What is a marketing campaign worth without tangible funds? The truth is, it is worth nothing. Preliminary analysis plays a prominent role before any decision making, be it website development, advertising campaign designing, or even complex marketing campaign planning. Now we share information about the importance of analytics, and you can find some specific tips on how to use analytics to make your campaigns perfect.
Analytics is key
Available data is also referred to as a kind of resource, a resource with huge value. With the data in your hands, you will be able to achieve your goals, you can be prepared for possible unexpected situations, or they can even be of great use in optimization processes.
Achieving goals
A marketing plan should always be tailored to the goal. However, to achieve this aim, you definitely need to do some analysis. Data that affects the goal can be:
- Data collected on competitors
- Data collected on customers
- Data collected from the whole market
- Monitoring trends
The success of the campaign will rest on this information.
Let us think that you are planning a new ad campaign. In this case, you need to know what channels your customers or potential customers can reach. In addition, you will need data along with which you can know how your target audience is using your webshop or even your physical store. These are needed to maximize the number of purchases, also known as conversions, during your communication.
If you do not get this data in advance, there will be chances that you won’t reach your desired goal, and your campaign may even fail. And you do not want your money to fly out of your hands without bringing any results, do you?
Numerical data
You may have learned first why analytics is important. Now let us look at what data you might have to collect in each specific situation and why.
Many people think that data collection today can only be done with the help of the internet and various software.
This is partly true, as the use of online tools is inevitable even for information obtained from offline channels, but in fact, this is only needed for evaluation. Even if you have a physical store that is not presented in the online space, there are still many ways to get the results you want.
Offline tools
Opinion polls
Nothing is more valuable than relying on the narration of your own customer base. In this case, you will know first-hand what should be changed in your store or the most frequented places in your store; you can get a comprehensive picture of how people see your store.
Aware of this information, you will be able to tailor your store to your customers’ needs or even display in-store communication tools in the most effective way. By the way, it is an almost completely free data collection method.
Camera examinations
This method is much more expensive than the aforementioned since you already have to use technical background here. However, believe me, it pays off.
This form of data collection is based on monitoring the habits of your customers with different cameras. For example, you observe which area of the store your customers visit most of the time, which shelves are the ones that catch customers the most, and how they behave at the point of purchase.
By evaluating the data, you will be able to deploy products effectively and plan effective communication.
Online tools
Now you have learned the 2 most useful offline methods, let us focus a bit on online methods. Nowadays, analytics appears more in the online space. As a result, there are several ways to get more and more useful information.
Data visualization
Data visualization is a very spectacular and interesting data collection method. Therefore, we can say that it is finally not a boring, dry tool that provides only numerical data.
One of the most common and, in our opinion, the most useful methods is to use heatmaps. Heatmaps give you information about the activity of your website. They mark the frequented and less frequented areas of your page with different colors.
Among other things, the method allows you to optimize your website. By this, we mean, for example, that if you see that one of the CTA buttons is not working as it should, you can either change its wording that day or even move the entire button to a more popular location on your website.
Of course, heatmaps also provide numerical data. For example, they allow you to see exactly how many clicks were on each item on your website and what percentage of the total visitors clicked on that item. In addition, some heatmap tools also display whether the interaction came from a mobile or desktop device.
This data can be used perfectly if your goal is to increase conversions. Sounds good, right?
Versatile analysis
If you want to get a lot of data, we recommend using Google Analytics. Why? Because this service has the most features and it is even easy to use.
70% of online businesses use this software in any form. The reason for this is that it provides a lot of data. For example, it provides information about the number of people currently on your website, counts conversions, monitors the device from which your page was opened, and the source too.
You must be unsure now; who wants to know this so much information? Do not worry; you do not have to deal with it all. Remember, always focus on the goal. Here are some important data you may want to keep collecting:
- Conversions:
We can say that this is the most valuable information. Google Analytics takes any action here that may be right for you. You first need to set your goal; as we said, you have to tailor the analysis to your aim.
Depending on the setting, you can find how many people purchase on your site, how many people downloaded a material, how many signed up for your newsletter, and we could list more.
- Demographic data:
With this data in mind, you can perfectly define your target audience, and defining the exact target audience can result in a perfect marketing campaign. Here you can find out the gender, age, and even the origin of your customers and visitors.
These data also play an important role in designing the communication plan, as you need to advertise differently to younger and older people.
- Device information:
To plan the perfect marketing campaign, you will also need to know what device will be used to visit your web store. It would be best if you used different advertising tools on mobile and desktop devices.
Conclusion
As you can see, data collection is of paramount importance before any corporate activity, including planning a marketing campaign. Never neglect to gather information, as this can even result in the loss of your money.
Try to use data visualization tools regularly. For example, using heatmaps gives you a perfect view of how visitors use your website, which is a precious piece of information.
Always adapt the method to your goal, as this will extract the relevant data.
We hope we can help you.
