How to Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy by Utilizing Data Analytics

How satisfied are you with the results of your ongoing digital marketing campaigns? Have your efforts lived up to your expectations or does it feel as if they are less than effective? Believe it or not, up to 90 percent of all businesses will eventually fail. This is largely due to outdated and/or incorrect online marketing techniques. 

However, all is not necessarily lost if you are capable of leveraging the tools at your disposal. One powerful approach involves data analytics. What does this method involve? What benefits does it have to offer and how can analytics be seamlessly incorporated into your ongoing efforts? 

Data Analytics Defined

Within the world of digital marketing, data analytics are used to better understand how past, present, and future patterns may impact your overall strategies. Here are some of the variables that can be determined through the use of analytics:

• Which products are the most popular?
• Where the majority of your buyers are located.
• The average size of a purchase.
• Demographics such as average age and gender.
• Website clickthrough rates.
• Conversions.

As we can already see, many of these represent core metrics when developing any effective content marketing strategy. The only potential pitfall here is that there can be a disconnect between these observations and how such actions can be realistically implemented. This problem deserves a closer look. 

Start with the Basics

Data analytics can be somewhat overwhelming; particularly if your in-house staff does not possess an adequate level of experience within this sector. As a result, some important variables may be misinterpreted while others could be overlooked entirely. This is why the first step involves identifying your key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs are intended to determine how your campaign is currently performing. Some common examples include:

• The number of visitors to your website.
• Which pages attract the most views.
• How many users registered for email notifications.
• Sales pipeline figures (such as your overall return on investment).

We can already see that some of these indicators coincide with the factors mentioned in the previous section. The main takeaway point is that stakeholders will need to identify which of these is the most relevant to their ongoing marketing efforts. It will then be much easier to appreciate if and when changes must be made. 

Targeting the Appropriate Audience

What audience are you hoping to target? What are the best channels of engagement in this sense? These seemingly basic questions can have a dramatic impact on the outcome of any digital marketing strategy. After all, it makes little sense to engage with a demographic that shows little interest in what a business has to offer. 

This is, once again, when the power of data analytics will come into play. By scrutinizing the KPIs outlined previously, it is much easier to understand where to focus your efforts. For example, websites targeting the millennial generation will often turn to social media to enhance their brand identity (more on this later). Conversely, businesses concerned with presenting a product to industry professionals may choose portals such as LinkedIn or employ an affiliate marketing campaign. Using analytics to segment and underscore your target audience will always yield positive results. 

Data Analytics and Content Creation

Some individuals may erroneously view data analytics from a rather "dry" and technical perspective. Although the quantitative nature of these approaches is indeed pivotal, this very same insight can be applied to traditional SEO marketing techniques. 

For example, are the most relevant keywords being employed within online content? When we observe that more than 92 percent of all keywords receive fewer than ten monthly searches due to their outdated nature, it becomes clear to see why choosing the appropriate phrases is important. Analytics will help to take the guesswork out of this equation. 

These platforms can be used to track what keywords are associated with the most inbound hits as well as those that the competition may be employing. Not only will choosing the most relevant keywords to boost the number of inbound hits following a query, but they can also help to improve SERP (search engine results rankings) over time. These are the reasons why analytics should always be utilised during the content creation process. 

Proactive Social Media Oversight

One of the most effective ways to increase the "footprint" of any digital marketing campaign is to take full advantage of the sheer scope of social media. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are frequented by millions of users daily. It, therefore, stands to reason that a strong brand presence is crucial for future success.

However, which channels are the most suited to your marketing efforts? What posts have proven to be the most popular? Have these posts caused an increase in conversion rates or has your inbound traffic remained the same? Answering these questions will enable businesses to develop a streamlined approach to social media management. Simply stated, it is much easier to focus one's efforts in a single direction as opposed to throwing enough jam upon a wall in the hopes that some will eventually stick. 

Data analytics will provide businesses with the ability to proactively monitor how their campaigns are performing in real-time scenarios. Thus, minor changes can be made before a great deal of capital and energy is wasted. Let's also remember that analytics can provide invaluable insight into how customers respond to a specific strategy (such as what type of feedback they leave or how many times a post happens to be shared). Once again, this information would be rather difficult to come by when using traditional methods. 

Data Analytics and Digital Marketing: A Match Made in (Online) Heaven

A recent study has shown that 63 percent of all businesses feel that data analytics are the most important factor in terms of marketing efficiency. This only stands to reason when we consider the observations highlighted above. Integrating the right tools at the right time is therefore crucial if you hope to take the success of your organisation to the next level.