Marketing Data Analytics: How to Build Your Source of Truth
What story is your marketing data telling you?
At Half Past Nine, we liken data analytics to the headlights of a car that is circuiting the ever-evolving road track of the customer journey. It allows you to see where you are and where you’re going so you don’t veer off track.
And if marketing dollars are the gasoline of sales performance, we want you get around your customer journey track as fuel efficiently as possible. That’s why it pays to put that effort in with your digital marketing analytics.
Digital marketing analytics can seem daunting when you have a number of active platforms in your marketing tech stack. There are a few things you’re contending with in order to optimize your analytics and decision-making processes:
- Accurate tracking of all digital marketing activity and consumer interactions.
- Interpreting data correctly to inform further decisions on customer acquisition and retention initiatives.
- Finding one source of truth in a sea of marketing analytics platforms.
In this article, we will overview setting up a digital analytics infrastructure and data tracking, and using analytics platforms to interpret your data accurately.
If you’re still looking at how to set up your wider marketing operation and process, learn more before diving into the technicalities of tracking and analyzing your marketing activity.
The Importance of Marketing Analytics & Data Integrity
Achieving accuracy and clarity around data is the billion-dollar conundrum for digital marketing in this era. Trustworthy data you can confidently use for making effective decisions that grow your business is the goal.
Understand Where Budget Is Spent - Your data should be able to provide a clear and detailed picture of where and how investments are made in your marketing. Reporting should allow you to drill down into specific business streams, audience segments, individual marketing channels, products, and so on.
Measure Results Accurately – It's crucial to understand what the result of investments are, directly tying spending back to measurable results. That could be bottom line revenue in resulting sales, or other marketing goals such as improved brand awareness in target audiences. Your KPIs should guide what kind of results you want and need to report on as a priority.
Improve ROI – High quality data gives you the ability to improve budget efficiency and ROI with precision by investing more in tactics that work best, and divesting in ones that don’t. Ultimately, good marketing data integrity allows you can scale your business and drive growth.
Once you have this data, it’s also important to consider the use of data visualization to communicate the information across your business clearly and quickly.
The true source of your data’s power is being able to make highly responsive and good quality decisions across your marketing operations and wider business. That won’t happen if people can’t easily understand what the data is saying.
Maintaining Marketing Data Integrity
Maintaining the integrity of marketing data can be a challenge in today’s digital environment. That’s down to the number of cross-channel touch-points brand typically have with users on a daily basis resulting in double attribution for conversions, coupled with the growing trend for enhanced user privacy.
Does your business have a process for assessing how well marketing data gives a complete and accurate picture? If not, we’d recommend introducing one, because data integrity does require some proactive management. Learn more about managing your marketing data integrity and hygiene.
Now, let’s cover setting up accurate data tracking, as it’s not possible to analyze data that you don’t have!
Capturing Digital Marketing Data
When capturing digital marketing and advertising data, it’s all about pixels, tracking tags, and tracking codes.
If you haven’t come across these yet, they are small and unique pieces of code that need to be added to your website. Provided by analytics and advertising platforms, it’s your responsibility to add them to your website. Either your website developer can help you, or if you have access to do it yourself, instructions are always provided.
The codes allow the platforms to follow users onto your website and track their subsequent activity. That’s how they know what a user has done after they have clicked on your website, and, for example, if an advert was responsible for a ‘conversion event’. First, you’ll need to set up the conversion events you want to be tracked. Depending on your business, that could include newsletter sign-ups, adding items to cart, making a purchase from your store, a form-fill, an account registration, a demo sign up or trial subscription, etc.
You’re typically going to need the following tracking-codes:
- Analytics Tags - Google Analytics is the biggest platform in the website analytics space, allowing you to see and report on all user activity (anonymized) on your website for free. Create an account and you’ll be provided with the Google Universal Analytics Tag to link your website. You could also add the newer version called Google Analytics 4, which links with your main Universal Analytics account. This newer extension provides advanced functionality that works for both websites and apps (with a new Firebase SDK code).
- Advertising Pixels - Any platform you use for digital advertising will provide you with pixel codes, allowing user clicks on adverts to be tracked onto your website. You’ll need to set up the conversion actions or user engagement ‘events’ you want the pixels to track and report on, depending on the goal of your adverts and your sales funnel. The most common pixels are the Facebook pixel and Google AdWords pixels, or Klaviyo pixel for email and SMS marketing.
- Other Tracking Codes - Some other codes you may find useful include Google Optimize for free A/B testing of website pages, the Hotjar Tracking Code for using visual tools such as heat-maps to see how people use your website.
