Article

William Yates
William Yates 5 August 2015
Categories

Web Analytics: Joining Up The Dots

Marketers today have access to vast pools of data and associated analytics, all of which can provide a clear insight into online marketing campaign performance as well as product and service trends and business direction.

Marketers today have access to vast pools of data and associated analytics, all of which can provide a clear insight into online marketing campaign performance as well as product and service trends and business direction.

 

But despite this amount of information, many marketers don’t have a true understanding of their market conditions or where their marketing efforts are headed, and even if they’re effective or successful.

Too much information?

The issue is that your digital agency team will be more than keen to offer you as much data as you wish to receive, and will generally ask you what you want to know. This is good practice, but there’s more to it than that.
 

If the agency does not have close experience of your business and target market audience and buyer personas, it becomes difficult for them to establish what you actually need to understand in order to measure marketing performance.

One dimensional metrics

This means that the question ‘what do you want to know’ becomes a here-and-now question, and because of their lack of close understanding, what you will likely get are a series of market snap-shots rather than an insight into your product or service trends.
 

You might think ‘OK, I can live with a single dimension picture’  but in reality, this will not give you any real understanding of what is actually happening because a single dimension snap shot doesn’t give you a clear picture of trends.

Strategic thinking

So there are big dangers in being bombarded with too much data, or too little of the wrong data. In any event, and whichever way, you will not get a valuable market insight, and you won’t be able to track trends.
 

What has to happen is that you need to develop an understanding of precisely what you actually need to know.
 

And the only effective way of achieving this is to fully engage with your strategy and objectives, understand where you’ve come from; where you are now; and, critically, where you want to go.

Parallel delineation

Clearly defining your marketing strategy and objectives will help you to understand what you need to know. It will define success and will allow you to create a matrix that will help measure effective campaigns and the success of each element in that campaign.
 

But this is simply a matrix of performance indicators, and to make it fly you will need to define your target audience and its buying behaviours, and this is critical to the process as buyer behaviour is at the centre of all analytical intelligence.

Plan for the long-term

If you have not done this previously, you will need to work from the ground up, through the segmentation of available prospect and buyer data, augmented with information from open sources such as directories where necessary.
 

Marketing automation will also help longer term in buyer persona development and can be an extremely useful tool in not only tracking data but also in building prospect and buyer persona data.

Long-term gains

This probably seems like a long and protracted route to the ‘ what do you want to know?’ answer. But unless you know how your products and services resonate with your target audiences, and who they actually are and how they think, then you don’t have a starting point.
 

Analytics, and their interpretation in the right hands can drive commercial success. But data means nothing unless you know what you actually need to know from it.

Original post here

Please login or register to add a comment.

Contribute Now!

Loving our articles? Do you have an insightful post that you want to shout about? Well, you've come to the right place! We are always looking for fresh Doughnuts to be a part of our community.

Popular Articles

See all
How to Review a Website — A Guide for Beginners

How to Review a Website — A Guide for Beginners

A company website is crucial for any business's digital marketing strategy. To keep up with the changing trends and customer buying behaviors, it's important to review and make necessary changes regularly...

Digital Doughnut Contributor
Digital Doughnut Contributor 25 March 2024
Read more
The Impact of New Technology on Marketing

The Impact of New Technology on Marketing

Technology has impacted every part of our lives. From household chores to business disciplines and etiquette, there's a gadget or app for it. Marketing has changed dramatically over the years, but what is the...

Alex Lysak
Alex Lysak 3 April 2024
Read more
The World Is Shrinking: 6 Degrees of Separation Is Now 2!

The World Is Shrinking: 6 Degrees of Separation Is Now 2!

Six degrees of separation is not just a party game, it's a reality. Everyone is the world is interconnected, and thanks to social media, that connectedness gets tighter and richer each day. See the research...

Scott Christley
Scott Christley 9 August 2017
Read more
10 Factors that Influence Customer Buying Behaviour Online

10 Factors that Influence Customer Buying Behaviour Online

Now is an era where customers take the center stags influencing business strategies across industries. No business can afford to overlook factors that could either break the customer experience or even pose a risk of...

Edward Roesch
Edward Roesch 4 June 2018
Read more
Cats and Dogs Boost Your Business By 300%. Here’s How.

Cats and Dogs Boost Your Business By 300%. Here’s How.

It’s the age-old question that has endured ever since the creation of the internet: are you a cat person or a dog person? Or do you love both cats and dogs? We have both dog lovers and cat lovers at Sortlist, so it...

Aline Strouvens
Aline Strouvens 27 August 2021
Read more