Analytics As The Cornerstone Of Successful Marketing

Analytics As The Cornerstone Of Successful Marketing

If you want to determine whether something is working or not, you first need to be able to measure it, which means that you need the relevant data. So ask yourself this question: are all your marketing strategies working?

In today’s digital age, you often hear the term ‘analytics’.

So what does the term mean?

To put in basic terms, ‘analytics’ denotes a system that uses various data analyzing tools and techniques to accurately assess the effectiveness and performance of a business strategy. One of the major benefits of the digital age is that real-time data is easily accessible, which means that every niche has its own set of analytics.

However, the digital age has also resulted in increased competition. These days, corporations and business have to tread carefully as small mistakes can cost them valuable time and resources. Furthermore, opportunities of gaining a comparative advantage have also become increasingly difficult in the digital age. This is where analytics come in. It helps businesses, corporations and marketers to identify ways to improve through analyzing critical business metrics.

Let’s delve deeper into why analytics is a cornerstone of successful marketing.

Web Analytics

The internet has provided corporation and businesses with the fastest and most convenient way to reach out to a vast potential market. According to the Internet World Stats, nearly 90% of the North American population is online. Web analytics has been identified as a key tool for corporations and businesses to expand into new markets and gain a foothold in existing ones.

Web developers utilize Web analytics to procure quantitative and qualitative data which is then used to analyze and assess the on-site and off-site aspects that have a bearing on the website’s performance. The type of Web analytics techniques and methods and how they are applied depends mainly upon the category of business and what it requires. For instance, an e-commerce website would require more elaborate and complex data, which includes visitor demographics and online shopping behavioural trends.

Web analytics also enable marketers to determine which processes of the website are performing and which ones are failing to deliver. Furthermore, they can be used to address the following questions:

  • How many people are visiting the website?
  • Where is the traffic coming from?
  • Which social media platform is generating the most leads?
  • How are visitors finding the website?
  • Which content is attracting the most visitors?
  • What keywords are being used to find the website?

The definitive aim of Web analytics is to eliminate guesswork. With all of the above questions answered with empirical and substantial evidence, marketers are able to pin-point strengths and weaknesses, and come up with improved and more dynamic business marketing strategies. Data analytics gives companies a valid for decision-making and planning, and helps them save valuable time, energy and resources. A report from Forbes revealed that 53% of companies were adopting big data analytics—a significant rise from the 17% in 2015.

Furthermore, Web analytics are also an effective way to assess the performance of digital marketing strategies in real-time. By analyzing the important metrics of inbound marketing tools such as PPC advertising, SEO, content marketing, social media marketing and link building, it can be determined if these tools are delivering, both individually and on a collective basis.

Although Web analytics plays an imperative role in the success of a business website, it can’t guarantee the success of your website and your online marketing campaigns on its own.

Fortunately, there is a way for companies to amplify the positive impact of Web analytics. That way is known as marketing analytics.

Defining Marketing Analytics

Whereas Web analytics keeps tabs on your website’s performance, market analytics focuses on the outcome of your online marketing strategies, marketing analytics utilizes offline and online metrics and various other tools to enhance the data accumulated by Web analytics. You can think of marketing analytics as Web analytics data on steroids. What you’re left with is a complete and comprehensive outlook of your online marketing campaign.

If you’re existing marketing practices are based only on Web analytics, you are confined to just the results of your efforts. You are aware of the outcome but don’t know about the factors that resulted in that particular outcome. Its marketing analytics that answer all the critical questions related to the execution of marketing campaigns. These include:

  • What was the optimal time for distributing the content?
  • During which time of the day was engagement level the highest?
  • What were the main issues faced by customers audience?
  • Which platform contributed the best Return on Investment (ROI)?
  • What impacts did the online marketing strategy have on the end-user?

So as can be seen, market analytics are more of an in-depth analysis of your company’s marketing operations. While web analytics analyze how a website is performing, marketing analytics will enable you to determine the returns you will get from your efforts.

Marketing analytics help uncover the finer points and minute details of your business’s marketing strategy. The combination of Web and marketing analytics helps companies to identify the marketing strategies that are paying dividends, and warrant additional investment and support.

The Importance of Marketing Analytics for Businesses

Prior to the internet and the digital age, companies had to utilize conventional means of marketing to convey their message and promote their products. These included TV, radio, newspaper and billboard ads. All these mediums were limited in regards to reach and sustainability, and it was hard to accurately analyze the ROI of a marketing campaign and how it was performing.

Even with the emergence of the internet, the question on the lips of business owners hasn’t changed: “How much will be the ROI?”  This is a question that goes with any type of investment, including investments in marketing campaigns.

