Does the thought of marketing analytics make you cringe? Does it seem overwhelming and time consuming?

Many business owners find analytics and reporting a cumbersome task and one they put off until absolutely necessary. If this is you, or you’d like some advanced tips on measuring data, this is the article for you.

We look at making marketing analytics simple and easy to understand so it’s something you want to do, not grudgingly have to do.

First, let’s define marketing analytics.

Marketing Analytics Is…

Marketers (and business owners) use marketing analytics to evaluate the success of their marketing initiatives.

These analytics make up the processes and technologies to measure their performance.

Bottom line – marketing analytics tell you if your marketing programs are working.

You want to gather your data from all of your marketing channels and consolidate it into one common view. From here, you can decide how to drive your future marketing efforts.

To increase your lead generation and ultimately your conversions, you’ve got to know how to interpret your data.

Many business owners think marketing analytics are best left to the experts. We’re here to tell you that you are the expert. No more worries about metrics. You can do it.

To create your report, you want to attend to these items first:

• Ask yourself what you want to learn.
• Find the report that answers that question.
• Put it into your overall marketing analytics.
• Include a balanced assortment of reports.
• Assess your strategies.
• Then, you can use your report to change or revise your marketing strategy.

Here’s how to make marketing analytics simple and easy to understand.

Take Little Bites

When gathering your data, you often have access to multiple metrics. In the beginning start small.

A good place to begin is with page views, conversions and visitor information.

You want to track the most important information first. After you get accustomed to analytics and reporting, you can dive deeper for more metrics.

Marketing experts put much of their emphasis tracking conversions. Why?

This is a much more accurate number for you to gauge your success. Conversions track actual customers doing something on your website, like signing up, downloading information or buying something.

Your conversion rate focuses on dollars and the value of your visitor.

Be the Master

The true analytics expert knows which metrics and data matter and which ones don’t matter so much.

The fact is you don’t need to track everything. It’s too hard to stay on top of it all.

For example, if you want to focus on lead generation, your most important data is page views and your opt-in rate.

Understand Your Data

It also helps to narrow your focus to the most relevant metrics so you know what data to capture.

Here are some areas to look at depending on your business:

Ecommerce businesses can look at conversion rate, total revenue, orders completed, average order value, drop off rate and where that happens and full on cart abandonment.

A business to business company might look at page visits, page views, conversion rate and leads generated.

A business to consumer company might focus on conversion rate, click-through rate and orders completed.

Remain Objective

It’s easy to selectively look at your data and search for things that confirm a hypothesis. You might have something in mind you want to confirm and find data that validates it, but that leads you to ignore all of the contrary information.

Don’t get caught up looking for metrics that confirm what you expect and disregard all other data.

Be objective and look at the data from multiple angles.

For example, many people think a high bounce rate is due to the fact that visitors didn’t like your page. But you have to ask these questions:

• What is happening?
• Why is it happening?

Your first instinct is to attribute a high bounce rate to people not liking your page. Yet, there are many other reasons your landing page may have a high bounce rate:

• Your content is superb and meets the users’ needs, and you only have one call to action that people take and then “bounce” off.
• The landing page was simply to collect an email address, thus they bounce when they were done.
• Your page load time is too high.
• Your page doesn’t meet users’ needs.
• Users landed on your page from a Google Ad campaign, and your page didn’t match the ad.

The goal is to assess why you have a high bounce rate before arbitrarily deciding you have to redo your entire page.

Know the Value

You’ve probably searched Google for “What’s a good conversion rate?” That isn’t necessarily the same information for everyone.

You want to understand the value of your analytics for your industry. Don’t stack your business up to businesses in other industries because their “good” conversion rate may not be yours.

Your Google search should instead be for, “What’s a good conversion rate in my industry?” Once you’ve narrowed down the field, you really can compare rates.

Comparing to unlike industries sets you up for misplaced expectations.

Final Thoughts

Now that you know how to make marketing analytics simple and easy to understand, we want to leave you with a few more thoughts.

Take advantage of these advanced ways to break down your marketing into analytics you can understand.

If you don’t, you’ll end up with a bunch of marketing information cobbled together that has no relationship with one another.

To make the best decisions for your business, you have to take your entire marketing picture into account.

This means your social media insights, your Google analytics and your emails stats. It means taking a look at all of your marketing efforts in one place so you can decide how to proceed.

Use your marketing analytics to make sound business decisions and drive your future marketing. Use them to refine and test your lead generation to increase your profits.

Tie your marketing efforts to your leads to your bottom line, and you’ll quickly see what’s working and where you can improve.

So, say goodbye to marketing analysis paralysis. Use these advanced tips to make it work for your business.

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