Updated October 25, 2024
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Intuition vs. Data
Using intuition to make important marketing decisions is a thing of the past. There’s increasing pressure on marketers to justify their strategies with data analytics. And rightly so, as companies invest more each year into their digital marketing budgets. With web analytics, conversion tracking, and data dashboards, making data-driven marketing decisions is now easier than ever before.
A Web Analytics Foundation
For most companies, lead generation occurs on their website… hence the need for configuring and using web analytics for tracking and data-driven marketing decision-making. Web analytics enables you to track performance from all digital marketing sources such as organic (SEO), social media, paid ads, referral partners, etc. Without it, it’s like driving at night without headlights.
Since Google Analytics is free, we frequently recommend this solution for most businesses. Note: Google is rolling out GA4, which is a revamp of their Universal Analytics product. GA will become the standard interface mid-year 2023. Currently, it is still in development, with some functionality that’s not quite working as expected. Even so, we are setting up GA4 for clients, so there are no gaps in data collection. It’s also an opportunity to test-drive the new tool and become more familiar with the new menu and interface.
Your Analytics Toolbox in Marketing
In addition to web analytics, there are additional sources of marketing data you’ll need to make informed decisions. We highly recommend these free and paid tools as part of your digital marketing analytics toolbox:
- Google Search Console (previously Webmaster Tools) and Bing Webmaster Tools. These two analytics tools inform you of what’s occurring before traffic comes to your website. Essentially, they measure SEO (organic search) performance. For example, in Search Console, you can pull reports on what keywords are driving traffic to your website and which pages are performing best in organic search. Think of these digital analytics tools as direct communication with search engines, where they share data about your site’s SEO health.
- Heat Maps & Visitor Recordings. Imagine peering over your target audience’s shoulder as they interact with your website. That’s essentially what heat maps and visitor recordings do. They aggregate pageviews and sessions (without personally identifiable information) into heat maps (what’s hot or cold on the page, where they click, how far down they scroll, etc.) as well as individual visitor recordings (browser and device type, what pages they view in a session, etc.). Heat maps and visitor recordings are especially useful for online ads’ landing pages. Since you’re paying for that traffic, you want to optimize for lead conversions and inform your A/B testing plans. We also view heat maps and visitor recordings for important pages that contribute to conversions.
- Custom Views. Some digital marketers want to enrich their data with third-party tools such as Leadfeader for IP identification/company information. Depending on the software, there may be ways to integrate this information into Analytics or onto a data dashboard.
Dashboards for Data-Driven Insights
Collecting the data is the first piece of the puzzle. Unless you’re reviewing data that are most relevant for your company, marketing goals, and channels on a regular basis, you won’t be able to make data-based marketing decisions. By creating a comprehensive web analytics dashboard, you’re able to:
- Evaluate which channels bring in the most conversions/revenue to invest in profitable strategies
- Measure audience behavior to better understand your customers’ buying journey so you can adjust how you’ll meet their expectations
- Quantify and analyze results to influence planning, business priorities, and financial forecasting
Consider which actionable metrics you need for marketing decision-making. Without the end in mind, your dashboard will just be a crowded — albeit interesting — bunch of numbers.
As to which platform to use for your marketing dashboard, we highly recommend Google Looker Studio. Not only is it a free tool, but it also integrates with a wide variety of marketing software. Plus, it’s not a black box owned/controlled by a third party. And, your dashboard’s data is compiled dynamically — meaning that it’s on-call whenever you need it.
Start Sooner Rather Than Later
If you’re not confident in your web analytics data or don’t have what you need to make informed marketing decisions, now is the time to act. Digital marketing is a competitive sport. Marketing-related data has made its way into the C-Suite. Most likely, your competitors are already using these free web analytics tools to determine where to invest their marketing dollars.
Trying to figure out your marketing ROI?
Our FREE 30-minute consult can help identify:
– Which metrics you need to measure
– How to track the data you need to grow your business
– How to turn data insights into a plan of action
“Using a consultative approach, they dug into my business and built a marketing strategy that worked within my budget constraints and need for ROI. They helped prioritize projects — keeping a keen eye on resources and timeframes.”
~ Dan Hartnett, President Sergeant Shredder
Photo credit – Top: Pexels
