Marketing Analytics: A Beginner's Guide

In this guide you will learn what is the marketing analysis digital and how you can perform strategic analysis to use in your business plan.

We live in the age of accessible data. At home, you can use your smartphone to access data on your exercise habits, sleep patterns, and even your medical records. At work, you can use text files called cookies and other similar tools to collect information about your customers.

You can learn almost everything you need to know, from the types of products your customers buy to the age groups that tend to visit your site the most. And you can explore that data, down to the individual level if that's what you need.

At the end of the day, it's not the data that matters, it's what you do with it. The power lies in the aggregation and interpretation of data, part of a process known as marketing analysis.

What is marketing analysis?

Marketing analysis is a mathematics-based discipline that seeks to find models in a cough to increase workable insight . It uses statistics, predictive modeling, and machine learning to reveal information and answer questions.

Weather forecasts, batting averages and life insurance policies are the result of the analysis. In the world of digital marketing, analytics is essential for understanding and predicting user behavior and optimizing user experience (UX) to drive sales.

Here are 2 main objectives marketing analysis:

1. Measure the performance of your marketing efforts by measuring the effectiveness of your marketing activity.
2. Figure out what you can do differently to get better results in your marketing channels.

Together, these processes allow you to turn raw marketing data into a plan of action and get the most out of your marketing investment.

Why is marketing analytics important?

Is there a need to educate myself on marketing analytics or can I ignore this? ...

Analysis is more than a good bonus. It's one of the best ways to understand the customer journey and find out what's working in your digital marketing campaigns and what does not work. And having this information is crucial for your future online marketing efforts.

Here are some of the things you can do with marketing analytics:

1. Quantify your complaints

The figures are compelling. You can tell your CFO that content attracts customers, or you can tell them that 72% of marketers think content increases customer engagement.

The second is more likely to provide you with funding. People are more likely to care about your claims when you include relevant statistics.

Without specific marketing data points, like your ROI (Return On Investment) before and after a campaign, you can only think in general terms ...

Either your income increased while a certain ad was running or it didn't. Either you have obtained more subscriptions to lists of broadcast after launching the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, or you haven't.

What is the contribution of each of your campaigns?

Marketing analysis allows you to take data from that time period and determine the actual contribution of a particular campaign - its marketing impact. If you received 100 email subscriptions on the first day you launched your PPC campaign, how many of them were from the ad itself? ...

If you determine if the marketing initiative itself has worked, it is much easier to get funding. And if that didn't work, you can save some money to continue the initiative.

With marketing analytics, you can clearly demonstrate not only that something is working or not, but also why. And with that "why" you can convince people to make a change.

2. Convert data into information

Today, most businesses have access to customer data and web analytics tools. The difference is that your business uses this data. Too often you find yourself on a server without doing anything particularly useful ...

At worst, it can be misinterpreted and misused, which will mislead your marketing team.

In order for your data to become useful information, you need to subject it to relevant data analysis.

For example:

At the start of your PPC campaign, your income is around $ 5 per month. After your first campaign, your revenue is up to $ 000 per month. Should you reinvest in that same ad? ...

It depends. Has there been an industry-wide sales rebound this month? ...

Maybe your products started trending for some unrelated reasons. Did you have any other ads running at the time? How many of your customers are actually coming from this PPC ad? ...

Data analysis gives you the answers to these questions. With these answers, you can make decisions in your marketing program.

3. Compare and contrast your marketing data

Marketing analysis allows you to go further and compare your data sets against each other.

For example:

1. How does your income from paid search social media marketing ou organic traffic is do they compare to your estimates?
2. Was there a difference in the income generated between the demographics?
3. How does the ROI of your PPC campaign compare to the ROI of your Facebook ad campaign?
4. How much did your PPC campaign generate in first sale income compared to lifetime income?

Your Classified, campaigns, content initiatives and customer groups are interrelated. By understanding the intersections, you can eliminate irrelevant information and make the best decisions based on your unique business goals.

4. Stay goal-oriented

Each of your marketing elements has a goal, whether it's increasing sales or just driving more traffic to your business website. The more you analyze and use the available data, the more you will know about your progress towards your goals.

Marketing analysis allows you to measure that progress and helps you determine where the problem might be if the progress is not as fast as you would like.

Let's say you ran an ad campaign on Facebook and your ROI was just under 3: 1.

Your team tells you to try something else, but you watch the reviews. You've seen that your ad has a high click-through rate, but your homepage has a high bounce rate.

The PPC campaign was not the problem. But without good analysis, you would never have known.

Marketing analysis to improve business growth

Data alone are just numbers ...

You get the benefit when you use that data to steer your marketing efforts towards what works and away from what doesn't.

