Why Analytics Are Your Best Friend In Digital Marketing
Your digital marketing campaign is one of the most important elements in your overall business plan. A strong digital marketing strategy can help you find customers where they are, build value and name recognition for your brand, and set you apart from your competition.
However, without digging into analytics, you won’t be able to harness the full potential of digital marketing. Analytics can guide every aspect of your digital campaign, taking it to the next level. In fact, without analytics, it’s hard to measure whether your efforts are even making a difference. When you use data to drive your marketing decisions, they’ll be more targeted and more effective. How can you make the most of your digital marketing campaign using analytics? Read on for a few guiding principles that will help you get started.
Track How Visitors Interact With Your Website
When you attract visitors to your website, how long do they stay? Do they click on the links you provide, or do they ignore them? Do visitors tend to visit multiple areas of your website, or do they stick to reading just one section? Analytics can help you answer these questions and figure out why. The longer you can keep visitors browsing your website, the more effective your marketing campaign can be. If visitors aren’t sticking around long enough, you’ll need to figure out how to hold their interest.
One key metric you’ll want to track is your bounce rate. If your home page has a high bounce rate, you may have a problem. It could mean that customers are landing at your front door but never venturing past it to shop for products. On the other hand, if your website has informational pages, a higher bounce rate, there might simply mean that customers are coming there with questions and leaving with answers.
Understand How Customers Are Shopping Online
If you have an online store, you can also benefit from shopping cart data. What are customers putting in their cart and then removing? What does it get replaced with? Are customers backing out of their purchases due to high shipping costs or a confusing checkout process? The more you know, the more you can do to finalize the sale.
A key metric to focus on is your shopping cart abandon rate. Typical online abandon rates are fairly high–around 69% of customers who fill up a shopping cart don’t finalize the purchase. Sometimes, customers get enough satisfaction from adding to their cart that they don’t feel the need to actually buy your product. Sending a text or email to shoppers who abandon their carts can help you beat this trend. Making special offers or simply adding value to the purchase can motivate customers to finish checking out.
Find Out How Successful Your Social Media Strategy Can Be
Without analytics, it can be easy to make assumptions about your customers’ engagement with your social media accounts. But crunching the numbers can give you a fuller picture. Are people really engaging with your brand in a meaningful way online? Comments are part of the equation, but you should also track reactions, shares, saves, clicks, and other specific interaction types. If you’re not driving holistic engagement, it’s time to rethink your plan.
Social media giants understand that most users don’t want to be passive. Your customers will soon get bored with just looking at your content. Many of us already feel isolated and disconnected, and we turn to social media for connection. Customers want to actively connect with your brand, the people behind it, and the other people who use it. The best social media strategies help to solidify brand loyalty. When everyone associated with the brand feels connected, good things happen.
Perform Constant Cost-Benefit Analysis
Do you know your brand’s cost per click? To figure it out, divide what an ad campaign cost you by the number of clicks it generated. Once you’ve got your answer, it’s time to do some strategizing. If your cost per click is too high, you have some options.
You may need to adjust the keywords your ads are designed to target. If your keywords are too vague or too specific, you could be missing out on valuable opportunities. For example, if you offer online therapy sessions, it might be a waste of time to attract people searching specifically for in-person appointments.
If your ads are consistently attracting people to your site, this might seem like an automatic win. But if your ads are attracting people who quickly lose interest and leave, it can do more harm than good. This can lower your relevancy score, which can harm your ratings and keep people from finding you in the future.
Know Whether Your Email Campaign Is Working
Digital marketing via email often involves sending out thousands of promotional messages. A good marketing email should be carefully crafted, with a winning title, interesting content, and quality graphics. All this takes time and money to accomplish. How do you know whether your email marketing efforts are a waste of time?
Tracking your open rate can be a great place to start analyzing your campaign’s success. If no one is opening your emails, it doesn’t matter how great they are. Offering quality, helpful content can help keep your messages out of spam folders. It’s also important to honor customers’ requests to unsubscribe and only send emails to leads who are likely to be interested. Getting a reputation for spam will only hurt the success of your brand.
Beyond your open rate, it’s important to track whether your emails are actually motivating customers to take action. Your emails should be designed to drive traffic to your website and, usually, to your checkout process. If they’re failing to do so, data analytics can help you identify exactly where the disconnect is happening.
Need A Hand?
Digital marketing experts can help you effectively use analytics to level up your strategy. Are you ready for professional help with your digital campaign? Contact Personalized Creative to find out what our team can do for your brand.