Marketing analytics is perhaps the most efficient and accurate way for companies and businesses to calculate the ROI they are getting o their marketing campaign. However, that’s not all. Marketing analytics provides a plethora of additional benefits to businesses. Some of the major ones include:

1.      Keeping Up-To-Date With the Eternally Changing Market Behaviour

It’s essential for any business to stay up to date with the changes in market behaviour. Keeping track of the shifts in consumer demands, tastes and preferences is critical for businesses if they wish to remain on the top of their respective market. Online behavioural shifts are fast and unpredictable, and can render your online content and marketing strategies irrelevant in the blink of an eye.

Marketing analytics tools such as product reviews, blogging communities and social media forums can help businesses and companies keep track of the ever-changing market behaviour trends.

2.      Keep Track of the Competition

The underlying principle of comparative advantage states that you should design your business development strategies in a way that they exploit the weaknesses of your competitors. In other words, you should aim to turn your competition’s weaknesses into your strengths.

Competitive analysis is constantly utilized as a critical metric by the marketers who have a firm grasp on how marketing analytics work. Competitive marketing analytics is not something that is run at various intervals during the campaign, but it’s a constant process that is ever-present during all stages of the campaign. If a business seeks to gain a competitive advantage over its rivals, it must always be aware of their operations and movements.

Competitive marketing analytics addresses the following questions in regards to the moves your competitors are making:

  • Are they looking to explore new markets?
  • Are they testing any new products?
  • How are their end-users responding to their campaigns?
  • Where and how are they distributing content?
  • Are they utilizing any new tools and networks?
  • Are they making any changes in their product placement?
  • What are the common problems pointed out be their audience?

Conclusively, market analytics enable you to gain highly useful insights of where your competitors stand without distracting you from your own campaign.

3.      Make Informed & Knowledgeable Decisions

Digital marketing provides an endless array of tools which can be used to optimize marketing campaigns. Your website and content can be optimized through SEO and purpose-generated key words. Furthermore, marketers can also utilize a wide variety of online distribution channels such as blogging communities and social media platforms to get their content to their preferred type of audience.

Using marketing analytics will enable you to identify which channels are performing the best and which channels are failing to deliver so that you can make informed decisions when it comes to allocating the marketing budget.

Marketing analytics tells companies which distribution channels are most beneficial so they can delegate monetary and human resources accordingly. Marketing analytics address the following questions:

  • Are PPC advertisements improving the conversion rates?
  • Are end-users finding the content to be engaging and is it generating the desired amount of likes and shares?
  • How many leads for your website are being generated on average by social media platforms?
  • Which social media channel is engaging the most people?

In today’s cutthroat business world, time is of the essence. Companies cannot afford to make mistakes in their marketing strategies as it will waste valuable time and result in lost market opportunities.

Tips on Developing Effective Marketing Analytics

Although marketing analytics can greatly enhance the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, there are certain guidelines on how they should be utilized if they are to be effective. Here they are:

  • Don’t Ignore Past Data: You must have heard the saying, “What goes around, comes around.” Well, it’s important to remember this saying when developing marketing strategies.
    Historical patterns and data are a good source of marketing lessons. Any marketing tactic that you may be planning to implement is most likely to have precedence, and historical data can be used to judge if it will be a success or a failure. However, marketing trends are constantly shifting so this doesn’t apply to all cases.
  • Analyzing Present Data: We’ve already elaborated on this one throughout the article but it’s a good opportunity to stress the importance of analyzing current data. It’s in current data that provides you with an idea of how your end-users are responding to your approaches and what you can do to increase engagement. Furthermore, competitive marketing analysis also comes under analyzing present data. The majority of strategy-related decisions are based on what the present data indicates.
  • Predicting the Future: Marketing analytics provides marketers with the knowledge they need to predict future possibilities, risks and any threats that can affect future goals. All types of business forecasts are driven by data and analytics, which make them reliable.

Furthermore, conducting effective marketing analytics is not a simple matter. Most companies outsource marketing analytics to digital marketing agencies that have experience in this complex discipline. Outsourcing to a professional digital marketing agency ensures that effective marketing analytics are developed for your company. Remember, this is what digital market agencies specialize in.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that both web and market analytics are essential tools for companies if they are looking to develop effective marketing strategies. Although marketing analytics are more detailed and comprehensive, they don’t render web analytics as unnecessary.

It’s essential for businesses to analyze informative data that comes from website tracking and how your end-users interact with your website. This is achieved through Web analytics. Marketing analytics plug the remaining gaps by providing an in-depth review of the numbers and figures accumulated by Web analytics. Both disciplines go hand-in-hand and complement each other.

 

If you want further information on web and marketing analytics, and how they can help your business or organization achieve sustainable growth and success, get in touch with us at DeveByte.

Based in Edmonton, we’re one of Canada’s premier digital marketing agencies. In addition to Web development, we offer professional search engine optimization and Web design services. You can message us online or call us at 1-780-445-4359.

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