If you’ve worked in any kind of digital or marketing agency, the chances are you’ve probably heard of Analytics. It is the single most important element of marketing online, it allows you to make informed decisions, understanding the weaknesses of your website and then rectify it. It truly is a godsend for us marketers and we would be working in the dark without it.

Best of all, a lot of Analytical programmes are free to use – Google Analytics, Yahoo Analytics and Facebook Insights to name a few – but do you know how to use them to maximise their great potential? It is the catalyst for success, you can gain insider knowledge on consumer traits and behaviour, what is working on the website and what isn’t and where the consumers are coming from among much more. However all this information can be overwhelming for employees and this can lead to frustration. It is important to have clear objectives on what you want and what you want to find out from you audience.

Analytics can be broadly split into two sections: Web Analytics and Marketing Analytics.

Web Analytics

Web analytics allows you to track the performance of your website by using predetermined criteria. You can analyse every part of the website; acquisition, behaviour, conversion. No stone is left unturned and this is epitomises the usefulness of it.

The most popular analytics software used is Google Analytics and this is the most comprehensive software out there in my opinion. To further analyse and get more in-depth analysis of your website you can use Heat Maps and Eye Tracking software but these come at extra cost.

First the basics, it informs you of the amount of traffic and the bounce rate, two critical metrics. It can tell you the amount of first-time visitors, new/returning visitors, session duration etc.

Web analytics also enables you to be able to discover how people have initially arrived at your website, the journey users take through the site, where and why they leave. This allows business to pinpoint weak spots in the website and rectify them. For example if users are dropping off at the checkout stage, then they’re may be something wrong with delivery price/options or you don’t have PayPal/adequate payment methods etc.

Overall, it enables you to mould and tweak your website to the most important demand in marketing - the customers! Your website will thank you for it.

Enter Marketing Analytics

Marketing Analytics are the measurement and optimization of your marketing activities. Understanding marketing analytics allows your business to be more efficient and streamlined as well as minimising wasted marketing costs.

Marketing analytics are often business metrics, they’re customer-centric and are like traffic, leads and sales. It also encompasses email and social – Facebook Insights is good for tracking social engagement such as likes, shares, views on a Facebook post. These are very useful metrics and can help you mould your marketing messages into effective, tailored messages as you try and test posts throughout social media. Remember to log the successful ones as these are the ones you need to repeat.

It can help determine which marketing tools are the best (i.e. email vs social) and the true ROI of their activities. This can then help understand how the business is achieving its goals. From the data we gather we can improve our marketing mix and make adjustments to strategies. No decision shouldn’t be made without it being informed and with all the applicable data or you might end up on the wrong side of the tracks.

And that’s all folks. We hope you now realise the utter importance of analytics as they truly do play a truly great role in successful marketing. Contact us today to see what we can do for you.

Was this post helpful? Help other by sharing it