6 Fantastic Benefits of Marketing Analytics (And How to Use Them)

In this video, Bo from the WebFX Internet Marketing team will take you through some of the main benefits of marketing analytics. Keep reading to learn more! 

Transcript:

Hey guys! When you were in school, did you ever have to do a science fair project? If you did, you probably remember having to learn the scientific method. You start by observing something. Then you come up with a question about it, then you create a hypothesis, and then you test it.

The testing part was always fun — at least, if you didn’t end up setting your bedroom on fire, something I have definitely never done. Ahem.

…But anyway, the project didn’t end once you ran the test. Actually, the most important stage was the analysis. That’s where you took what you learned from the test and drew some conclusions from it. Without the analysis, the project wouldn’t really benefit you.

You know, it’s kinda the same with marketing. It’s all well and good to run some campaigns, but you also want to test and improve them over time.  That won’t happen unless you take the time to analyze their performance. That’s the idea behind marketing analytics. But how exactly do analytics help you?

Well, that’s what we’re here to talk about. In this video, we’ll go over six of the biggest benefits of marketing analytics.

1. Analytics help you better understand your audience

If you know anything about marketing, you know that the first rule in the marketing handbook is “Know thy audience.” You’ve got to know who you’re marketing to, or you’re not gonna have much luck. Thankfully, analytics can help with that.

By analyzing your marketing and your sales, you can gain a better understanding of who engages with you the most. Maybe you start off marketing primarily to, let’s say, people between 30 and 50. But then you see that most of your website visitors are actually in their twenties.

Based on that new info, you now know to readjust the groups you’re targeting with your marketing efforts. That’s just one example of what you can learn about your audience. Other types of audience data include:

• Which devices people use
• Which pages people are most interested in
• Which geographical areas people are from
• And more!

2. Analytics help you connect cause and effect in your marketing

If you’re confused by what I mean when I say “cause and effect,” let me explain.

You’ll undoubtedly try out different things in your marketing over time. You’ll use different designs, different strategies, etc. As you try new things, you’ll see different responses from users.

So, maybe one month you roll out a whole bunch of new marketing changes. That same month, you notice a big uptick in website visitors. Okay, so, it seems like something you did really helped you drive traffic. But what was it? You made several changes — which one drove up traffic?

Only marketing analytics can provide the answer to that question. By sitting down and looking at the specific impact of each factor, you can figure out which changes led to which results. That, in turn, helps you make more informed decisions about which tactics to use down the road.

As a side note — try not to make too many changes at once. This will make your life easier when you try to pinpoint what got the positive results. This matters a lot when you dive into A/B testing. Speaking of testing…

3. Analytics help you understand A/B tests

A/B tests are a super helpful tool for digital marketing. The basic idea is that you try out two different tactics and see which one performs better. So, for example, maybe you test two separate versions of a paid ad to see which one earns more clicks.

These tests are great because they can help you continuously improve your marketing. You can weed out the less effective tactics in favor of the ones that really drive results.

But A/B tests don’t really work if you don’t, you know, look at the results. That’s like if you took a final exam for a class in high school and then the teacher didn’t even bother to grade it. You’d be asking, “What’s the point of the test, then?”

When you take the time to analyze your A/B test results, you’ll actually get something out of it.

4. Analytics show you how to improve your campaigns

One of the absolute biggest benefits of marketing analytics is that they help you figure out the weak spots in your marketing. If you think your marketing is flawless…I’ve got some news for you, buddy. No matter how good you think it is, it has some weaknesses you’ll want to patch up.

That’s where analytics come in. By analyzing your marketing campaigns, you can figure out which parts of those campaigns aren’t meeting your benchmarks.

You can also check to see which tactics are working well for you so you can keep doing them.

5. Analytics help you budget your money

Not all marketing analytics benefits have to do with earning money. This one is about how you spend the money in your budget — more specifically, how much you spend relative to how much you earn, or your return on investment (ROI). You want to be sure you’re earning an overall profit.

When you analyze your marketing results, you get a chance to see exactly what your money is getting you. Maybe you’ve poured a huge chunk of your budget into a particular strategy. Analytics show that that strategy isn’t really working for you.

When you find out that you’re not spending your money in the most efficient way, you have an opportunity to reevaluate your budget. Maybe you want to stop investing as much in, say, paid ads, but you find that you want to budget more money for your social media.

6. Analytics let you plan for the future

If you want to plan for the future of your marketing, you need to know what to expect. That’s why I’ve invested heavily in dice. I use them to make all my business decisions.

I…I don’t know what that means.

All right, you know what, maybe you shouldn’t roll the dice with all your business decisions. If we want to predict our marketing future, we need something that uses hard data.

That’s one more reason to use analytics. Your analytics can reveal trends in your marketing that help you come up with predictions for the future. For example, you might notice that you earn more sales of a certain product during a particular season. You can plan your marketing for that product accordingly.

WebFX can help you optimize your marketing analytics

That just about does it for our list of marketing analytics benefits. If you want to learn more about analytics and marketing attribution, subscribe to our YouTube channel and our email newsletter, Revenue Weekly. Plus, for help harnessing all these analytics advantages, get in touch with us about our marketing analytics services.

Thanks for watching — see you next time!