Want to Succeed in Digital Marketing? Learn these Data Analysis Techniques

Marketing is undergoing a sea change since the past few years. We are no longer drafting expensive ad campaigns using celebrities or creating elaborate distribution channels. 

Marketers are getting creative and working hard in competing in the virtual world. Celebrities are signed for not just shooting the TVCs, they become a part of complete “endorsement deals” where they post about the product, blog about it, put up reels and stories etc. 

Not only celebs, but the mass appeal of people and content creators across platforms like YouTube and Instagram have given rise to a completely new form of digital marketing - influencer marketing. 

Here is where it gets interesting.

Earlier, when marketing was more ‘traditional’, there were few or no ways to measure or figure out how to check campaign effectiveness. We couldn’t really relate to how many people watched Juhi Chawla applying ‘Kesh Kanti’ hair oil vs. how many people actually bought the product! 

With digital marketing, however, the story is entirely different. When you track the entire digital footprint – as a marketer, you have full control over your campaigns – click through rate, website visitors, dropout rate, email open rate etc. 

Precisely the reason why, as a digital marketer, you need to be data friendly.

Data analytics is the key to success for any digital marketer. The more data you have, the better insights you can generate.

The first step to data analytics is collecting data. This can be done by using Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or other web-based tools. Once you have collected your data, it's time to analyze it and figure out what it means for your business. You will need a tool that can help you with this process – Tableau, Power BI, Qlikview etc are a few from multiple options available for that purpose.

Various courses are available on Careervira to understand and learn Marketing Analytics as a discipline such as:

• Marketing Analytics Course by BitDegree
• Marketing Analytics by Coursera

Social Impact Strategy Tools for Entrepreneurs and Innovators by Coursera is an interesting course that offers an introduction to social impact strategy and social entrepreneurship, including key concepts, an overview of the field, and tools to get started as a change maker.

Data analytics are essential for every digital marketer because they allow them to make better decisions and improve their marketing campaigns in order to get higher conversion rates and more traffic on their website.

If you want to get the best results for your marketing campaign, you need to make sure that it is data-driven and accordingly optimized. There are many reasons why it’s important to use data analytics in your marketing campaigns, the top 4 of them being:

• Ensure optimal ROI (Return on Investment)
• Identify the most effective channels and content for certain audiences
• Reduce customer churn and increase customer engagement
• Strengthen relationships with influencers and partners

Now that we have established it is imperative for marketers to have a certain level of analytical skills, let us look at some tools and practices to be followed. 

Marketing analytics software aids advertisers and marketers in tracking and forecasting various campaign results. Marketing analysts can keep track of a variety of indicators like Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI), Cost per lead (CPL) for all paid online ads, and Cost per click for search ads (CPC), as well as deal with attribution modeling and aggregate marketing data from many channels. 

Advertisers can make better use of their time and resources, obtain better outcomes, and gain a better understanding of the impact of each marketing campaign by using the right marketing analytics software.

Marketing analytics come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Each one focuses on a specific set of data and marketing channels. Marketers typically use one of five types of analytics:

• Analytics on the internet
• Marketing analytics on social media
• Attribution and lead generating
• SEO data analysis
• Analytics for email marketing

The following are the types of marketing data that were used in the analysis:

• Information about website visitors
• Paid campaign performance data
• Customer touchpoint/event data
• Email marketing data
• Customer purchase data

Aggregating data from many platforms, such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Linkedin, as a marketer or agency, may be difficult and time consuming. Logging into each platform, exporting the data, and uploading it into Excel, Google Sheets, or a BI tool can take 20 to 40 hours per week.

To learn these basic to advanced concepts of Marketing Analytics, it is important to understand and gain foundational data skills applicable to marketing. Udacity's Marketing Analytics Nanodegree Program will help you learn more about collecting and analysing data, model marketing scenarios, and communicating your findings with Excel, Tableau, Google Analytics, and Data Studio. 

Alternatively, there are some dedicated marketing analytics tools which exist to help with this difficult process, assisting marketers in saving time and maintaining their sanity. Many of these products have an automatic dashboard that allows you to view all of your marketing data in one spot.

Some of them are:

• SEMRush: One of the most popular and oldest tools in digital marketing. SEMRush is a great tool for marketing analysts that deal with content marketing, social media marketing, paid media, and other marketing strategies and channels.
• Domo: Not specifically a marketing analytics tool; however, it offers over 500 connectors across Marketing and Sales, Operations, IT, HR, and Finance. It offers really good CXO-level dashboards, which can be quite comprehensive.
• Datorama: This is a dedicated marketing-level analytics tool and is good for highly technical marketing teams or those with engineering resources. To use the tool effectively, marketers will need to be familiar with SQL. The only negative point is that marketing teams need to be technically strong and should be able to handle complex data.
• Funnel.io: Funnel.io is a marketing analytics platform that strives to integrate with all of the advertising and marketing platforms marketers use. This is quite a user-friendly and comprehensive tool for a marketer.
• Ninjacat: Ninjacat is a wonderful overall solution for marketers and digital marketing agencies, especially SEO reporting, PPC reporting and budget monitoring.
• Zohosocial: A pocket-friendly solution for digital marketers, particularly for social media and content marketing.
• SpyFU: An innovative marketing solution for marketers to keep an eye on their competitors and their SEO, SEM strategies.