How Data Analytics Can Boost Your Digital Marketing Success

There's an ongoing debate about whether marketing is an art or a science. But whether you run the numbers to calculate the optimal timing and frequency of your ads, you A/B test every iterative change to see blips in the conversion percentages, or you craft messaging for each of your segments by hand, you're using data to do it.

Data tells the story of who shops from you, what they're interested in, and what your marketing can do to improve the process. However, as more and more of your marketing tools and online sales portals give you more data, you can no longer just glance over the numbers and get the core insights. Instead, you need "data analytics" — a comprehensive process for collecting, analyzing, and using data to make stronger business decisions. 

However, moving from data to data analytics isn't always an intuitive process. Working hand-in-hand with an inbound marketing agency will certainly help, but it also pays to understand the role of data analytics on your own terms. Take a deep look at how digital marketing data analytics helps during both the strategy phase and during specific campaigns before you start deciding which tools and tactics to prioritize first.

How to Use Data Analytics to Develop Your Marketing Strategy

A digital marketing strategy is a broad overview of your marketing objectives, channels, and projects. Your company may have an annual marketing strategy, but you might also have a quarterly strategy so you can develop more nuanced approaches for your peak and off-peak seasons. Here's how you can use data analytics while you build your next strategy and review the results of the last period.

Use the Numbers to Set More Accurate Goals

When you first set objectives, the numbers will involve a lot of guesswork. You might set a quarterly goal of increasing conversions by 15%, doubling the number of videos you produce and publish, or increasing revenue by 8% in a specific season, but it's hard to know if these numbers are too big or too small until you race past them or fail to come close.

General market research can help if your business is new, but it's far better to amass analytics over time. When you have historical data about revenue increases, costs, and conversion percentages through different channels, you can much more accurately forecast future growth and the appropriate goals for different projects. 

Identify Areas of Waste or Failure

Data analysis can help reveal the relationships between different numbers. While a lot of businesses focus on conversion rates, increases in revenue, and other positive metrics, it's just as important to find the negative metrics: the times when projects failed, when the ROAS was too low, and when the cost per acquired customer was too high. Some of the ways data analytics can help you uncover waste are:

• Seeing if your online marketing services package is providing sufficient value for the price
• Analyzing the results of your content marketing strategy over time to see which channels or types of content are underperforming
• Reviewing the click-through rates and open rates of your email marketing campaigns so you can judge if it's a drain on company resources
• Highlighting high-cost or low-engagement areas of your marketing strategy

Create Baseline Statistics for Comparison and Growth

If you're investing in good data analytics for the first time, this is one of the key benefits. Amass baseline information about the number of touchpoints for the average conversion, the cost per acquisition, the real value of different keywords in your SEO optimization efforts, and web traffic over time.

Your team or digital marketing agency can then compare future numbers against them to measure growth, failure, or trends over time. Then you can prioritize future projects, such as a new website or an increased focus on social media management, based on data insights. You can't effectively strategize without this.

How Data Data Analytics Can Reshape Your Campaigns in the Moment

Robust data analytics doesn't just help you shape your strategies for the upcoming months and years. They also play a critical role in the decisions you make "on the field" while campaigns are active. For example, data analytics can help you:

• Identify when you should add more budget to a successful CPC campaign
• Decide when it's time to pull the plug on a struggling email marketing campaign
• Forecast inventory once you can reliably tie changes in engagement to increases or decreases in purchases
• Seize on new keywords and micro-trends during key seasons

Top Tools for Marketing Data Analytics

The right tools and services for mastering marketing data analytics are crucial—your organization needs to have the right tech stack to keep up with your competition. Make sure you cover your bases with these types of marketing data analytics tools:

• Email campaign tools: You want to be able to manage your email list, measure click-through rates over time, and even develop attribution models that measure the impact of emails within a larger series of touchpoints.
• Web traffic analytics: These tools, like Google Analytics, give you deep insight into where your traffic is coming from, how it behaves, and even what you can do to increase it. 
• SEO analytics: SEO optimization centers on keywords and engagement. Look for tools that can measure your own performance and data-based trends in the marketplace.

Every organization has its own suite of tools based on their size, budget, and industry, so shop around for tools that fit your unique needs.

Best Practices: Tips for Getting Started With Data Analytics

Once you understand the role of data analytics in digital marketing, what should you do next? These best practices can help you develop a strong foundation of analytics and data gathering you can rely on:

• Make sure every part of your marketing efforts is analyzed, including every distinct channel and every stage of the buyer's journey.
• Start by focusing on a few core metrics so your team isn't overwhelmed. 
• Partner with an inbound marketing agency that can gather and analyze data for you before presenting it as actionable insights. 

At Decographic, we have years of experience in data analytics and helping local businesses ramp up their use of analytics to increase ROAS and grow their customer base. 

Reach out today to start optimizing your campaigns with professional support.