The over-abundance of data and its omnipresence is forcing analysts to extract the actionable insights out of them as effectively as possible to justify the money spent on them. Yet, analytics remains a weak area in most digital marketing programs and campaigns. The world has arrived into a data-oriented era ruled by big data, social data, web data, mobile data, product data, market data, consumer data, performance data, and so on. Hence, analyzing all these data comprehensively to withdraw meaningful and consistent insights is a capability every company would seek to ensure the success of their digital marketing campaigns.
The data analysis capabilities define a campaign’s sustenance when confronted by sophisticated competition.
Take a look at some currents digital analytics trends to address this year:
- Web analytics is increasingly facilitating the usage of dynamic content optimization based on content relevance to enhance customer engagement and thereby paving newer ways to interact and influence the customers in the purchasing decision journey.
- This year has upgraded from predictive to prescriptive analysis and is witnessing the emphasis and importance of it in digital space. This is about data that would play a key role in driving insights and automated decision-making.
- Most companies are now exploring the scope to leverage and monetize customer data either to increase revenue streams or to reduce costs within the organization. Business are looking forward to more innovative ways of utilizing data to drive future action and to optimize bottom-line profit.
- Digital analytics is shifting focus to a more customer-centric measurement model. According to a recent study by McKinsey, “Only 13% of companies feel strongly that they have identified their customers’ decision journeys and understand where to focus marketing, while nearly half cannot measure the critical stages of the consumer decision journey”.
- Marketers this year are concentrating on unraveling an attribution model for the multiple channels a consumer is exposed to, which means deciphering a perfect channel-platform combination based on relevant context and supporting content.
- More and more companies are realizing the importance of digital/web analytics and hence making efforts to evaluate the ROI of analytics. In many cases, there is surprisingly less scrutiny about their impact than is required, given the amount of money being spent on analytics.
In 2016, decision makers are enabled with the ease to access processed information and automated solutions, whereas technologists are enabled with easy means to manage this information.
Basic framework of Analytics in Digital Marketing
Every company should start from drawing a full picture of the internet marketing performance on multiple dimensions and so should evaluate it in its entirety. It ideally requires 4 basic steps to create and implement an analytics strategy.
- Define the metrics and develop a plan
- Collect the information
- Develop reporting features and capabilities
- Analyse and implement
It is crucial to perceive each of these components to enable the company to make the right investments at the right time to maximize returns. Nevertheless, digital analytics software and tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Crazy Egg, KissMetrics, GoSquared, Chartbeat, Woopra, IBM Digital Analytics, Piwik, Mixpanel etc. prove to be of much use in extracting and interpreting data, but a company should also foster a culture that is data-driven. In many cases, democratization of data is also suggested to eliminate data bottlenecks and to make it freely available for better generation of insights and ideas.
Digital Data Analysis calls for the Right People with the Right Blueprint
In addition to the analytics tools and technologies, creating a well-planned analytics strategy would need to have the right people with the right process. An expert digital marketing team with an outcome-focused measurement plan for each marketing initiative is desirable. Also, this digital analytics plan should consider inputs from every stakeholder and their points of concern. Metrics and KPIs for each of them might be different and so would the business results.
Arrange the Data Analysis Tasks according to Importance
Once the people and the process is all set, it is time to prioritize the actions and tasks to ensure that the most important work gets best attention. It is necessary to anticipate the right ratios of each task like planning, collecting, reporting and analyzing of data. According to Google’s data experts, the reasonable ratios should be 15% for data capture, 20% for data reporting, and 65% for data analysis. Keeping that in mind, maximum efforts should be put in analyzing the data and articulating the implications for business. This process should be in synergy with the performance indicators in order to drive actions that can generate conversions and revenues.
Measure the Data that counts and helps in taking a Marketing Decision
Now that you know how to go about planning and prioritizing the tasks, let’s explore what is needed to be tracked to make an optimal difference. To keep it simple, measure what matters. This means one can take suggestions from superficial metrics to feel good and to get some flimsy idea about what is happening, but should not overlook the real metrics that offer an in-depth analysis of what’s happening to your business in the real world.
The so-called vanity metrics are:
- Number of site visitors
- Page views
- Total newsletter subscribers
- Social media followers
- Bounce rate
- Time spent on site
Tracking useful data indicating action includes evaluating the following:
- Who are the people visiting your site and what are they doing on your site?
- What are the sources and channels that are driving buying customers?
- Which are the pages where conversions are happening the most?
- Which conversions are resulting into deeper relationships?
- Who are the customers with repeat purchase?
- What is your customer lifetime value?
- What are your churn rates?
Data is fast changing the landscape of competition and hence companies are fast shifting to develop a data-driven culture while leveraging advanced digital tools, expert resources and enhanced processes that they have implemented with the help of a robust governance mechanism and data integrity.
Conclusion
Zensar Web Analytics capabilities help companies tap the real nature of the customers, while diving into rich data and patterns, which involves deriving insights with visitor segmentation, an understanding of the buyer behavior, measurement of content consumption, analyzing the source and nature of content, social networking activities and digital conversations. It is all about dissecting the data to get richer and more relevant insights on your visitors and customers and influencing their buying decision journey throughout with the right content and the apt context.
At Zensar, we amplify the latest insights and leverage innovations to ensure that your digital marketing and measurement model is enabled to generate value throughout the business. We guide you about where to start and what to concentrate on, for data-based recommendations are always actionable and worthy.