5 Ways to better integrate analytics into your marketing
In today’s marketing landscape, relying on your gut feeling doesn’t work. Instead, sound marketing requires data-driven tactics to make strategic and informed decisions. You can achieve this when you integrate analytics into your marketing. Here’s how:
1. Know your basics
Understand key marketing analytics terms so you can apply vital metrics to reach your marketing goals effectively. Some key marketing analytics terms to learn include:
Leads generated. This is the number of sales leads you produce with your marketing efforts. Sales leads are individuals who are interested in the goods or services you offer and can potentially lead to a paying customer.
Sales growth. This is the rate at which your sales increase over time based on your marketing strategies, such as lead generation.
Conversion rate. This is the percentage of your leads who transform into paying customers.
Web analytics. These are the different types of metrics and data that specifically measure online activity from various platforms, including email and e-commerce. You use web analytics to understand how site visitors use the web so you can optimize your web content. Some key terms include:
- Click-through rate (CTR). CTR measures the percentage of individuals who clicked on your digital ad or call-to-action (CTA) in comparison to individuals who only viewed it.
- Traffic. Traffic measures the number of visitors that come to your website.
- Engagement. Engagement typically measures the rate at which individuals interact with your online content and the way they interact with this content. The pages per session, bounce rate and time on page are a few of the several data points that constitute engagement.
- Open rate. This metric measures the rate at which recipients of your email campaign open the emails you send.
2. Push your metrics further with insights
Without drawing insights from your data, it’s challenging to understand their value. Accomplish this by assessing how specific marketing activities impact different metrics. For instance, you can measure the performance between two different CTAs by comparing the changes in the CTR for each CTA. If you notice the first CTA garners a better CTR, then it may be ideal to use the first call-to-action to drive traffic.
3. Track lead sources
You can better integrate analytics into your marketing by tracking the source channels of your leads. This is especially useful for tracking social media sources. Review the source of your leads by measuring the CTR. This can help you better determine where to focus your marketing efforts.
4. Improve the user experience
You can use data to also enhance the site experience users have when they visit your website. For example, you can monitor changes in your bounce rate before and after making a technical change such as removing images that slow down site performance, to determine the effectiveness of the change. If it decreases your bounce rate and keeps visitors on your site longer, it can mean that it’s enhancing the user experience.
5. Craft your strategy around insights
You can’t maximize your data’s potential if you lack effective strategies. It’s not uncommon for marketers to limit their data’s potential by using it to support pre-made decisions. However, it’s key to leverage the potential of data to drive action. You can do this by crafting your strategy around insights. Consider using these tips to build a driving strategy with marketing analytics:
- Make marketing analytics accessible. Make sure your team has access to your insight and discuss how analytics impacts your marketing goals.
- Get help. Get a different perspective and ensure you’re capturing data from different angles by leveraging the help of an expert or partner.
- Test your tactics. Perform tests to determine if the theories or tactics you have are working based on your analytics.