Note that tracking codes can actually slow down your website if you have too many. That will impact your search engine marketing (SEM) performance and also detract from the user experience. It helps to either use a tag manager, or be selective about which advertising platforms work best for your audience so you can minimize the number of tracking codes on your site.
Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager lets you manage all of your tracking tags in one place. So rather than needing to add all your various tracking codes directly to your website, only the Google Tag Manager code goes into your site. We recommend using it - it’s an incredibly helpful free tool.
Not only does this tool stop your site being slowed down by too many tracking codes, it also has a great feature for Custom Events Tracking. That means you can track valuable user activity like clicks, scroll depth and form fills. This kind of data provides greater insight into how much user engagement and value that individual webpages are generating for your business.
UTM Codes
UTM codes are slightly different. They are custom URLs that work with your analytics platform to track where your users last came from when they clicked onto your website. It involves adding a little bit of specially formatted text to the end of your webpage URLs.
Analytics platforms like Google Analytics or HubSpot use the URL tag parameters to report the exact location users came from, meaning you can see which individual pieces of marketing content were responsible. You can see how many users came from which source and medium, (E.g. Email, Email banner click), which campaign it was part of, right down to an individual social media post or link within an article.
It’s an invaluable tool for understanding how much traffic individual pieces of content or adverts drive to your site. You can use it to assess the effectiveness of entire marketing campaigns, channels, online PR coverage, right down to individual Pay-Per-Click (PPC) adverts, etc.
You’ll have to create these UTM codes yourself, depending on what you want to track and how you want to label the dimensions for unique pieces of content. URL builders are available to help you do this, such as Google’s URL builder. You can also find tools to help you keep track of all your codes too. Depending on how many you use, this can definitely be worthwhile.
Understanding Marketing Analytics Platforms
There are a number of marketing analytics platforms out there to choose from. All will require some degree of tailored set-up in terms of tracking conversion activity that’s specific to your website and marketing goals. It’s worthwhile investing this effort to fully utilize the analytical potential available to you.
We’re going to take a deeper dive into using website analytics, and then in-platform analytics. But there’s something we want to note first.
We’ve not found one analytics platform that’s able to offer a complete source of truth across digital marketing channels. Website data, in-platform advertising data (such as from Facebook), and email marketing data can’t all be captured by one single analytics platform.
On one hand, data is often treated as proprietary to the platforms providing the ad or email service, although you can usually export it manually. Companies like Facebook offer their own in-platform analytics tools that they’d like you to use. And on the other hand, nobody has developed an analytics platform that can capture all the different types of data from across the various marketing channels and platforms.
That means you’ll have a number of analytical platforms you need to extract data from to create combined reporting. You can work around this by using visualization tools and creating dashboards with multiple data inputs for a holistic overview and top-level reporting purposes. Read more about data visualization.
But for now, let’s get back to your website and in-platform analytics.
Website Analytics
Google Analytics is still the king of website analytics platforms - an incredible product to have at your disposal for free.
Set up your Google Analytics account so it’s tailored to your own unique website and marketing goals. The most important data you’ll need to set up includes:
- Reporting views - if you want to separately analyze distinct business steams on your website (including language versions), if you have more than one website linked to the same Google Analytics property, or if you also have a customer app. These filtered views give you the ability to instantly view sliced data, making reporting quicker and easier.
- Traffic sources dimensions - to see exactly which entry points users have to your website. You can see source/medium data automatically, but as already discussed, you’ll need to use UTM codes for more detailed data. For example, clicks from specific Facebook ads.
- Custom events - to track user interaction and engagement with your website content. For example, call-to-action button clicks or link clicks, how many times a video was played, how long a video was played for, etc.
- Goals - to measure how often your users complete events that you consider to be conversions. For example, making an e-commerce purchase, downloading a sales brochure or submitting a contact form. After you have set up goals, you will have access to view conversion reports.
Pros of Google Analytics:
- You own the data on your website, so all information is available to you in terms of users behaviors and actions.
- Data is shown on a last-click basis by default, or the click that brought users to your site. You can accurately track advert Click-Through attribution if you use UTM codes.
Cons of Google Analytics:
- You don’t get the full attribution scope for the combined effect that multiple outbound marketing touch-points contribute towards website traffic and conversions. That’s because you only know when someone has clicked on an advert - not how many adverts they have seen to create familiarity with your brand or product before coming to your website.
