audience and increases your brand’s awareness, allowing your company to reach a wider audience. To grow your business, start by evaluating your current digital marketing strategy to determine what’s working and what still needs improvement.
If your team needs assistance navigating digital marketing, let's create a brilliant strategy together. Contact us today, and watch your business grow tomorrow!
Go Beyond The Social With BlueTickSocial
BlueTickSocial is a woman-owned and women-led digital marketing agency. We focus on building your digital presence to generate sales, increase engagement, create brand awareness, and take your company goals to the next level.
Other Sources:
How Data Analytics Helps Improve Marketing Strategy
Master Marketing With Data Analytics: How to Get Sustainable Results
What are digital analytics? Definition and examples
What are Digital Marketing Analytics? The Complete Guide
