Marketing analytics is the study of data to evaluate the performance of a marketing activity. Through use of technology and analysis, your local business can better understand what drives your customer’s actions and refine your marketing campaigns to optimize performance and your marketing return-on-investment.
The proliferation of digital technology and the capabilities it brings in measuring the effectiveness of digital advertising have created useful tools for local business to measure, monitor, and optimize your marketing investments. Today more than 80% of businesses say most of their marketing decisions are rooted in data. The ubiquity and accessibility of powerful tools have enabled local business to evaluate and understand how each aspect of their marketing plan is contributing to sales.
Among these tools includes multi-touch attribution models that enable you to measure your company’s engagement with consumers, across multimedia, all along the customer path to purchase. This insight enables evaluation of your marketing spend and opportunities to adjust to evolve with changing market conditions.
To best utilize marketing analytics, it is best to focus on those data points that are most relevant to the success of your campaign. Common KPIs (key performance indicators) include:
- Impressions: Measures how many times your advertising has been viewed.
- Click Through Rate (CTR): Measures how many times your ad has been clicked compared to how many times the ad is shown. CTR is a key metric because it directly reflects engagement with your advertising.
- Leads: Measures the number of customer prospects who have engaged with your marketing activities including filling out an online form or clicked a button to start a free trial.
- Conversion Rate: Measures the percentage of users who take a desired action after interacting with your campaign.
- Bounce Rate: Measures the percentage of visitors who only stay on your site for a limited time, those users not likely interested in your offerings.
- Return on Marketing Investment: Refers to the amount of money your marketing efforts generate compared to their cost.
There are many more metrics that can be measured. But these serve as the most common.
Your local business can benefit from using marketing analytics, including:
- Understanding Customers: Marketing analytics can help your business understand customers better by identifying trends in user behavior and analyzing demographic information, browsing behavior, and engagement patterns. This can help businesses create more personalized and targeted marketing campaigns.
- Segmenting and targeting: Marketing analytics can help businesses divide their customers into groups based on similarities, and then decide how to relate to each segment to maximize their value. This can help you to tailor your marketing messages and content to each group’s specific preferences and needs.
- Making data-driven decisions: Marketing analytics can help businesses to make informed decisions that optimize their resources and maximize ROI including identifying your most profitable customer segments and enhancing customer experience all along their path-to-purchase.
An important component in your analysis and assessment is to be certain to measure each tactic in your marketing plan based on its role in the media mix.
It is believed that Albert Einstein once said “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Some media and marketing tactics perform better at different stages of the customer journey to purchase. For example, radio, newspaper, and television advertising are vitally important components in the awareness stage of the customer journey; while search, social, and newsletters are effective in the consideration phase. It’s likely best not to evaluate search on impressions, or radio on conversions. Use the metric that best fits the role the tactic plays in the mix.
Don’t be intimidated by these processes. Even non-tech-savvy business leaders can master these fundamentals. Tools including Google Analytics are easy-to-use and will inform your marketing decision-making. Other terrific tools include SEMRush and Hootsuite. Locally, campaigns run with Sentinel Solutions receive a live dashboard for your use including measures of impressions served, click-through rate, and conversions. We also provide individual data on platforms and ad creatives to help you compare effectiveness.
If you’re interested in learning more about the value of marketing analytics, Sentinel Solutions can help. We have experts who will effectively measure and manage your campaigns to ensure you are optimizing every dollar invested in your marketing plan.
Give us a call at 603-352-5896 or send us an e-mail to advertising@SentinelDigitalSoutions.com if we can be of help.
