John Wanamaker once famously said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” This saying still largely applies today as many of us in the world of marketing and communications have yet to fully embrace marketing analytics as a way to measure and quantify the success, or alternatively, the shortcomings of our marketing efforts.
Improving the bottom line of your marketing comes from an analytics-driven focus on each part of the digital marketing strategy. Inbound marketing analytics lets you know which parts are working, which should be further developed, and which need to be improved or removed altogether.
Landing pages, SEO, blogging, social media, calls-to-actions, and unique sources of traffic are all key components in your digital strategy. But if you don’t know how each part is performing – for example, which landing pages have the lowest bounce rates, draw the highest unique visitors and most pageviews, or which social media posts are drawing the most engagement – you are operating in the dark, relying on the limited knowledge Wanamaker spoke of. This post will discuss 7 components of your web strategy that can take your digital marketing to the next level.
1. Analyze landing pages and other sources of traffic
Important metrics include – call-to-action (CTA), click-through-rates, visitors-to-lead conversion rates, and visitor-to-customer conversion rates. Examine these metrics to see if your landing pages are converting visitors to leads and leads into customers.
2. Next, analyze your content assets
Determine which assets are converting visitors into leads. Are your content assets about free credit card application driving more leads than your mortgage application landing pages? Are ebooks generating more traffic than webinars? Determining which assets are the most successful allows you to focus more of your marketing resources around them and generate even more leads.
3. Improve traffic by drawing insights from SEO keyword performance
Focus your SEO efforts on generating content and inbound links around search terms that drive qualified traffic and customers.
4. Holes in your content strategy
If a keyword or landing page is generating a lot of traffic but not doing so great at converting visitors to leads, that means your strategy needs some revision. Analytics makes you see these gaps and develop tactics to close these gaps.
5. Analytics can also help improve your blogging
Key metrics to track include individual post views and traffic referral sources. Post views lets you see which topics draw the most traffic and the most inbound links and should be emphasized in future content.
6. Improving your social media presence
Analytics helps you identify which sites are drawing the highest engagement rates by tracking metrics such as likes, re-tweets and @replies on both your posts as well as comments and content embeds. Social media is now one of the biggest traffic generators for blogs and landing pages. Marketing analytics informs you of not only how many of those leads convert to customers, but also which platforms to focus on, and ways to create more strategic content development programs based on user analytics. To find out how to choose the right social channels for your needs, check out our infographic.
7. Utilize your closed-loop marketing data
With this data, you can track leads from the moment they enter your site until they become your customers. It allows you to determine which of your marketing assets – your blog, SEO, social media, etc – are the most effective at engaging your audience. It also identifies your best channels for converting leads to customers and lets you prioritize your most successful platforms. This data in turn leads to the new conclusion that social media leads should be nurtured with email messages. Inbound marketing analytics lets you see where your digital assets are falling short and tailor your marketing strategies to fill those holes.
