All the marketing you do for your business should serve one goal: your macro, aka, your bottom line.
But too often, digital marketing feels like throwing ideas (and time, effort, and money) into the void, hoping that something will give you a decent ROI.
It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to feel uncertain about your marketing efforts. It is possible to scale your marketing in a way that yields results and serves your business goals EVERY SINGLE TIME.
What’s the trick? Proper reporting.
Today, let’s talk about the right way to measure your marketing data analytics and how you can use them to boost your business.
Let’s dive in!
Keep Your Eyes on the Macro Prize
First things first: any and all digital marketing you do MUST be in service of your macro goal.
Whether that’s increased conversions, a growing email list, or anything in between, it is absolutely critical that your advertising and digital spend help you get there.
I know what you’re thinking.
“I know that already… Why do you think I’m spending so much?! And why aren’t I seeing any returns?”
The fact is, you’ve probably fallen victim to the one main problem plaguing most organizations today: failure to understand the data.
Sure, you may WANT all your digital advertising to serve your macro goals, but unless you can fully see how they’re performing, you’ll never be certain.
The only way to be sure that all your digital marketing spend is working effectively and efficiently is to properly report your data.
Proper plotting of your digital marketing data will allow you to fine-tune your strategy so that you get the most for your money.
The Digital Marketing Data Reporting Pyramid
Think of your data management and reporting like a pyramid.
As I mentioned, your macro goal sits at the top, with a few micro goals nestled within the pyramid’s peak. All of your marketing efforts should be feeding these goals on a regular basis — and you should be able to track your progress towards these goals with proven, understandable data.
You should be tracking your goals yearly, quarterly, weekly, daily, and even hourly for larger organizations. This data will tell you how effectively your business is progressing toward your goals, as well as which digital marketing tools are helping you get there.
Ideally, you should have enough data to plot your progress for the current year, the previous year, and where you’re forecasted to go, right down to the hour. This level of detailed marketing data analytics will help you determine whether you’re meeting the company’s needs.
What do you do if your forecast doesn’t point to fulfillment? It’s time to look at the next level down on the pyramid.
Marketing Data Analytics: Mediums to Track
The next level on your reporting pyramid is your mediums.
In marketing terms, a medium is defined as the general category of a source (more on that in a moment!). For example,
Simply put, a medium is like a bucket. Inside this bucket, you have several different digital entities that feed into your macro goal — and each of them is measurable over time.
If you want to find the most effective route toward achieving your goal, you need to look at each medium and study how effective these elements are at helping you get there.
Here are the most common mediums businesses use in their digital marketing and how you can break them down in your data analysis.
Timeline for Tracking Your Goals
Even with all the different digital marketing mediums out there, there’s no reason to discount good old email.
Research shows that email is 40x as effective as other forms of digital marketing! With this in mind, it’s important to remember that your email will only help your macro goal if you can find (and fix) its weak spots.
Plot Points for Email Data
These data points are the biggest determining factors in a successful email campaign. If one of them isn’t working, the whole campaign might be a wash.
Once you have all the data laid out, you can see if any of these elements are having any issues (for example, a small list sized or a low click-through rate). Identifying the problem is the first step toward fixing it — and it’s much more efficient than blindly guessing!
SEO
A high-ranking website on Google is one of the best ways to promote your business long term.
How do you get onto that front page? With excellent SEO. But how do you know if your SEO is delivering? By now, you should know the answer: by plotting and measuring your marketing data analytics.
Data Points That Impact SEO Efficiency
Once again, this data will point to weak links in the SEO chain. Once you find the element that’s keeping you from your goals, you can work to improve that area.
If a keyword is underperforming, update your keyword research and adjust your metadata!
If a landing page has a low conversion rate, work to improve that rate!
This precision-level marketing will improve the chain as a whole and ultimately help you reach your goal and better visualize your digital marketing data as a whole.
Paid Sources
Paid sources include any digital marketing that you pay for — Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, the list goes on and on.
For these sources, you need to look not just at paid sources as a whole, but at each ad you’ve produced and published.
Paid Sources to Watch
Looking at the digital marketing data for each ad will help you determine what your audience wants to see.
If you have an ad that’s performing poorly, dial back or stop that campaign and put your efforts more toward those ads that perform well with your audience. Not only will this improve your overall marketing efforts, but it’s also likely to yield better ROAS!
Social Sources
Social media pages (Facebook, YouTube, Tik Tok) are one of the most effective sources for keeping your brand at the top of your audience’s mind.
Just like with paid sources, this data can help determine where your effort truly belongs.
Data Points From Social Sources to Track
What type of post gets the greatest engagement from your audience? Which posts result in traffic to your website — and more importantly, conversions? Find those golden posts and start making more of them!
Media Buy
If you’re not using media buys for your business, it’s time to start… now!
Media buys are a fantastic way to drive macro conversions. These include television advertising, print ads in magazines and newspapers, and (since we’re talking digital marketing) prime ad placement on blogs or websites.
Data Points From Media Buys to Track
These marketing data analytics will help you find the media that best reaches your audience. There’s no need to buy an ad and hope for the best — reporting helps you gain certainty into which ads will give you definite results.
Marketing Data Analytics: Sources
Once you’ve looked at all the mediums available to you, it’s time to head one more step down the pyramid. Here, you can look at every source you use for your digital marketing.
Your audience is unlikely to use every platform on the internet today; Gen Z kids aren’t spending much time on Linkedin, and Boomers may not even know what TikTok is!
Plot out and analyze your performance on each platform. Then, look at whether that performance is helping you reach your macro goal.
It may be that your marketing efforts are better used on one platform over another, and this information can make all the difference in improving conversions and boosting your bottom line.
Wrapping Up
Part of the beauty of digital marketing is its ability to deliver actionable data. Instead of throwing your money at everything and hoping for the best, you can design an easy-to-read, forecastable report that tells you EXACTLY where to put your money and your marketing.
You CAN use digital marketing to promote your business, and you CAN see real results. It’s all a matter of proper reporting.
