As a business owner, you must wear many hats: Sales, Finance, Coach, R&D, Marketing, and the list goes on. It’s challenging for the best of us to have deep knowledge and understanding in each one of these specialties, let alone all of them! The good news today is that you do not NEED to have a deep knowledge of marketing if you understand the value of analytics and your marketing firm appropriately utilizes this tool.
Analytics is the use of data or statistics to make decisions. Analytics in marketing is taking those metrics and stats to discover and interpret how consumers are receiving the message from your ads.
There are various tools available to you that can and will provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your advertising efforts. Some are paid tools, and many are available for free. A few of the most common analytics tools are Google Analytics, a free and widely used program. Another great option is MOZ, a top-rated program that helps you identify your visibility in search engine ranking results (SERP), track your positioning by specific keywords, and monitor your competitors.
Once set up as intended, analytic tools give you the ability to view your prospects’ and clients’ actions from the very first ad view all the way through to conversion.
Let’s take a closer look at what analytic analysis tells us and why it matters to your bottom line:
ONE: Paid Ad Analysis
Paid Ad Analysis allows us to interpret the effectiveness of each ad placement, blog post, or social media offer beyond an initial ad impression or video view, yet provides real ROI metrics by linking individual ads, ad copy, or keywords to REAL results – leads or a sale.
This insight then provides the ability to focus your paid ad dollars on those areas that are driving returns for your company.
TWO: Organic Analysis
Here, we are talking about all those efforts you invest time and attention to outside your paid ad campaigns. These include building up your website, adding blogs, being published, claiming your GMB listing, trade show sponsorships, and more. All of these efforts increase the likelihood of your company showing up on the first page of SERPs without you having to PAY to be there.
Your analytics will tell you how people are navigating to your website and company through these efforts; and, more importantly, how valuable these visits are to your bottom line goals.
THREE: Customer Insights
This is where I get a little more excited! Your analytics will provide a wealth of insights into WHO your PAYING customers are, their behaviors and interests, and the types of messages they respond to positively. This information will help inform your larger strategy – from where to allocate ad spend, the message you develop, the timing, and even when and how to deliver them.
Additionally, you will be able to view the activities that lead up to a sale or lead form – both direct attribution and conversion paths, as well as assisted conversions.
FOUR: Bench-marking
Over time, your analytics will provide benchmark metrics in which you will be able to see trends. This can include trends in traffic – both volume and quality – as well as trends in average cost per acquisition.
In conclusion, It’s essential to have analytics about your company and its marketing efforts to understand better if your marketing is working. What does ‘working’ mean? It could be one of two things:
- You can use Analytics to measure your marketing efforts against your industry’s standard.
- You can also use your own historical analytics to define what success looks like for your company based on previous results.
If you would like to learn more about using your analytics to your best advantage, contact us today! Our digital marketing experts are ready to help your business grow!
Sources: https://www.trustradius.com/marketing-analytics#toprated