Having a marketing strategy is essential for any business, and in the digital era we live in, the prevalence of analytics for marketing success is equally vital. But, unfortunately, many companies do not exercise proper measuring or collecting data to analyze how their efforts impact the business. There are many reasons this could be so - lack of resources, knowledge, thinking they don’t have time, or just the sheer intimidation of using analytics and metrics.
So, what does it mean to track your marketing efforts? As a business, you measure your success by collecting information surrounding emails, website analytics, phone calls, conversions, metrics, and more related to business launches, campaigns, posts, and potential customer interests and habits.
Why Is Tracking Marketing Efforts So Important?
When you track your efforts, you find ways to drive more significant impacts. There are many ways in which you can track, so you should have a strategy in place.
Having the ability to collect and calculate data provides you with insights on what is working for your business and what can be improved. Analytics that are watched, tracked, and measured can help you determine new trends and provide engaging content surrounding those trends to appeal and draw in new customers.
The ability to collect and analyze data provides you with insights on what is working for your business and what can be improved.
Tracking your efforts also gives your business a better perspective. You can easily set improved expectations and goals based on your history if you are watching it. For example, when you track on social media channels, you can find trends to help shape new strategies that target your objectives, like more click-throughs or engagement, because you can look more in-depth at posts on those channels and see which are performing the best.
How Do You Track Your Marketing Efforts?
If you have not yet started to track and measure your business efforts, don’t be intimidated - it’s not hard to start! The first thing you should establish is your goals in terms of what exactly you want to be tracking - as in, what is your objective for the business? Some of your goals can include:
- Email conversion
- Analytics for URL clicks
- Social Media Engagement
- Views/Comments
- Visitors to your Website
- Ad Conversion
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Phone Tracking
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tracking
- Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
Some social media channels have their own built-in metrics you can track. However, it is a good idea to see if you can combine all of your marketing tracking into one platform.
All of those may seem like many things to look at, but you may want to examine each one individually and find where your customers frequent the most. It’s crucial to understand that your clients must be at the focus. Knowing your customer’s habits and interests, as well as what sites, channels, and mediums they use the most.
The Do’s And Don’ts Of Tracking Your Marketing
Using analytics tools is helpful, but you need to ensure that you choose the correct trackers geared toward your business objectives. There are many marketing metrics out there, and all of them are helpful for different reasons. The four most common categories in which your metrics can be tracked include:
- Quantity Metrics - measure bounce rates, social media engagement
- Financial Metrics - measure your ROI, profit, cash flow, average order value
- Cost Metrics - measure your retention, cost per customer, churn numbers
- Activity Metrics - measure downloads, clicks
Here are the many dos and don’ts to tracking your efforts:
DO - Keep an Open Mind
Experiment to find what kinds of tracking metrics you can utilize, and when you find something that works, you can stick with it. However, you should also look to other methods of analyzing that can help to improve your reporting.
Depending on your project or campaign, you will be focusing on different goals. Because of this, you may need to use more than one type of tracking for a new launch, project, or campaign to the next one.
DON’T - Focus on The Past
It is easy to measure metrics of something that has already happened, but don’t let that determine how you will do your marketing tracking for future projects. Instead, take the full scope of your marketing’s value and set up your tracking to map trends so that you can be more predictive in your analysis.
You need to use your metrics to set the direction of where you are going instead of reviewing what happened previously.
You need to use your metrics to set the direction of where you are going instead of reviewing what happened previously. Break down the categories of your tracking into the past, present, and future. Ask yourself the question of how you’re doing in those timelines, how did you do/how are you doing/how will you do. Then you can more effectively apply your analytics tools to measure where you need to go.
DO - Pay Attention To Branding
Part of your business marketing includes a specialized focus on your branding. When analyzing your customer base, you need to evaluate what sorts of things resonate the most with them, and this will impact all aspects of how you brand your business.
Branding is much more than just fonts and colors.
Branding is much more than just fonts and colors. You need to evaluate and determine specifics like packaging, shelf displays, store affiliations and pay close attention to what is going on within your particular industry so that you can re-brand if necessary.
DON’T - Copy What Other Big Companies Are Doing
While it is crucial to analyze what other successful (and bigger) businesses are doing within your industry, you want to ensure that you will not copy their exact marketing or analysis styles. There are some main reasons for doing this. First, more prominent and successful companies often have a larger budget and staff for marketing and campaigns, so those strategies are hard to recreate for a smaller, newer business.
Successful companies often have a larger budget and staff for marketing and campaigns...
The other reason is that just because it works well for them does not mean that it will have the same effect on your business. When you evaluate and examine another business that is doing well, you also have to look at what they are missing and what they are not doing well. You should hone in on what makes your product or service more valuable, more unique, and appeal more to your ideal audience by developing your own spin.
Make Time To Focus On Your Marketing Efforts
It can feel challenging to track all of your marketing efforts, but it is a vital tool that will help you build your business when looking at your operational performance. Don’t put this off because you feel you don’t have the time or know where to start. Small and newer businesses have the opportunity to test out new ideas and campaigns, so you can be creative and see what kind of feedback stems from it that will help you improve as you go further.
It doesn’t have to be over-complicated; you just need to have a clear objective and plan set out to know what you are looking for...
When creating your analytics plan to track marketing, there are many numbers, systems, and tools to measure various aspects. However, it doesn’t have to be over-complicated; you just need to have a clear objective and plan set out to know what you are looking for specifically. It will take some time to experiment and examine trends. You will find what works for your business and learn a lot about improving your value to your customers in the process.
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