Why Analytical Capabilities for Digital Marketing Are an Essential Part of Your Marketing Toolkit?

According to LinkedIn’s projections, the most in-demand talent in 2022 will be analytical thought and innovation, both of which are essential to every corporate function, including marketing. 

In order to fully appreciate the significance of analytics in digital marketing, you must first comprehend the conditions that catapulted analytics from the status of meaningless jumbles of numbers to that of one of the most sought-after commodities in the economy of the present day.

The Evolution of the Data

The latter half of the 20th century marked the beginning of the Information Age, which is also referred to as the Digital Age. 

This era was characterised by a dramatic transition away from an economy that was dependent on industrial services and towards one that was dominated by information technology. The development of computing capabilities allowed for the archiving of this information online, which resulted in the establishment of the valuable commodity we now refer to as data.

Businesses who have access to vast volumes of data have a significant presence in their sectors because they hold the key to valuable insights about a variety of topics, including their products, the behaviours of their customers, and other topics. 

This helps to explain, in part, why businesses such as Google, Facebook, and Tesla have achieved such phenomenal success. The following question to consider is: how can businesses transform a large quantity of information into valuable insights?

Analytics for digital marketing help to close the informational gap that exists between the gathering of data and its application in a commercial context. 

Digital advertisers no longer base the success of their efforts on assumptions; instead, they construct plans based on the data collected from their initiatives. Data is analysed on a daily basis by astute marketers in order to make adjustments to their advertisements in real time. 

Gain a better understanding of what digital marketing analytics is, which indicators are the most revealing, the skills that help marketers flourish, the importance of digital marketing analytics, and the future of the industry by reading further.

What Exactly Is Meant by the Term “Digital Marketing Analytics”?

Analytics in digital marketing are defined as the process of translating client activity into data that can be used by businesses. Digital marketers collect data on their customers, analyse that data with tools designed for digital marketing analytics, and look for patterns that can inform the development of new marketing tactics. “Analytics tell you what you’re doing properly, and what you’re doing poorly,” asserts an article published on Social Media Today. 

What aspects of your marketing, such as social media, content marketing, and email marketing, are succeeding and what aspects are failing to do so should be evaluated. If you aren’t measuring, you’re just making educated guesses.”

Measurements That Matter for Digital Marketing

Digital marketers are responsible for determining which metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are important for their clients’ businesses and for the industries in which they operate. In the improper setting, certain metrics can give a false impression.

For instance, the insights that are supplied by organic search traffic will be more relevant for measuring the performance of a search engine optimization (SEO) effort as opposed to a social media strategy. In contrast, when measuring the success of a campaign on social media, the information gleaned from social traffic will be significantly more informative. Gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which measurements contribute to digital marketing analytics.

Measurements of Digital Activity on Websites

Because the majority of digital marketing channels send users to a website to complete the desired action, Web Analytics provides some of the most important data that can be used for digital marketing analytics. The digital metrics that are made available on the website can be used to inform customer experience (UX) and map precisely where users decide whether or not to continue consuming the material on your website. The following data is used by many digital marketing methodology to inform their website design, copywriting for landing pages, and other aspects of their work.

Important Website Metrics

• The rate at which a page on your website loads for a visitor is referred to as the site’s load speed. The majority of people who work in this business recommend keeping the maximum time it takes for a page to load at 1.3 seconds.
• A person who visits your website is referred to as a “visitor.” Set up a pop-up that informs consumers that accepting cookies on your browser is required in order to carry out effective tracking of users.
• Pageviews are counted whenever a user loads any page on your website; each time this occurs, one page is considered to have been viewed.
• The level of engagement that a user has with your website over the course of one session is known as the session’s length. A “session” refers to the time that a person spends actively navigating a website by scrolling and clicking. Nevertheless, if a session remains inactive for thirty minutes, it will be closed.

Traffic refers to the cumulative number of times a user views a website or page. With the use of the following data, marketers are also able to track the origin of user traffics:

• Visitors who arrived at your website by way of a search engine are considered to be organic traffic.
• Visitors that have put in your website’s URL to go there directly are considered to be direct traffic.
• Sponsored traffic refers to visitors who arrived at your website by clicking on an advertisement or sponsored content.
• Referral traffic refers to users who arrived at your website after clicking a link on another website.
• Social traffic refers to users who have entered your website by clicking on a link or article that was shared on a social media platform.
• The total amount of time a visitor has spent on your website is referred to as the time spent on page.
• The amount of activities that a user has performed on your website during a single visit is referred to as the interaction rate.
• The number of users who viewed your website but did not perform any actions or navigate to any further pages is referred to as the bounce rate. This percentage is compared to the total number of users who visited the site.

Metrics for Digital Marketing in the Field of Lead Generation

The first stage of the marketing funnel is called “lead generation,” and it is the process by which interested website visitors are added to a business’s mailing list (email list, sales lead list, etc.). Visitors are considered to have effectively converted into leads whenever they have entered their information into a lead generation form and have chosen to receive material from a company. Because of this, lead generation analytics focus mostly on the actions that visitors deliberately take while on a website.

Key Indicators for the Generation of Leads

• The click-through rate, abbreviated as CTR, refers to the proportion of total clicks on a call-to-action (CTA) relative to the total number of pages viewed or site visits.
• Form submissions refer to the aggregate number of people who have filled out a form with their information and then pressed the “submit” button. This could be done by a slide-in form, an embedded form, or a pop-up form.
• Conversions are the amount of people who have finished an action that you want them to perform on your website, such as making a purchase or downloading an eBook.
• The number of individuals who have clicked on a pop-up advertisement that was displayed on a website is referred to as pop-up clicks.

