The field of marketing has changed immensely in the past 25 years. And certainly one of the biggest changes that’s happened in the field over that time is the proliferation of data[1] – in particular, for the purposes of this piece, the ability to collect real-time, actionable data on campaigns or operations that provides insight into what you’re doing today.[2]

It sounds great. And, for the most part, it generally has been for the field – and for the businesses themselves. But it causes a problem we see at a lot of businesses: Death by analysis, as well as misinterpretation of the data you have.

Consider the following list of data that you can collect within various channels to analyze your current operations, which is only a “small” sample of the data available to you as a business:

• • Website or landing page performance (total visits, most viewed pages, time on site, event conversion, device use, geographic region, heatmap analysis, page flow, form fills, and a lot more.)
  • Email performance (opens, clicks, conversions)
  • Social media performance (likes, shares, comments, clicks, potential conversions)
  • Content performance (views, visits, downloads, etc.)
  • Video performance (views, completion rates, clicks)
  • Advertising performance (impressions, clicks, conversions, call volume, cost-per lead, return on ad spend, cost per acquisition, and many other KPIs depending on the ad platform)
  • SEO/ranking improvements (rank position/position improvement, site authority, volume of inbound links)
  • E-commerce performance (visits, visit-to-checkout percentage, abandon cart percentage, abandon cart fulfillment, product page visits, etc.)
  • Mobile app engagement etc. (Total engagement, use frequency, if you have an app, etc.)

The problem, of course, is time. Who has the time to look at all of the different measures? And, even if you did have the time, do you understand how to read the data such that you can: a.) Make the right improvements; b.) Choose the optimizations that can have the best chance of boosting performance with your often limited resources.

What we see happening at a lot of businesses, including small, midsize, and large organizations, is that they can become fixated on data collection and analysis but then get overwhelmed by the amount of marketing data available to them, so they end up either not spending the time looking at the right data, or get caught up in focusing on only one or two of the measures for a specific channel, which may or may not be indicative of overall performance.  

And Yes, The Data Can Also Mislead You

Here’s a question: Is a campaign working or not? In order to really answer that question, you have to consider many things:

• • The timeframe
  • The bigger success metrics/goals for the business
  • The goals set for that particular campaign (Often, not really stated with any depth or nuance and may even be unrealistic.)
  • The bigger picture of what all your marketing is doing.

The points above are particularly important to understand as marketing doesn’t work in a vacuum. In other words, your ads, work with your email, work with your content and social, and SEO as a whole. It’s not just one channel and looking at that channel’s metrics. We often give this example:

Let’s say you run a display advertising campaign. It can be a programmatic ad, in the Google Ad Network, or even on social media. A potential customer sees the ad and doesn’t click on it. Instead, he or she types in the URL directly and goes to the website. That individual looks around. But doesn’t purchase anything. Let’s say, as a good marketing company, you then retarget the individual for having visited your website. You run another ad encouraging them to come back. Again, the potential customer sees that ad, doesn’t click but then decides to come back the same way: typing in the URL of the website. The person then signs up for an offer: “Join our newsletter and get your first 10 percent off.” As a good marketing company, you send an automated response acknowledging to the individual that he or she has signed up and will get the offer.

The individual doesn’t use it right away but then you send another email reminding that person to use the offer. And he or she clicks the link in the email and makes his or her first purchase. A conversion!

Now, unless you have a really, really good marketing attribution system (most don’t), here’s what the data will show:

• • Your direct traffic is effective at driving engagement and the popup offer on your site works!
  • Your email is effective in driving conversions.
  • Your ads aren’t effective.

But note it was the ad that got you noticed in the first place. You did all the data analysis, which leads you to believe that you now can simply cut your ads because those didn’t convert. That’s where reading the marketing data you have becomes a lot more involved than simply collecting all the data and not having a way to interpret it. In fact, it can potentially be harmful to your business.

What Can You Do: Ask for Help

Let’s be clear: We think data is great. And we think if you have the time to go over it look at the big picture and know how to interpret it, it can be a huge advantage for your business.

But you have to be able to take the time to do it – most businesses we know don’t have so much time – and you have to be willing to understand and really dig into customer behavior, something that’s not easy for a layperson. 

The other thing: It can be dangerous to look at data in isolation without understanding any of the broader issues that may be affecting your marketing performance. An email open rate might be suffering not because your team wrote a poor subject line but it might because your sender reputation has been damaged.

That’s why it’s always good to get a second opinion, especially when it comes to interpreting a data issue you’re trying to solve. At Marketing Nice Guys, this is what we do all day, every day. We’ve seen a lot of different situations that can help us provide another lens, hopefully one that boosts your marketing performance and gives you a more even-handed look all your operations. Contact us for a free consultation today.  

[1]As many of you already know, technologies such as Generative AI have started to take hold as well, but for now, let’s tackle data first.

[2] In another blog, we’ve talked about the 5 types of data that are worth looking at. But for the purposes of this blog, we’re only speaking of campaign data.