However, do note that there are several attribution models you can use within conversion reports - you don’t just have to go by the default last click. For example, you could go by first interactions, or specific conversion paths using event metrics. However, none can give a complete view of attribution for every customer on their journey to a sale conversion.
Other Website Analytics Platforms
Google Analytics may be the biggest and best known website analytics platform, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s the only one you should use.
Google Search Console is a free tool for diving into your organic search performance. It allows you to see and fix any indexing problems (things that stop Google from crawling your site) and request that Google re-index it when fixed. You can look into which search queries show your site in search results, how many clicks you get for those searches, review backlinks, mobile usability and more.
Use it in conjunction with other Google tools like Analytics, Google Trends, and Google Ads.
Bing Webmaster Tools is a surprisingly competitive (and also free) alternative to Google Analytics. It’s simpler and more user friendly, geared towards organic search engine optimization (SEO). The main platform offers additional functionality for SEO reports and recommendations, mobile-friendliness reports, plus research keywords and see inbound links analysis.
Bing is the largest search engine platform after Google in terms of users, so it’s worthwhile not complacently overlooking it. Plus, any improvements you make for Bing can also help optimize your site performance on other search engines too.
Third-Party Analytics
Third-party analytics is data that’s reported on within the platform where you’re deploying paid marketing activity. The most common are Google Ads Manager, Facebook Ads Manager, and email providers like MailChimp or Klaviyo.
Pros of Third-Party Analytics:
- The analytics functionality provided by advertising or email platforms offer valuable information designed to help you get better returns from the unique channel. It is specific to the type of activity that happens on the platform, whether that’s reporting on users engagement activity such as likes, shares, comments, retweets, followers gained or open rates, plus click-throughs and conversion attribution. Facebook, for example, will let you set up 8 types of conversion events that will be tracked and reported on across all of a user’s devices.
- Data is mostly available immediately, meaning you can optimize live campaigns, amend landing pages, and make cost-efficiency decisions quickly. It gives you much more control and responsiveness when you can monitor live results.
Cons of Third-Party Analytics:
- Advertising channels are competing against each other and want to demonstrate higher conversion attribution than the others, encouraging you to spend more of your ad budget with them. If you use more than one advertising platform, double-attribution can be an issue, meaning more than one advertising platform claims full attribution for a sales conversion on your website. The extent of over-estimation will depend on how many ads a user has seen or clicked across different platforms within the set attribution timeframe - called View-Through and Click-Through attribution respectively.
- The quality of advertising data declines by the day as more user privacy laws and tracking restrictions are introduced. Where users have opted not to be tracked, data modeling is used as a substitute, with its reporting delayed by a day or two. Facebook, as a prime example, now indicates in its ad reporting where modeled data is in use. Given the size of the user base that measures such as the Apple iOS 14 privacy update are impacting, the data accuracy for how effective your adverts are is hugely compromised.
You definitely can’t rest on your laurels and trust the in-platform analytics to manage the integrity of your reporting data for you. The best way forward for is a combination of using in-platform data with your own website analytics data.
The Bottom Line
In a fierce digital marketing landscape where competitive edge is driven by continually leveraging data with razor precision, it pays to fully utilize the many free data analytics tools available to you.
Our top tips are to honestly assess how well you currently report accurate ROI data across your marketing activity mix. Familiarize yourself with what data analytics functionality is available beyond what you’re currently using. Take no ROI data from paid marketing providers at face value. And make sure you really understand what the data is telling you so you can make decisions that drive market-leading results. Don’t get complacent, but continually keep your eye on things with regular reporting schedules and a continuous improvement loop.
As always, the team at Half Past Nine are here to support you should you need us! Data analytics & visualization is our passion. We’ll happily confess to being full-on data geeks who get a kick out of showing our clients how much extra revenue they’ve earned thanks to our obsession with all things analytics.
Feel free to get in touch anytime via email or our contact form. We’d be delighted to explore how we can help you harness the power of data analytics & visualization to turbocharge your marketing strategy and tactical delivery.
What To Read Next:
Read next
Creating a landing page that drives high conversions is essential for effective advertising campaigns. The key to a successful landing page is a clear and compelling call-to-action (CTA) that guides visitors toward a single goal. By focusing on this primary objective, businesses can increase their leads and improve overall campaign performance.
Effective landing pages often utilize well-designed templates, clean layouts, and concise messaging. These elements help maintain visitor attention and reduce the likelihood of them leaving the page. Additionally, personalizing the content to resonate with the target audience can significantly enhance engagement.
