3 Marketing Tools to Start Number-Crunching
How to stay on top of your marketing data
The Skinny
Nobody wants their marketing budget to be wasted a result of piñata-like swinging-for-the-fence decisions. For those small business owners and entrepreneurs who wish to handle their marketing in-house, it’s key that someone keeps checking useful data points to make sure your marketing dollars are working efficiently. No matter whether you love numbers or not, understanding marketing data is important in the greater marketing process. Here are some simple tools for gathering information to that takes your digital marketing beyond a random shot at a dart board.
The Fat:
1. Facebook Insights.
Facebook Insights are easy to read and are often times a fair representation of the customer base you have. It not only shows information on your likes but also data on your advertisements and boosted posts. We use the Business manager to look at both audience insights and advertising data.
Mountain Valley Marketing will soon be changing the content of an advertisement to appeal to the female demographic based on the data we found from our insights. Changes like this may be the difference between $9 per thousand impressions (CPM) or $2 per thousand impressions, which stacks up over time. Keep in mind that if you are checking analytics for Facebook, you must be checking in the other areas you are promoting content, like Instagram or Twitter, as well. Have no fear, many analytics look similar, and once you understand Facebook Insights, other social media insights will come easily.
2. Website Analytics
If you have not already, you should make Google Analytics your best friend. Analytics shows where people are visiting your website from, how often, and what pages are most popular. The analytics can be input into nearly every Wordpress or Squarespace site out there, and often time come with an easy to use guide to help those who don’t know code. If you are driving people to your website, analytics are a must.
Our most recent experience with analytics came in our investigation of the impact of an influencer’s tweet. Visits to our site that day spiked 6 times the high. Not only did it prove the effectiveness of our original post that tagged the influencer, but it showed how important it is to get the content in the hands of those with large amounts of followers. Thanks to analytics, we will now be pursuing more influential marketing.
3. Google Adwords
First thing’s first, use the Keyword Research Tool on Adwords to get a better understanding of competition for keywords on your website and in your advertisements. This is crucial and should be the first step to getting a better understanding of how you want to be found.
Then, start in on Adwords campaigns. These are some of the go-to advertisements for the modern marketer who wants to branch out with online advertisements. We use Adwords to build awareness and drive traffic to our site. The data also showed we were being found with a keywork that had a low conversion rate in comparison to other keywords. We eliminated the generic term we were being found for, and are now watching the data to see if our overall cost per click goes down.
The Takeaway:
Once you get your marketing going, stay on top of the numbers. Whether it is the marketing manager or an owner who simply enjoys the data, make sure someone can translate the information gathered about your core marketing efforts to objectively drive marketing decisions. These are three tools to help you do so that we use that will get you started, but don’t stop there! Keep searching for more ways to add data to your marketing and watch effectiveness soar.
Good luck, and happy number crunching!
