Digital marketing is defined by channels and numbers. Finding your audience and reaching out to them is critical to the success of your marketing campaigns. However, to understand and enhance the performance of your campaigns, you need to look at hard numbers. This is where data analytics comes in.
What Is Data Analytics?
Data analytics refers to a cumulative set of data numbers that allows you to measure and analyze the effectiveness of your marketing activities.
About 26% of marketing budgets are wasted on ineffective strategies and channels, but the insights uncovered through data analytics will help you reduce wasted marketing dollars and hit revenue objectives.
Analytics can also provide profound insights into customer preferences and trends over time.
Why Use Data Analytics?
Data analytics can help you track important metrics and know how to optimize your campaigns for the best ROI. Some of the metrics you can track include:
- Traffic numbers – Analytics can track the amount of traffic coming to your website. You can uncover the source of the traffic, page views generated, and actions taken on your website.
- Lead conversion rate – Through analytics, you can determine the lead conversion rate for your offers.
- Consumer trends – Analytics can help you know what audiences in your industry are searching for in real-time. This information can uncover trends that you can capitalize on.
- Channel performance. Through analytics, you can determine the performance of every marketing channel you use. For instance, you can see how many leads are generated from a particular channel.
Improve Your Marketing Spend with Data Analytics
Here are 6 ways you can use data analytics to use your marketing budget wisely:
- Identify Top Customer Segments
Understanding your customers’ behavior is critical to know the right marketing strategies to implement. Data analytics provides a 360-degree view of your customers, including their geographic location, languages spoken, average order value, and more. This information can inform your marketing strategy for the best return on investment.
For example, if you realize customers of a certain age group are converting poorly, you can evaluate your campaigns to better address their needs. For customers with small average order value, you can get them to spend more by providing complementing products.
- Predict and Optimize Conversions
Your marketing strategies should be pegged on driving qualified leads to your sales channels. The conversion rate is directly related to the quality of the leads you generate.
Data analytics can help you understand the actions prospects take that indicate they are likely to convert. Based on this information, you can create landing pages, sales funnels, and cross-sales campaigns that are geared to positively impact your bottom line.
- Improve Lead Scoring
When implementing a marketing strategy, your sales team should be ready to reach out to leads at the right time and convert them. Using data analytics, you can identify the customer journey and connect the dots to know which leads are likely to convert. This information can help you allocate budget resources effectively, reduce the loss of productivity, and minimize response times.
- Discover Product Insights
Data analytics can help you know the products that are performing well over a particular time. With this information, you will know which segment of your audience to focus on, the marketing campaigns to implement, and content strategy that will improve product performance.
Discovering product insights can also help you plan your inventories to avoid shortfalls. For example, analyzing historical data can help you predict and position your future product volume to mitigate shortfalls.
- Real-Time Personalization
Personalization is critical in closing sales. According to a report, 90 percent of retailers use personalization in their marketing efforts. The report further indicates that businesses generate $20 for every $1 invested in personalization.
Data analytics can help you build a customer persona, which you can leverage through various strategies to drive more sales.
- Proper Budget Allocation
Data analytics can help you know where to allocate your budget for the best ROI. By analyzing different metrics, you can know things such as:
- The landing pages that convert the best
- Impact of seasonality and customer trends
- Channels driving the most qualified leads
You can leverage the insights to know how much budget to allocate at different for various activities and campaigns.
Use these strategies of leveraging data analytics to make the most out of your marketing budget.
Data analytics provides critical insight into the performance of your business, allowing you to identify trends that help you optimize your marketing campaigns and increase ROI.