Metrics and KPIs for Digital Email Marketing

When it comes to connecting with their leads, digital marketers continue to find email marketing to be an essential component. The following metrics are used by digital marketing analytics to determine which subject lines are successful in attracting the attention of leads, which email content is most likely to prompt leads to take action, whether or not email calls to action were successful, and the quality of the leads’ email lists.

Important Email Metrics

• The percentage of recipients who have read your email message as a proportion to the total number of messages sent out is known as the open rate.
• The click-through rate, often known as CTR, refers to the percentage of users who have clicked a call to action (CTA) in an email relative to the total number of users who have opened the email.
• The percentage of mails that were not received as a proportion of the total number of emails sent is referred to as the bounce rate.
• Unsubscribe rate is the percentage of people who unsubscribed from an email list expressed as a percentage of the total number of users who were previously registered to the email list.

Metrics for Digital Marketing Used in Content Marketing

Content marketing specialists have the goal of providing website users with information that is both pertinent and of high quality. How exactly can it be determined through digital marketing analytics whether or not a visitor was successful in locating relevant content?

A marketer can learn whether or not a user landed on a relevant page by analysing metrics such as bounce rates. The length of time a reader spends on a page is another indicator of whether or not they considered the content to be entertaining or valuable. The following KPIs are particularly illuminating for those in charge of content marketing.

Important Content Metrics

• The ratio of the total number of interactions (such as clicks, likes, and comments) on a piece of content to the total number of times that material was viewed is referred to as the engagement rate.
• The total amount of time an user has spent looking at the content of a page is referred to as “time spent on page.” This typically denotes a level of interest in the material being discussed.
• The proportion of users who did not take any act on the material or continue to explore the site after arriving at the piece of content is referred to as the bounce rate. This percentage is compared to the total number of users that visited the piece of content.
• The number of visitors who submitted and entered their information in a lead generating form located on the content page is referred to as the form submission count.
• A content page’s call-to-action (CTA) click-through rate is the proportion of users who engaged on a CTA on that page out of the total number of visitors to that page.

Measurement and Analysis of Digital KPIs for Social Media Marketing

Because social media marketing is focused on engagement, the online marketing analytics that are utilised for social are mainly concerned with the activities users are taking such as commenting, sharing, and liking. This is because engagement is the foundation of social media marketing. Even though social media platforms are becoming increasingly focused on driving traffic to referral websites, their primary source of revenue still comes from maintaining users’ attention.

Important Social Metrics

• The ratio of the total number of interactions on a posting to social media or page to the total number of views on that post or page is known as the engagement rate. Examples of engagements include clicks, likes, and comments.
• The total number of users who have shared a particular social media post or page is denoted by the term “shares.”
• Follows refer to the overall number of users that have chosen to follow your social media account.

The Significance of Analytics in Contemporary Digital Marketing

Analytics for digital marketing are currently more crucial than they have ever been. This is due to the fact that data is of no use to advertisers and marketers if it has not yet been converted into insights that are both useful and applicable. The ability to glean insights from consumer behaviour and identify possibilities to boost income, improve user experience, and raise customer happiness is a necessary skill for digital marketers. Marketers may better understand, optimise, and forecast the customer journey with the assistance of digital marketing analytics, which allow them examine data regarding customer behaviour.

1. Make Use of Analytics for Digital Marketing to Learn About Your Clients’ Preferences

Marketers build customer profiles, also known as customer personas, with the help of data and demographic information. These profiles are intended to look like the ideal client that the company is trying to attract with their product or service. What are the benefits of constructing these profiles through the use of analytics for digital marketing?

Non – qualified traffic and leads end up wasting a total of fifty percent of the expenditure allocated to marketing. This indicates that utilising smart data to target qualified traffic can help decrease waste, identify the requirements of your ideal customer, and attract a readership that is more likely to convert.

2. Make the Most of Digital Marketing Analytics to Enhance the Overall Experience of Your Customers

The user experience (UX) is the sum total of a customer’s journey, which often takes place on a website. It should come as no surprise that businesses strive to deliver a streamlined and high-quality user experience (UX) in the hopes that consumers will comprehend their content, quickly navigate their website, and ultimately convert as a consequence. Analytical tools for digital marketing make it possible for business owners to monitor the activities of site visitors in real time.

This implies that marketers are able to observe where readers choose to leave an article or where they gave up on an online shopping basket. These insights can be used by businesses to eliminate roadblocks and improve user experience (UX), which will result in increased conversion rates.

3. To Accurately Predict Customer Behaviour, Make Use of Digital Marketing Analytics

Analytics for digital marketing not only provide information about previous interactions with customers, but also indicate trends that may be used to forecast their behaviours in the future. Marketers can use an A/B test to measure the change in a KPI’s performance if the KPI has followed a particular trend.

According to one definition, an A/B test is “a process of testing two versions of a web page or application against one other in order to identify which one works better.” In its most basic form, AB testing is an experiment in which two or more variations of a page are displayed to users at random, and statistical analysis is used to discover which variation works better for a specified conversion objective.

Marketers should also keep an eye on trends and start speculating about which ones will become the most significant in the future.

This enables companies to maintain a competitive advantage over their rivals and to develop messaging that is consistently one step ahead.

For instance, a social media post with a holiday-themed dish could have resulted in significant levels of engagement. These insights into digital marketing analytics might be used by the team to create a multi-channel recipe that, when implemented, would generate an even better level of engagement during the following vacation.

Author bio

Travis Dillard is a business consultant and an organizational psychologist based in Arlington, Texas. Passionate about marketing, social networks, and business in general. In his spare time, he writes a lot about new business strategies and digital marketing for FindDigitalAgency.