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Analytics
Written by Caujuan Mayo on May 19th 2021
Why Analytics Are Crucial To Online Marketing Success
I like to compare online marketing analytics to a general or admiral about to fight a crucial battle. Data collection without analysis is completely worthless. Here’s an example from World War II.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the US navy quickly realized that their F4F fighter plane was no match for the faster, more maneuverable Japanese Zero. The navy pilots were being shot down with alarming frequency.
A squadron commander, Jimmy Thach, analyzed the information gleaned from US fighter pilots who had survived dogfights with the dreaded Zero. Thach was able to analyze the data that showed how the inferior F4F could not only survive a dogfight, but inflict real damage to the Zero.
He devised a strategy called the “Thach Weave” which stressed teamwork between two American fighters. This strategy completely changed the dynamic of air-to-air combat, and was instrumental in allowing the US to defeat the Japanese in the air and establish air superiority.
Analytics are a crucial, yet often overlooked, component of businesses’ online marketing strategy. Simply put, you HAVE to know what is working and what is not working. Without analytics, your marketing strategy is no different than throwing mud (money) against the wall to see what sticks.
5 Crucial Components To Online Marketing Analytics
#1: Bounce Rates
Simply put, a bounce rate means that someone clicks on your website link but leaves without taking action. Ideally, you want you website to have a low bounce rate, which means that the majority of its visitors find it interesting and, hopefully, take positive action. A higher bounce rate means that you clearly have something wrong with your design or content, which is driving people quickly away from your site.
Analytics is crucial to identifying and analyzing the problem. If you have a high bounce rate, you need to make changes. After making the changes, analytics will help you see the effects of the changes. This can and does often require multiple changes before you discover what keeps people on your site and converts them into sales.
It can be time-consuming and frustrating but, if you want to be successful in online marketing, it is absolutely crucial that you do this.
#2: Demographics
In journalism schools, future journalists are taught the importance of who, what, where, & how in their stories. In online marketing, “who” and “from where” are absolutely critical components of your analytics.
It aids in understanding if your marketing is reaching its target audience or is getting visits, but from a place where the business can’t service. For example, if you have a brick & mortar business in Scranton, Pennsylvania, it doesn’t do you much good to get visitors from San Diego California.
On the other hand, demographics can aid you in discovering “hidden” market. Maybe this brick & mortar in Scranton can ship their products to San Diego and establish a foothold there.
Analysis of data regarding demographic reach of a website also helps understand why there’s larger interest from a specific geographic zone. This, along with the bounce rate can provide vital inputs if people are merely looking for a specific product and visiting your website or there is genuine interest.
#3: Conversion Rates
The ultimate goal in any online marketing campaign is to convert a visitor into a customer. Customers provide revenue. Setting up and optimizing an online marketing campaign requires a financial investment. If your campaigns are not creating sufficient conversions (sales), you’re throwing your money down the toilet. If your conversion rates are low, you need to do a triage of your campaign, figure out what is not working, and make changes. The simplest method to analyze this is by calculating cost per conversion.
Optimally, you want your cost per conversion has to be low. You don’t want to spend any more money on advertising than is necessary. The more money invested in a non-optimized ad strategy means less overall profit.
#4: Predicting Client Behaviors
It is generally accepted that it is cheaper to get repeat business from an existing customer than convert a new customer. Understanding the data that your business captures from your website helps you better understand your customer’s behavior.
Ideally, your customers will repeatedly visit your website and place orders. Good analytics helps you predict their behavior and structure offers that will keep them interested and will generate loyalty to your brand.
On the flip side, if you are not getting repeat customers, this is a clear sign that you need to optimize your online marketing sales funnel. This is why it is so crucial that you have a good CRM (Customer Relations Management system) that provides you with the data you are looking for.
#5: Better Decision Making
Analytics helps you make better decisions for your business, by providing you with insights as to what is working and what is not. Knowing what is not working is often more crucial than knowing what is working. Online marketing is a dynamic field and changes happen quickly. What worked even a week ago may no longer be working. It’s important to have analytics that quickly show you when a strategy needs to be tweaked or completely overhauled.
In my experience, companies that make their decision based on good data combined with good analytics, are the ones that are consistently profitable.
Summary
History has shown that analytics are crucial to a business’ success. Thomas Edison failed 1,000 times before he invented the light bulb. He analyzed each failure, which provided him the data to make changes to the next experiment. Eventually, with persistence, he succeeded.
Thankfully, as online marketers, we don’t need to fail 1,000 before we can be successful with our offers; yet, we need to be as dedicated to good analytics in order to be consistently profitable in our online ventures. Businesses and entrepreneurs who that fail to learn this lesson set themselves up for failure.
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This Organization Is A 13009190 CANADA FOUNDATION
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