Over the last few weeks, I have been working on a project that involves marketing metrics. I’ve always been a math person, but marketing math is something totally different. In marketing math, it is less about the numbers and more about what they mean. In a way, these numbers teach you how people think. I like to think that by doing marketing math I am kind of doing business psychology. By looking at data and seeing how people respond to advertising on a base level, you learn how to better position your company so that people connect and take action toward becoming a client. You want to make sure they are engaged with what you are doing at all times and on all fronts. You need to make sure they are opening your emails, clicking that big orange button, and reading your posted content.
The tricky part about marketing analytics is determining what information is important and what is not. With the expansion of digital marketing, companies are working hard to provide information on every aspect of digital marketing campaigns. You can find anything and EVERYTHING about what your visitors are doing and all those numbers can be overwhelming. In order to even begin to strategize about what numbers to track, you need to look at the business goals of your company. What is your end goal? What parts of the marketing strategy do you consider most important? What areas are you struggling in? What does your sales/marketing/management team need to know to do better? I’m not saying that some things won’t be the same for every company. I have done enough research to notice a few common things that managers need to look at such as traffic on your website, followers on social media, average page loading time, etc. In the end though, it’s all about you and your company needs.
It’s important to remember that you’re never locked into recording one set of metrics. You can always add some later or get rid of a few that you realize you don’t really need. Measuring marketing data is fluid and customization. Feel free to experiment with it. Also, remember that all the numbers you receive have a financial value. Each part of the digital marketing process helps push people to buy so each part is an investment with a return value. You need to keep this idea in the back of your mind so that the numbers carry more value to you than just interesting facts to know. Managers like to know about the bottom line and most could care less about the number of people click on the blog page until they realize that those people are 20% more likely to buy from them after visiting that page. The job of a marketing professional is to take marketing data and make it make sense to managers by presenting them with financial facts. If you can take marketing math and show projected revenue, you are well on your way to being successful on the digital front.
Sincerely,
Online Marketing Intern