The Rules of Marketing Analytics

Over the last several years, analytics have provided marketers with a universal language to share findings with outside departments. What was once seen as a creative art can now, at least partially, be distilled to numbers like ROI that any member of sales or operations can immediately interpret. And firms have been quick to invest resources into bolstering their data efforts. From 2017 to 2021, the average spend on marketing data in the U.S. grew from $12.3B to $30.61B and 43 percent of CMOs reported that marketing technology, data, and analytics was their top priority over the next 12 months.

Today, almost anything in marketing can be measured, so much so that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction of where it was several decades ago. Today there is too much data to record, let alone analyze. Conversion funnels are more intricate than ever, with disparate platforms coming together as a tech stack where apples-to-apples comparisons become difficult. And data privacy concerns have spurred movements like Google’s removal of third-party cookies and Apple’s new Mail privacy policy which threaten to obscure accurate results. For many organizations though, having a strong framework for how analytics are used and what data should be prioritized can help ensure number crunching doesn’t threaten the amount of time spent on actual marketing.

Know Your Targets First

You may be surprised how many marketing teams launched headfirst into a campaign without a clear, unified view of what success looks like. Don’t wait until the data has come in to evaluate what good looks like, begin your marketing campaigns by establishing and publishing target benchmarks. Set a pre-existing context for external stakeholders so there are no surprises and misunderstandings of the overall goal. A great starting point is looking at numbers from the previous period or, in the event of a new effort, industry averages from sources like Statista or Hubspot.

Sanity Check Your Insights

UX research has become an increasingly important field in the last several years to ensure companies are in-tune with their customers. Numbers may never lie, but they don’t always explain themselves. Directly hearing from customers will yield discoveries and insights that may allow you to tweak your marketing strategies that aren’t working or realize your most successful tactics are effective for a completely different reason than you believed. If you don’t understand your customer, you will never understand your marketing data.

“Data Gives Insights and Can Unearth Significant Opportunities, But There Should be A High Burden of Proof if That Data Contradicts What Industry Leaders are Doing”

It’s also critical to contextualize results outside of the silo of marketing. Collaborate with sales and other departments to contextualize what external forces (good and bad) may be skewing your results. It’s extremely rare that a marketing campaign is ever devoid of outside variables. Another source for insight is your competitors. Ask your C-suite which companies in your industry keep them up at night, then study what they’re doing. Data gives insights and can unearth significant opportunities, but there should be a high burden of proof if that data contradicts what industry leaders are doing. If you see a rival heavily utilizing a channel that hasn’t been effective for you, ask yourself what they’re doing differently and probe deeper to try and find out if it’s a blind spot for them or they know something you don’t.

Time and Money are KPI’s

In our current era of big data, it’s tempting to get bogged down in the weeds, but in many cases, companies are guilty of getting bogged down in overly minute data points. Unless you’re an extremely mature company like Google or Amazon, optimizing an ad by 0.2 percent with A/B test on which serif font to use for your disclaimers isn’t going to meaningfully change the fortunes of your organization. Don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees- always know where you are spending your budget and how many man hours are being devoted to each area. If you’re seeing higher engagement on Facebook compared to Instagram but it is costing twice the ad spend and more hours, it drastically changes your takeaway. Great marketing strategy is not so much about cutting out the things that don’t work- any firm that’s relatively successful is already doing that. Instead, it’s saying no to the things that are working well so that you can double down on the things that are working great.

Remember not to forget the end goal either. Marketing is about awareness, but if prospects aren’t taking action, it doesn’t matter how many readers your newsletter has or how many followers your social media account boasts. The CTA performance is almost always the number one metric to focus on. Are customers signing up for the webinar? Are they visiting your new web page? With improved tracking links and the proliferation of entirely online exchanges between customers and companies in a post-COVID world, it’s become easier to determine customers’ actions after encountering your marketing material.

Don’t Shy Away from Negative Results

Copywriting legend, David Ogilvy, loved referencing the famous Andrew Lang quote “Some people use statistics as a drunk man uses lamp-posts—for support rather than for illumination.” There is a temptation, be it intentionally or subconsciously, to only pay attention to statistics that back-up our ideas or showcase our marketing brilliance. This type of behavior should be avoided at all costs. In fact, it is often bad results that provide the best insights and can have the largest impacts. Imagine the relief knowing that an ineffective campaign can be discontinued without fear of missing out on an opportunity. Or getting one step closer to optimizing a channel that hasn’t quite delivered the expected results. Negative results should be celebrated as a sign of learning and growth within an organization. To better remove the stigma of failure, earmark a small portion of your budget to “experimental marketing” and go in with the mindset that it is an education investment and that any actual ROI is icing on the cake. Set a time commitment to new strategies in advance (I recommend six months) and if there is still no value gained by the end of it, you can feel confident about moving on to something more promising.

Ultimately, it’s important to keep data as an insightful tool in your repertoire rather than a dictating rubric or distracting burden. Outlining where analytics fit into your overall marketing strategy is the first step to evening the scales between science and art.