Whether you’re just getting started or you’re already well into your digital marketing activities, it’s important to track the results of your campaigns. After all, every dollar spent on digital marketing is a dollar not spent on other areas of business. To make sure you’re getting the most out of your investment, it’s important to measure the results of your various campaigns. This is where a business or marketing analytics tool can help. A business analytics tool can measure the success of your digital marketing efforts in great detail, allowing you to pinpoint exact areas for improvement and to track the effect that your campaigns have on the bottom line. It’s also a good idea to review these results frequently to ensure you’re getting the most out of your digital marketing investment. This article will discuss three ways you can use business analytics to audit your online marketing efforts:
Look At The Big Picture
The first step to effective audit is to look at the whole picture rather than just the results of isolated campaigns. Simply put, you want to be able to track the results of your various marketing activities over time. Doing this requires a bit of organization so you can keep track of what’s been done and what still needs to be done. Fortunately, there are tools designed for just this purpose. The key is being able to connect the various online and offline marketing activities that you’ve done in the past, present, and future. Doing this requires a bit of organization so you can keep track of what’s been done and what still needs to be done. Fortunately, there are tools designed for just this purpose. The key is being able to connect the various online and offline marketing activities that you’ve done in the past, present, and future. With a proper business or marketing analytics tool, this is a snap. Here’s an example from HP that tracks the performance of its print advertisements in real time:
In the above example, you can see that HP’s print advertisements are performing well. However, the reality is that this performance varies by region. In order to accurately gauge the effectiveness of their print advertisements, HP needs to look at their performance across a number of regions. Doing this for the entire company would be difficult and very time consuming, so instead they need to look at the results of isolated regions and then extrapolate the results to the whole company.
Keep Track Of Trends And Metrics
The need to look at the big picture is especially important when considering the pace of change in digital marketing. One year can seem like a lifetime when it comes to constantly evolving technologies and digital marketing strategies. The key is being able to keep track of the ever-changing trends and metrics so that you can properly place your efforts and see the results. For example, did you know that Facebook is now an advertising platform rather than just a social media platform? Or that video views are now considered a primary metric in the industry rather than simply a “nice to have” extra? These are important distinctions to make if you want to be able to effectively track the results of your campaigns. The trend of platform switching makes it even more important to be able to keep track of what’s been done and what still needs to be done. With a business or marketing analytics tool, keeping track of these trends and metrics is a simple matter of following the guides and instructions provided by the software engineer. In fact, this is such a fundamental step to effective marketing analytics that it’s often considered a “core competency” of the software engineering team responsible for creating the tools.
Understand The Drivers Of Change
Digital marketing is evolving at a fast pace, and this presents a major challenge to marketers who want to keep up. One of the most important things a marketer needs to do in order to effectively track the results of their marketing activities is to be able to identify the key drivers of change. Essentially, this means understanding the metrics that matter most (e.g., views, sales, etc.) and keeping track of what changes these metrics in order to determine the success of their campaigns. The metrics can be changed by digital marketing efforts, such as paid ads or social media posts, or changed inherently due to shifts in consumer behavior, such as the rise of mobile shopping or millennials consuming content on-demand. Being able to track these changes and determine which one has had the most significant impact on your bottom line is of paramount importance. To that end, having the ability to look at historical data as well as being able to project these results into the future, using sophisticated mathematical modeling and computing algorithms, is the best way to achieve this. Once you have a clear picture of what’s driving the change, you’ll be able to determine how much of an impact your various campaigns are having and if you’re making the right changes to make the biggest difference.
The above graph tracks the results of a digital marketing campaign that ran across various platforms and channels. The important thing to note is that while each individual platform or channel may have resulted in a certain number of leads, the campaign as a whole resulted in a significant increase in qualified leads, as measured by the number of contact points (phone calls, emails, etc.) that resulted in a conversion.
To properly track the results of your various marketing efforts, you need to look at the whole picture. Fortunately, there are tools that can help make this process much easier. By connecting the dots between your online and offline marketing activities, you can make better, more informed decisions about your marketing strategy and the future of digital marketing as a whole. Keep this in mind as you review the results of your various campaigns, using a business or marketing analytics tool to keep track of all the important numbers.