What is marketing analytics software?
According to G2, marketing analytics software must contain the following attributes:
- Collects data on marketing campaigns distributed across a variety of channels
- Monitors marketing campaigns and targeted audiences to identify results
- Analyzes results and compiles data of marketing campaigns
- Visualizes marketing campaign performance via an analytics dashboard
What does a marketing analytics dashboard enable you to do?
For organizations that are utilizing multiple channels to engage with customers and drive traffic to their website, a marketing analytics dashboard is critical to be able to view real-time data on demand and make agile decisions.
The dashboard will enable you to monitor all of your digital marketing efforts across all of your channels (e.g. social media, paid social media, SEO, website analytics, Google Ads, email marketing) and audience within a centralized location. By having this data in one location, you will be able to improve your ROI by easily identifying effective marketing methods and adjusting your campaigns.
But without Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and goals, your dashboard will just be a set of metrics. It’s very important to determine what you’re trying to achieve when setting up your metrics so that you can make strategic decisions. By tracking your metrics against your KPIs, you will be able to better optimize your marketing strategies and tactics.
So what do you need to consider before building your dashboard?
- What are your marketing strategies and KPIs? In other words, what metrics do you want to hit in order to prove that you are on the path to success?
- What metrics and data points can you utilize to track your performance against your KPIs?
- What digital marketing channels are you currently using?
- What tools are you using to track your metrics on these channels?
- Are there any channels that you’re not tracking metrics on that you think you should be? If so, how will you get access to that data?
Selecting marketing analytics platform can be very difficult and overwhelming, because there are 100s of platforms that claim to have some level of marketing analytics. Factors to consider when selecting a platform include:
- What metrics and integrations do you need?
- If you’re currently using a marketing platform (e.g. for email marketing or SEO), do any of your existing platforms offer centralized marketing analytics features?
- Does this platform provide the data that you’re seeking? And does it empower you to make real-time decisions?
Conclusion
I’ve seen so many organizations suffer from disjointed digital marketing strategies. The most effective organizations have a centralized view of all of their efforts so that they can determine what is working, what is not working, and why it’s not working. The best way to track this performance is by centralizing all of this data into a single dashboard so that you can make quick and educated decisions.
Need any help?
Need any help setting up a marketing analytics dashboard for your organization? Schedule a chat to discuss how I can help you!