Conversion rates can be improved by incorporating elements such as testimonials, relevant images, and strategic use of whitespace. These elements build trust and highlight the value proposition of the offer, making the visitor more likely to take action. Utilizing best practices and continuously optimizing the landing page will ensure it remains effective over time.
Essentials of Effective Landing Pages
Creating an effective landing page involves focusing on design and layout, as well as crafting compelling content. These elements work together to capture visitor attention and drive conversions.
Design and Layout Considerations
A clean and organized design is crucial. An effective landing page for ads should have a simple structure that guides the visitor's eye to the CTA. Avoid clutter. Remove extra navigation to keep the visitor focused on the main action you want them to take.
Visual elements like high-quality images or videos can capture attention. Use colors that align with your brand but also create contrast to make the CTA stand out. Consistent font styles and sizes help maintain readability, while white space enhances content focus.
Content Is King: Crafting Compelling Copy
The headline should quickly communicate the main benefit or message of the page. It needs to be clear and persuasive. Compelling copy is crucial. Use a value proposition to explain what the visitor gains by completing the desired action.
- Bullet points* can break down benefits or features in an easy-to-read format. Avoid long paragraphs – be direct and concise. Testimonials or case studies can add credibility and encourage trust. Ensure that all text supports the main goal without overwhelming the reader. Keep it straightforward and focused.
Optimization Strategies for Google Ads
Effective optimization of Google Ads involves enhancing keyword relevance, leveraging analytics, and conducting A/B tests to improve ad performance and user experience. Focusing on these strategies can lead to higher ad efficiency and better return on investment.
Keyword Relevance and Ad Copy
Keywords are the backbone of any Google Ads campaign. Ensuring keyword relevance means that the keywords used in ads must match what potential customers are searching for. This involves extensive keyword research to find terms that align with user intent.
Ad copy plays a crucial role in optimization. The text should be clear and compelling, directly addressing the needs highlighted by the keywords. Including keyword-rich anchor text, such as phrases that link directly to landing page best practices, can improve ad quality scores and relevance.
Here are some tips:
- Use exact match keywords for highly relevant searches.
- Write ad copy that reflects the keyword intent.
- Highlight unique selling propositions (USPs) to stand out.
Utilizing Analytics for Improvement
Analytics is essential for measuring and improving the performance of Google Ads. Google offers tools like Google Analytics and Google Ads reports that provide insights into user behavior. Key metrics like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and bounce rate help in understanding how well ads are performing.
By analyzing this data, advertisers can make informed decisions about where to allocate budget and which landing pages need improvement. For instance, a high bounce rate might indicate that a landing page does not match user expectations. Optimization efforts should focus on making the landing page closely match the promises made in the ad, which can be guided by Google’s guidelines.
A/B Testing for Performance Tweaks
A/B testing is a method where two versions of an ad or landing page are compared to see which performs better. This involves changing variables like headlines, images, and calls-to-action to see what resonates the most with users.
Running A/B tests can lead to significant insights. For example, one version of an ad might have a higher CTR because of a more compelling headline. Tools like Google Optimize can be used for this purpose. When tweaking landing pages, it's important to implement changes like strategic CTA placements and messaging.
By systematically testing different aspects of an ad campaign, advertisers can fine-tune their strategies to maximize performance and conversion rates.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) focuses on improving the number of visitors who take the desired action on your landing page. This can be achieved through effective CTA elements and trust signals like testimonials.
Call-to-Action Elements
The call-to-action elements are crucial for encouraging visitors to act. These elements should be clear, concise, and placed prominently.
Use action-oriented language like "Sign Up Now" or "Get Started Today." The button or link for the CTA should stand out with contrasting colors to grab attention. It's essential to perform A/B testing to see which CTA versions drive higher conversions. Split testing different offers or placements can significantly improve landing page performance.
Trust Signals and Testimonials
Trust signals and testimonials help build credibility and reassure visitors about your service or product.
Displaying testimonials from satisfied customers can increase the conversion rate by proving that others have benefited from your offering. Trust badges, like security seals or endorsements, add a layer of trust. Positive reviews and ratings should be easy to find on the page, boosting visitor confidence and leading to more conversions. Aim to include images of real people with their testimonials for added authenticity.
Building a Perfect Landing Page for Advertising
Meta’s Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC) are transforming how advertisers run their marketing efforts on Facebook. These campaigns automate up to 150 creative combinations at once, helping advertisers save time while optimizing ad performance. By leveraging machine learning, ASC identifies the best audiences, driving more efficient and effective results.
