You can't manage what you don't measure
Posted on 1st April 2020 at 15:15
Brands today are awash with more data than ever. We are moving from a position of Big Data to Data Paralysis, caused by the many data measurement tools and platforms that an organisation may have procured over time. Lets’ just take a moment to look at a handful of the free and paid for data sources you are most likely getting intelligence from on a daily basis.
What data measurment partners are available?
Analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Adobe and Hotjar, identifying opportunities to improve your web site and marketing performance
SEO tools including Google Search Console, Linkdex and ahrefs to measure your natural search footprint and provide you with diagnostics to improve your natural search visibility
Media publishers, such as Google AdWords, Facebook and Affiliate Window, tracking the effectiveness of your marketing (e.g. impressions, engagement and conversion metrics)
Social platforms measuring online sentiment including Brandwatch and Pulsar and tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer managing content publishing and measuring reach and engagement
Email platforms such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact and Pure 360, to send and track the effectiveness of marketing to your current customer database
And of course, if you’re lucky enough to be managing an App too, using tools such as Firebase and Senor Tower will be needed to measure its discoverability and performance.
And the list of data measurement platforms goes on …
Our top tips for measuring your digital marketing campaigns?
So, the questions are what data should we be looking at? Can we get to the much-hyped single version of the truth? And how do we make sure we make use of our data we have at a time, where working remotely from each other will be the new norm.
Don’t get lost in the data – Spend time understanding your campaign objectives and identify the metrics that matter to determine success. Is it awareness, engagement, sales or a combination? Metrics will most likely change throughout the lifetime of the campaign, especially when launching a new brand or product to market
Review your current tools – assess what you have in place to ensure it will meet your needs. This is a perfect opportunity to understand whether everything is setup correctly, the definitions for each metric and what integrations are available across the tools you have. Make sure you capture everything at the first time of asking as we know that those IT teams can be busy. You may also identify that there are tools which you get can rid, saving money in the process, which can be reinvested in the new tools you need
Produce example reports first – Create quick mock-ups in excel and screen share with end users via conference call. It is important to remember that the metrics and level of information that is important to you are not necessarily the same as your manager. Doing this can also help set the expectation of what is possible with your current tools, whilst being used to support investment cases for new
Centralise your data into dashboards – where possible look to bring the data together to make decision making easier. For example, bringing in offline data into Google Analytics or integrating your call tracking solution will help you get a more well-rounded view of the effectiveness of your online activity. Also, dependent on the type of stakeholders accessing and amount of data you are tracking using dashboarding solution such as Data Studio or Tableau combination with Funnel.io or Supermetrics to aggregate data should also be considered. This approach will also be helpful to give stakeholders the accessibility to the data they need in a period where we may be working different hours as we start to work from home
There is no one single source of truth out there – finally, the most important thing to remember is don’t look for absolute perfection in your data either. There will never be one solution to answer all your questions. Just make sure you understand what data and solution does and doesn’t answer, the integrity of the data and where the blind spots are
Need assistance with your data measurement and reporting? If any of the above resonates with you or you need support with developing your digital measurement strategy, get in touch and we will be more than happy to assist.
Tagged as: Thought Leadership, Top Tips
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