The Best Digital Marketing Strategy Lies In Your Data
It is the job of a digital marketing agency is to create a good strategy. The best way to get to that strategy by looking at the weekly, monthly, and quarterly data. And, never rely solely on automated digital marketing reports to tell the full story. That unique digital marketing data should be used to develop a hypothesis, or a scientific approach, of what to do next.
Digital Marketing Requires Both Left-Brain and Right-Brain
Business decisions always require a combination of both the analytical skills of the left brain and the artistic skills of the right brain. Especially when it comes to the best digital marketing strategy, the data analysis and the creatives have to work together. But in order to come up with the best creative, the data has to be available and understood.
When customers and clients see any piece of digital marketing content whether an online ad, email campaign, blog post, etc., there’s a lot that goes into it. The visuals and the copy themselves take time to create and they directly reflect on the brand. Plus, the placement, tracking, and details within that piece of content determine its success. Without data wrapped around current digital marketing efforts, you cannot make good decisions on how to move forward or what to do next.
We all have different skillsets and natural tendencies when it comes to the left and right brain. So make sure you hire an agency or team that can meet both the creative and analytical requirements to develop the best digital marketing strategy for your business.
The Right Digital Marketing Tools & Platforms
There are numerous tools that allow us to do research to understand particular markets. There is no perfect answer for any business but this research phase helps to make decisions on where to go. Starting with a detailed business profile is an important step to knowing the intent, competitors, and more.
There’s a lot of changes going on in the online data world and it’s a constant challenge. Keep in mind that digital marketing data will present itself through varying trends on different platforms. Understanding how the data is collected helps us keep an honest view of what we see within those platforms. Each platform may tell a different story. Marketers have to discern what the data is really saying. We often look in Google Analytics, one of the best free tools, to see the bigger picture of what’s going on with your business online. The best approach requires constantly working to better understand your business, its audience, and refining what works (and what doesn’t!) through all of the data and resources available.
Accurate Digital Marketing Data Setup & Tracking
The number one thing that requires the attention of a digital marketer before they can develop any kind of strategy is making sure that data tracking is set up correctly. This is very important because, without accurate data, decisions will be misguided.
To make the best digital marketing decisions you need accurate data!
Digital marketing data tracking is unique to every business situation. The data behind the digital marketing strategy ultimately displays numbers relative to the desired outcome. Those numbers have to be pulled through accurately to the right places which can mean placing code, integrations, and other setup points depending on the application. This digital marketing data tracking has to be set up before a strategy can be realized.
Improving Digital Marketing Strategy Using Data Over Time
We have all heard that “patience is a virtue” and this truth carries through in digital marketing this is very true. Of course, we always want to see results right away. But think about your audience and natural human behavior when it comes to consuming digital marketing. Not everyone is going to see your paid ad as soon as it goes live and they’re not going to open your email campaign as soon as it is sent. Some strategies, like content marketing or SEO efforts, for example, can take even longer to see a result. Times when you can tell right away if a digital marketing strategy is working or not are rare.
When looking at digital marketing data over time, a clearer story of the overall strategy’s success is told.
When a digital marketing strategy is launched, time needs to pass for enough data to be collected to see results. There is no exact sweet spot and it is possible to have a stale or stagnant digital marketing strategy. But you can also pull the plug too soon before the resulting data can materialize.
There are significant advantages in allowing a strategy to run long enough to see useful data returned. It’s important to keep in mind that digital marketing data is not going to give an exact answer but rather will show useful trends. Data about your particular online presence needs to be collected. Patience is required to make good digital marketing strategy decisions.
Ongoing Data Analysis Informs the Best Digital Marketing Strategy
Digital marketing agencies should go extremely deep with data analysis because ultimately that understanding is what determines the strategy to take. There are a lot of small steps involved in the digital marketing process. It can be hard to know what to do and where to spend your marketing dollars at any given point. And the fact is, digital marketing is not easy. That is why the best digital marketing strategy also requires ongoing data analysis. There is no start and stop when it comes to marketing your business. The more good data collected the better and more informed the strategy will be.
Taking a data-driven approach to digital marketing does not ensure that the strategy will always work as intended.
There is no exact way to know the best move to make. Knowing the best next move based on unique data comes from years of experience. When something doesn’t work, understand that it didn’t work and use the known data to narrow down the next decision. It takes time to collect data, understands trends, and develop highly educated decisions. Overall, the best digital marketing strategy requires an understanding of digital data, science, art, and lots of patience!
If you have questions about how to set up your digital marketing data or aren’t sure what the numbers are telling you, we welcome you to schedule a 30-minute strategy meeting.
