September 25th, 2014
Marketers around the world and across a multitude of industries are constantly faced with one challenge—data. That is, turning data into relevant, actionable insights for more accurate, effective and timely decision-making.
Businesses spend billions of dollars globally on online marketing campaigns, but measuring the effectiveness of those campaigns is critical and can be a struggle to address. So, marketers turn to analytics to help derive measurable and accurate insights from their data, insights that allow them to “turn data into action.”
So what is the business community’s general understanding of analytics? Many businesses tend to think of analytics as metrics associated with their website, such as traffic, page-views, demographics or the time users spend on pages. But can this type of data really be sufficient to run key performance analyses and design targeted marketing campaigns for sales, lead generation or customer loyalty programs? In most cases it is not, so here marketers need to look beyond web analytics and incorporate an effective marketing-specific analytics program into their overall digital marketing strategy.
Web analytics can help improve a website’s performance by analyzing the performance of individual web pages and optimizing them for search engines. But marketing analytics go beyond web optimization, allowing marketers to understand the effectiveness of their digital marketing campaigns and improve return on investment from marketing programs. One powerful source of insight is data gathered from social networks, which businesses can use in new and innovative ways, such as targeted online advertising or pay-per-click marketing.
Ultimately, the ability to measure the performance of each individual marketing channel—be it social media, website, email marketing or something else—is a powerful tool. With it marketers can effectively compare the results of their efforts and make the most of their marketing budgets by allocating funds to the campaigns that work best.
Tags: digital marketing, digital marketing strategy, marketing analytics, web analytics