ASC campaigns focus on smarter and faster ad conversions. Unlike manual setups, Advantage+ campaigns have preset settings that streamline the creation process. This results in higher performance and less time spent on configuration, making it ideal for businesses looking to maximize their advertising efforts with minimum hassle.
For those interested in taking advantage of this automated solution, Meta’s Advantage+ simplifies the setup and management of ad campaigns. By using advanced algorithms, it ensures that campaigns reach the right audience, improving the cost per acquisition and overall return on investment.
Understanding Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns
Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns streamline the ad creation process by using automated systems to target the best audiences. This method improves efficiency and reduces the need for manual adjustments.
The Role of Meta’s ASC in Digital Marketing
Meta’s Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns play a crucial role in digital marketing. These campaigns use machine learning to identify and reach the most relevant audiences. This automated process helps businesses save time and resources while improving ad performance.
Instead of manually selecting audiences, the system dynamically adjusts settings to optimize results. Advertisers only need to choose a country, and the platform handles audience targeting. This leads to higher efficiency and potentially better return on ad spend (ROAS).
Components of ASC Campaigns
Components of ASC campaigns include automated targeting, dynamic creative testing, and centralized budget management. Automated targeting eliminates the need for manual audience adjustments, allowing the system to find the best placements.
Dynamic creative testing is another key feature, enabling advertisers to upload various creative assets such as static images and videos. The system then rapidly tests these assets to determine the best-performing ones. This approach saves time and optimizes ad delivery.
Budget management in ASC campaigns is more flexible. Unlike traditional campaigns, where budgets are set manually, the ASC system adjusts spending based on performance. This ensures that the best-performing ads receive the most budget, maximizing efficiency and effectiveness. These features make ASC campaigns a valuable tool for digital marketers seeking to optimize their advertising strategies.
Launching an ASC Campaign
Creating and launching Meta Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns involves setting up ads and targeting the right audience to optimize performance.
Creating Your ASC Ads
To start, navigate to Ads Manager and select Create. Choose Sales as your campaign objective. Then, opt for the Advantage+ shopping campaign.
Click Continue. Many settings are preset for ASC campaigns. You can review these by selecting See all preset settings.
Meta's ASC uses machine learning to create up to 150 ad combinations. This helps in finding the best-performing ads. Customize your ads by uploading product images, writing ad copies, and setting a budget.
Ensure your ads are visually appealing. High-quality images and clear, engaging text result in better performance.
Targeting and Optimization
ASC targets both new and existing customers. To set up targeting, first define your audience's demographics, interests, and behaviors. ASC leverages machine learning for optimizing ad delivery, finding the most likely buyers.
Utilize custom audiences to target people who have interacted with your business before. Lookalike audiences can help reach users similar to your best customers.
Monitor campaign performance regularly. Use the data to refine targeting and improve ad effectiveness. Adjust budgets based on what works best, ensuring optimal performance and better return on investment.
By following these steps, you can effectively launch and optimize your ASC campaigns, reaching the most relevant audience efficiently.
Measuring Campaign Success
Measuring the success of Advantage+ Shopping campaigns involves tracking specific performance metrics and analyzing data to ensure your advertising goals are met. This includes monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) and interpreting data within the Meta Ads Manager.
Key Performance Indicators
To evaluate the effectiveness of ASC campaigns, it is essential to focus on several KPIs. Click-through rate (CTR) measures the proportion of people who clicked on the ad after seeing it. A higher CTR often indicates a more engaging ad.
Conversion rate indicates the number of visitors who completed a desired action, such as making a purchase. This helps assess how well the ad translates interest into actions.
Return on ad spend (ROAS) calculates the revenue generated for every dollar spent on the campaign. A higher ROAS means better efficiency in ad spending.
Cost per acquisition (CPA) measures the cost to acquire one customer. Keeping a low CPA while maintaining or improving conversion rates indicates a cost-effective campaign.
Analyzing ASC Data
Analyzing data from ASC campaigns requires understanding patterns and making informed decisions based on them. Segmentation of data by audience demographics or behaviors helps identify which groups are responding best to ads.
A/B testing different ad elements, such as headlines or images, helps find the most effective combination for attracting customers.
Visualizing trends with tools like graphs or charts in Meta Ads Manager allows easy comparison over time. This aids in identifying periods of better performance and understanding possible reasons behind them.
Using these methods, advertisers can continually optimize their campaigns by adjusting their strategies based on the insights gained from data analysis. For more details on ASC performance, refer to the insights available on Meta’s Advantage+ performance.
