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Have you ever wondered, "What is marketing analytics?"
If so, then you're in the right place.
Right now, only 22% of marketers can say that they have data-driven marketing initiatives that are achieving significant results. Which kind of makes sense, seeing as only 25% of marketers are even collecting customer data.
To stand out from the crowd, your business needs to make the most of the marketing analytics. Use our guide below so you understand the answer to "What is marketing analytics?" and more to help your business thrive.
What Is Marketing Analytics?
To answer "What is marketing analytics?" we must first cover the definition of the term.
Marketing analytics is the practice of measuring, managing and analyzing the marketing of your business to maximize its use. It uses data gathered across marketing channels to form a common marketing view.
Such metrics involved can include:
- ROI
- The state of your marketing funnel
- Lead generation
From that view, you can extract analytical information that can provide insight in driving your content marketing campaign towards success. By understanding your analytics, you can become more effective at your job as a marketer.
Plus, this ability to understand how your marketing is actually performing makes a huge difference in giving you the edge to beat out your competition.
Why It Is Important
To understand what is marketing analytics, you must also understand why it is so important. As technology advances, businesses continue expanding and the marketing industry will follow suit.
With each industry, however, comes all sort of data.
Marketers have to make decisions based on data from all channels so their business decisions are effective and efficient. One wrong move and you could end up seeing your competition thrive, so all businesses must take advantage. Not to mention, marketing analytics, in general, can help you monitor campaigns and their outcomes, so your business knows how to spend money wisely and waste less.
One prime example of marketing analytics is the use of keywords.
Keywords can tell you what is happening in the mind of your audience. This gives you the ability to use that information to capture the attention of your potential customers and help retain current ones. Keyword data not only helps bring traffic to your website, but it can also be used to optimize other business processes, such as:
- Product design: are potential clients still looking for three-bedroom homes, or are more people looking at four?
- Customer surveys: how are your reviews and rating with current clients?
- Industry trends: are more people looking at incorporating smart home options; is the front-attached garage on its way out?
As you can see, marketing analytics isn't only about the marketing department of your business. Every integral part can be strengthened by the analytical information you discover.
What You Can Do With the Information
Now, it doesn't do you a lot of good to answer the question, "What is marketing analytics?" if you don't know what you should be doing with the information.
Analytics can help you answer specific marketing questions, like:
- How are your marketing initiatives are performing?
- What can you do to improve your initiatives?
- How does your marketing ranks against your competition?
- What should you do next?
- How should you prioritize your marketing resources?
The abundance of data will help you establish what has and has not worked for your business so you know where to take your marketing in the future. If that landscaping package offer resulted in a huge increase of leads and clients, but all you heard was crickets on the quick possession promotion, you know what your client base is looking for.
Where to Start
A big part of understanding "What is marketing analytics?" is to know where you can start to find business success.
The easiest way to determine marketing analytics is to get online. Search marketing can give you reports and information to help with all areas of your business. To start the marketing analytical process, you need to look at some key elements.
1. Keyword Research
Online techniques will generally begin with, surprise, keyword research. It is essential to learning about new products and services or developments that could be crucial to your industry. Displaying keywords that have been proven to work can ensure your advertising is relevant to the audience.
2. Paid Search Marketing Campaigns
Set up effective campaigns to lower your bid and improve your ad position. Grouping keywords and appropriate ad text will help your Quality Score and help you secure the attention your business deserves.
3. Analyzing Results
Always make sure that you analyze the data provided, right from the beginning. It is important to have benchmark numbers, otherwise, you have no idea of what worked and what didn't.
4. Implementing Natural Search
Again, keywords can make all the difference for your marketing. Incorporate the best ones on your website to generate relevant content and you will rank higher on organic natural searches.
A note here: the "best ones" doesn't always mean the ones with the highest search volume.
5. Repeating Ad Nauseum
Lastly, negative keywords are great because they will prevent unnecessary clicks and ensure that your ads are only for applicable searches.
Overall, do your research and figure out what works for your business. Keep it relevant and you will create great marketing campaigns in the future.
How to Interpret Your Data
The next step in answering the question "What is marketing analytics?" is to learn how to interpret the data.
At this point, you know how to start the analytical process. Next, you need to learn how to efficiently go through the data and figure out the correct insights. When interpreting your data, you want to make sure that you:
1. Act Strategically
All the data you collect may feel overwhelming, so don't try to analyze it all at once. Narrow down your metrics and focus on the metrics that most closely align with your goals. Set primary and secondary KPIs to help narrow it down. These can be metrics like:
- Conversion rate
- Revenue
- Cost per acquisition
- Number of leads
- Click through rate
Narrow down your results and you will find the most pertinent information for your marketing strategy.
2. Understand Your Business
Throughout the interpretation process, make sure that you focus on who your business is at the core. Make sure that your marketing metrics are narrowed down based on:
- Your type of business
- The industry you are in
- Your target audience
- Your revenue model
Secondary metrics should be based on your business, but on what page(s) you are examining as well.
3. Remain Objective
Once you've established the metrics for your data, you have to remain objective. This could not be more important when it comes to analyzing. Do not fall into the confirmation bias trap! That type of selective thinking can lead to errors when all you want to do is seek information to confirm your hypothesis while ignoring whatever may refute it.
4. Look From All Angles
Make sure you understand what is happening in the data, but also acknowledge why it is happening and all other angles of the situation.
There is not just one single way to interpret data. Look from all angles to minimize the chance of incorrect assumptions. By doing so, you will truly analyze different metrics in different ways.
5. Analyze Multiple Metrics Together
Remember to analyze certain metrics together to make the most out of the interpretation process. By looking at multiple metrics and how they relate to each other, you will be able to further understand the data, answer the question of why, and continue to avoid assumptions.
A correlation analysis, or looking at trends between different metrics, can also help you gain insight into the minds of your audience.
6. Don't Treat All Visitors the Same
Lastly, don't forget about segmenting visitors. By treating visitors differently, you can learn how certain groups of visitors interact with your site. This can help you establish which segment of visitors are warm and which group needs more lead nurturing.
Look at the segment of people who completed your KPI to understand what your audience wants and what actions will actually convert them into clients.
How to Find Success
At this point, you need to understand how to make the most of what you've learned to find success. You must analyze what you've done to figure out what has worked and what hasn't so you can prepare future marketing campaigns for your business.
Your business analysis outside of marketing might be able to answer specific questions about your business, but there could be gaps preventing you from achieving true success.
That is where this marketing technique comes to play.
You will be able to identify gaps preventing you from success so you can develop a strategy for your needs and fill them in accordingly. This creates a stronger marketing strategy overall, which leads to better results for future campaigns.
By analyzing what you're doing and using that information correctly, you determine which initiatives are contributing to the entire business as a whole. Thus, the analytical information can directly lead to more revenue and greater profitability.
As a full-service digital marketing agency, we excel at developing marketing systems that are goal-oriented, quantifiable, prospect-focused, and ROI-driven. By getting to know your business and what differentiates you from your competition, our team at Marketing Ninjas can create a killer marketing strategy to help your home builder business succeed.
If you need further help with your marketing analytics or to begin the process, then please contact us today.
