Take Action — Improve Marketing Analytics 

Statistics are fun. Numbers you can play around with to prove or disprove your theories and opinions, to impress your friends and colleagues, or to back up your assertion that your efforts really are paying off.

Here’s one random statistic from HubSpot you may want to consider: Spending on marketing analytics is expected to increase 60 percent in 2015. (Click to Tweet!)  

Why? What makes marketing analytics so important?  

One reason is increasing pressure from executive management. Marketingcharts.com reported that about 60 percent of chief marketing officers told the MIT Sloan Management Review in 2014 that there is pressure from management for an increased focus on data and analysis. (Click to Tweet!) (Before sending your executive suite a long list of statistics, however, make sure that the numbers you are sending them are the metrics they really want.

So what is the other reason you should consider?  How do you actually improve marketing analytics?  

By using closed-loop marketing to closely track the performance of each of your marketing channels, you can take action to make them each better.

What should you track?

HubSpot recently pointed out that there is a difference between web analytics and marketing analytics.  While tools like Google Analytics can provide great feedback for initial improvement of your website, you need to consider a much more expansive range of data and how it all works together.

I’m not going give specific instructions here for all of the areas you should be tracking — that’s what our ebook, Unlocking the ROI of Your Marketing with Analytics is for — but I will outline a few key markers to watch.

SEO metrics:

• Keyword performance and rankings

• Organic search traffic

• Branded vs. non-branded search traffic

• Unique search terms driving traffic

• Inbound links

• Conversion rates from organic search to leads and/or customers

Landing page metrics:

• Call-to-action click-through rate

• Visitor-to-lead conversion rate

• Lead-to-customer conversion rate

• Visitor-to-customer conversion rate

Blogging metrics:

• Individual post views

• Blog traffic and referral sources

• Call-to-action performance

• Blog leads

• Visitor-to-lead conversion rate

• Lead-to-customer conversion rate

Social media metrics:

• Social media engagement

• Traffic from social media

• Conversion rate from social media into leads and/or customers

Email marketing metrics:

• Bounce rate

• Delivery rate

• List growth rate

• Click-through rate

• Conversion rate

• Revenue per email sent

Lead nurturing metrics:

• Click-through rates

• Conversion rates

• Time to customer conversion

• Cost per customer

Did you notice a similarity amongst all of these? The bottom line goal for all your marketing channels is to create customers. Website visitors, blog readers, social media followers and email subscribers are all great. But what you are ultimately shooting for is gaining customers.

Here’s just one example of how to use analytics to improve from marketing software provider and JONES partner HubSpot (which, by the way, can put all of these metrics and more into a single dashboard):

Using their Keyword tool, HubSpot noticed that while they were receiving large numbers of visitors who used the keyword phrase “Google search tips,” none of those visitors converted into leads. That pointed to a hole in their content strategy, and a need for content offers and calls-to-action related that keyword phrase.

Now it’s your turn to analyze your statistics to determine which channels are succeeding, what is holding others back, and how you can improve your customer acquisition. That is the power of marketing analytics. Download our ebook to get started now: Unlock the ROI of Your Marketing with Analytics.