“84% of marketers cannot measure their marketing efforts to report their contribution to the company.“
ITSMA/VISION EDGE MARKETING
What is Digital Analytics?
In short, digital analytics in a process of gathering data from your marketing efforts to evaluate and analyze their success. This is important for, both, you and the company. It allows you to gain insights on the effectiveness of campaigns, how much return on your investment you are earning, consumer insights, and how to improve your marketing goals and actions. You and your company will gain all of this- and you, as a marketer, will be able to prove your efforts and value with actual data.
As marketing continues to evolve, it’s increasingly important to evaluate and improve your efforts. With new technologies and cost considerations as a factor, you’ll also need to prove results and value. By maintains a steady analytics process and making decisions based on data, you can both offer measurable results and prove the value of your efforts.
Jon Simpson
As mentioned by Simpson, the unique advantage of digital marketing is being able to make data driven decisions. You are able to collect enormous amounts of data, as well as enormous sources of data. This advantage lets you track customers before, during, and after an interaction with your business.
Getting Started
So, what metrics are there? How do I even know what goals to make? These questions can be difficult to understand for young marketers new to their field. So, let’s breakdown some metrics and how to set an appropriate goal.
Metrics
There are so many metrics out there to choose from. What metrics you choose will be directly coordinated with your goal. But here are a few to get your gears started- and familiar- with metrics when you start your own process.
- Cost per View (CPV)
- Conversion Rate
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
- Average Page Load Time
- Lifetime Value of Customer (LTV)
Keep in mind, there are so, so, many more metrics than those. These are just a few to get you thinking for your own analytics.
Setting Goals
There are five parts to creating a great goal- and luckily for you, they come in a convenient little acronym. SMART.
Here is a great source to check-out when making your own SMART Goals:
You Have Your Goals, Now What?
As you begin analyzing your data to make a data driven decision, make sure you mark-off these six items on your checklist:
1. Is your sample size large enough?
A single day or week is not a long enough period of time to gather a sufficient sample size to draw conclusions off of.
2. Is your testing period long enough?
Similarly, basing decisions off one day of data is not wise. You need to have a decent time period to collect data over in order to draw conclusions.
3. Are you using an appropriate attribution model?
There are several attribution models to use depending on your goal, with some common ones being:
- First interaction
- Last interaction
- Linear
- Time decay
- Position based
To learn more about attribution models:
https://agencyanalytics.com/blog/marketing-attribution-models
4. Are your conclusions unbiased?
Humans are prone to biases- make sure your conclusions are based on logical data.
Where do I get My Data?
You have three main sources of data: internal, market research, and tracking marketing initiatives.
Internal
- Website Analytics (Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics)
- Internal Site Searches
- Heatmaps (CrazyEgg, Hotjar)
- Call Tracking (CallRail, Invoca)
- Customer Relationship Management Data (CRM)
- Sales Team Data
- Engineering/Development Team Data
Market Research
- Google DataSet Search
- Google Trends
- Google Ad’s Keyword Planner
- SEO/SEM Tools
- Moz, SEM Rush, Xenu Link Sleuth, Screaming Frog
Tracking Marketing Initiatives
- Unique Landing Pages
- Vanity URLs with Tracking
- Coupon Codes
- QR Codes
- Call Tracking Software
I Have My Conclusion, Now What?
Make sure you understand the difference between correlation and causation in your conclusion of data, first. Then, present your data-driven decision to your team and company! Just always make sure that you add commentary to your presentation- to avoid any misinterpretation of the full scope of data.
Some great ways to present your findings are through visualizations like PowerPoint, charts, graphs, and dashboards.
Keep in Mind…
Your findings can be negative, and that is okay! Go over your data and check for external factors (hurricanes, a major sporting event, a pandemic) that may have been occurring during your data. Then, make sure your control was constant throughout your data. With these findings, adjust and re-test!
Remember that your data needs to be relevant to what you need, develop SMART Goals, keep a watch on your data, don’t conclude your search too quickly, identify and source trends, report your data findings on a regular basis, and compare and repeat your test. When you have met your goal, set a new goal- and repeat the process for the new one!
Check us out on our socials to stay updated on all the latest marketing developments and advice! Stay tuned for our next blog on social media marketing!