Segment your customer data

By segmenting your customer data based on particular qualities or actions, you can get more specific (and useful) data. You can segment based on any customer demographic that affects your results. These include:

• Age range.
• Kind.
• Level of education.
• Annual revenue.
• Family state.
• Geographic location.

You can also segment data based on consumer behavior, categorizing it by customers who:

• They abandon their shopping carts.
• They crawl through your product pages without buying.
• They regularly buy your products.
• They haven't returned to your website for a long time.

This segmentation allows you to filter your data by relevance, taking what you need and leaving what you don't.

Imagine that you have a large customer base who abandons their shopping cart. You want to know if Facebook or email would be better to bring them back to your cart, then you run a series of tests ...

You find that email gets a better ROI, but only if you include language that creates a sense of urgency. This information prevents you from pursuing carters in places they do not view.

Make sure you have high quality data

You can only have great analytics with high quality data. Data from 5 years ago won't be relevant to your marketing campaigns this year, and if the data has holes, it may not be relevant at all.

For the data to be of high quality, it must be:

• Current
• Complete, without gaps.
• Without mistakes.
• As accurate as the analysis of your data requires.
• Relevant for analysis.

Marketing analysis should always be goal-oriented, so the last point is the most important. It's possible to use old or incomplete data, as long as you treat it with care, but if the data doesn't meet your campaign's needs, leave it out.

To look forward

It's no longer enough to know what happened in the past, or even what is happening in the moment (although real-time analytics are important). For more effective marketing, it's also important to predict what will happen in the future.

Fortunately, you don't need a crystal ball for this: predictive analytics can help you look to the future ...

These tools use specific data and past trends to determine what results you can expect under different conditions. You can use predictive analytics to answer questions such as:

1. Would a search engine campaign get better results with more money invested?
2. Would a search marketing campaign work well on one platform with another?
3. Would an email campaign result in Facebook ads?
4. Would your Facebook ad work on Instagram?
5. What kind of income could you earn from your social media marketing campaign in a new market?

You don't need to be overly complicated with your predictive analytics, but spending time on it can help you determine if what you're doing is working or not.

See what isn't working, not just what is working

It's good to focus on your strengths, but don't stop there. You can learn a lot by paying attention to the gaps in your marketing efforts. If you see a sudden drop in sales, can anything in your analysis explain why? ...

See where your content is underperforming, but remember to stay positive and goal-oriented. Treat your gaps as opportunities and use your analysis tools to figure out how to close the gap.

And when you make changes, remember to keep collecting and analyzing data to see when things get better.

3 essential marketing analysis tools

Here are 3 of the main marketing analysis tools you can consider incorporating into your digital marketing strategy:

1.Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free basic website analytics tool provided by Google. You can use it to track your website traffic, find out where your website visitors are coming from, how they got to know your website, how much time they spent there, etc.

Google Analytics can also be integrated with other tools such as Google AdWords and Google Data Studio for a more in-depth analysis of your marketing data ...

However, defining and tracking new conversions is complex, and it lacks the ability to track individual user sessions and know how users are actually using your site.

2.SEMrush

SEMrush is a marketing analysis tool that can help you see what your competition is doing, search for keywords, to analyze web domains, analyze PPC ads, and more.

SEMrush software can provide you with a way to outperform your competition in search results and offers its users an easy way to monitor social media accounts, brands, etc. of your competitors.

You can also use it to track your own brand. SEMrush has an analytical reporting tool that shows the keywords your competitors are using in their AdWords campaigns. Moreover, you can use it to analyze the keywords you want to use in your advertising campaigns to determine their competitiveness.

SEMrush is a great tool for marketers who need to increase their search engine traffic and monitor the activities of their competitors. SEMrush offers 3 pricing plans, with the cheapest plan costing $ 99 per month and a free trial of 7 days.

Recommended reading: SEMrush Guide in Spanish.

3. AdWords performance qualifier

The campaigns PPC marketing or marketing SEM are a common way to reach new customers and grow the business of marketers.

However, there are many factors that will determine your success as a PPC marketer. It can even be difficult to determine the right areas to pay attention to. This is why PPC marketers need AdWords Performance Grader  from Wordstream.

Adwords Performance Grader by Wordstream helps you assess the strength of your Google Ads account quickly and securely. Once the tool has audited your account, it will provide you with a detailed report showing its strengths and weaknesses.

This can help you understand which items in your account require more work. You can use this tool for free.

Recommended reading: The best tools for SEO and SEM.

Conclusion

Every marketing project is a process. Marketing analysis helps you determine where to direct your attention during this process and the right marketing mix for your business. Remember to follow best analytics practices:

• Specify the questions to be answered.
• Collect high quality data.