How to Use Marketing Data Analytics to Reach your Business Goals
Marketing is an invaluable tool when it comes to reaching your business goals, but a marketing strategy is only effective when properly monitored. Without the collection and analysis of key data points, you're operating blind with no idea of what’s working and what’s not.
As a general rule of thumb, it’s most effective to pick a primary business goal to merge with your marketing strategy and from there track the corresponding metrics.
Gathering data may seem easy, but you have to be strategic about what metrics to prioritize. Your unique analytics report composition depends on what specific goals you’re trying to achieve. As a general rule of thumb, it’s most effective to pick a primary business goal to merge with your marketing strategy and from there track the corresponding metrics. Each metric gives a different insight, and if you’re looking at the wrong ones then the information can be misleading. It’s important to understand how the different data categories relate to your business goals so that you can have the most accurate portrayal of where you stand.
For example, if the goal is to increase revenue and make sales, you should track conversion metrics like website clicks and purchases or consults.
If the goal is providing customer service or growing brand loyalty among existing customers, then track engagement metrics and use tactics to increase interactions.
If the goal is spreading the word and creating brand awareness, track reach and impressions to get more eyes to the account and get more people into your marketing funnel.
Of course, tracking your marketing data is not enough on its own. In order to actually make progress towards your business goals, you have to apply your analytics insights. The data that you collect can tell you how to pivot your strategy for better results, you just have to know how to interpret the information. We recently had a client whose goal was to boost sales of their unique product. Given the context, we went with a strong ads campaign, which ended up driving a ton of traffic to the product pages. While the strategy was very successful, the number of sales did not reflect that. Upon further investigation, we realized there was a hangup at the bottom of the sales funnel. People were interested in making a purchase given the way they were interacting with the ads, but did not follow through after reaching the product page. We were able to identify that their product was priced too high for what it was. While this was not a particularly assuring realization, it was no doubt a hugely valuable insight that sparked a much needed shift in the structure of the business model. The options were to A) adjust the price point, or B) elevate the marketing and prove that the high price point is justified. If it weren’t for the telling info gleaned from our analytics report, our client would have continued to experience this roadblock without being explicitly aware of it or how to resolve it.
This brings us to another important point: calculating your cost per acquisition. If you’re spending more on your strategy than your profit on the product/service sold, then it’s not worthwhile.
Of course, any good business model prioritizes ROI so you want to be careful not to waste money on tactics that aren’t working.
Although the ads for our aforementioned client were generating a lot of leads, they weren’t actually resulting in sales, so they just ended up being another expense with low ROI. Of course, any good business model prioritizes ROI so you want to be careful not to waste money on tactics that aren’t working. Even if they are working, but the efforts cost more than the profits, then it’s not an effective strategy. It may sound obvious, but a lot of people neglect to calculate this before investing.
Business growth entails audience growth, but be careful not to get too caught up in vanity metrics unless that is your specific goal.
Regardless of your business goals, audience growth is a good metric to track. Business growth entails audience growth, but be careful not to get too caught up in vanity metrics unless that is your specific goal. It's important to see that your audience is growing, but if it’s growing and you're not getting clicks then something is wrong. When that’s the case, it’s likely one of two reasons: either your audience and offer aren't aligned or your content isn't clearly communicating your offer and using enough CTAs. If you're seeing steady growth but not in the quantity you need, it might be time to run ads.
Keeping an eye on what’s working is just as important as looking at potential red flags.
Keeping an eye on what’s working is just as important as looking at potential red flags. If you see a spike in something, such as website traffic or Instagram engagement rate, you should look at what happened that day. Investigate what might have caused the spike and then try to replicate it. That said, a spike in performance is not always directly attributed to a specific effort so sometimes you need to draw correlations based on your best assumptions.
Tracking and interpreting your data can feel like a daunting task, but it’s not so bad. Don’t let the learning curve scare you away from what is a critical component of your ongoing business strategy. If you need support for developing a digital strategy that is in line with your business goals, we can help! Schedule a free consultation here.
