/ How to set up marketing analytics for your business

How to set up marketing analytics for your business

A business intelligence system can provide your business with a wealth of data to help you make informed decisions about your marketing campaigns.

Yet, far too many marketing teams end up using spreadsheets and manual data entry to track their results, even at businesses that already use a BI tool. This not only makes it difficult to get accurate data, but also makes it hard to spot trends and make changes in real time.

Luckily, there are a number of BI platforms available that can make tracking your marketing campaigns a breeze. By understanding which marketing strategies are working and which ones aren’t, you can save your company time and money while increasing your return on investment.

If you want to take advantage of the power of your marketing data (and more) then you need to have a BI system in place. Here’s everything you need to know about setting one up for your business.

 
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What is a BI system?

So what is a BI system? In short, it’s a tool that allows you to track, measure, and analyze your business data from all the different software your business uses. BI systems are useful in many different situations and industries, but they’re especially useful for marketing teams, who can analyze their data in new ways.

This data can then be used to improve your marketing strategies, optimize your campaigns, and ultimately increase your ROI. Marketing analytics platforms come in all shapes and sizes, but the best ones will offer features like:

Advanced reporting

Most marketing analytics platforms will offer some form of reporting, but the best ones will go above and beyond to provide detailed, actionable insights. In most tools, static reports are replaced by dynamic, real-time dashboards, which allow for much easier, natural analysis.

Data visualization

The best BI systems will make it easy to visualize your data, spot trends, and make decisions accordingly. When you can make sense of your data at a glance, you can make changes on the fly and see results immediately.

Real-time tracking

Some marketing analytics platforms only offer static reports, but the best ones will update in real time so you can always be sure you’re making decisions with the most up-to-date data.

Integrations

If you want to get the most out of your BI system, look for one that integrates with your other tools, such as your CRM or email marketing platform. Otherwise, data will be siloed and hard to access, and you’ll miss out on insight.

 

Benefits of developing a marketing analytics strategy

There are a number of benefits that come with developing a marketing analytics strategy. By leveraging your data correctly, you can boost your marketing success and enjoy much more successful campaigns, but that can only happen if all the pieces work together.

In the past, marketers didn’t really know how successful their campaigns were until they were over. This sort of post-mortem analysis isn’t very valuable because it’s very easy to invest a lot of time, money, and resources into a campaign that, unbeknownst to everyone, is failing anyway.

When you have a BI system in place, your marketing data is no longer a guessing game. You’ll be able to track exactly which campaigns are working and which ones aren’t, and you can make changes accordingly.

This ensures that you’re always making decisions based on data rather than guesswork, which can save your business a lot of time and money.

 
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You can launch a marketing campaign—but how do you know if it’s actually working? With a BI system, you can track your campaigns in real-time and make changes accordingly. This allows you to optimize your campaigns on the fly and see results immediately.

With data, marketers can intervene when their campaigns go off the rails. They can monitor their key performance indicators closely, so that they know the second there’s a problem.

Better yet, businesses don’t need to generate these reports themselves. In a BI tool, a data source can power a dynamic dashboard directly without needing any manual input from a user at all.

Generating reports manually is time-consuming and it’s often difficult to get accurate data. However, with a BI system, you can automate your reporting so that you can spend more time focusing on other aspects of your business.

All this adds up to the number one reason why marketing teams need to become more data-driven: cost savings. BI tools can help marketers dramatically improve their financials just by giving them the knowledge they need to perform better.

When you have a BI system in place, you can track your ROI for each of your marketing campaigns. This allows you to see which campaigns are actually providing a positive return, and you can adjust your budget accordingly.

 

How to set up marketing analytics

Now that you know the benefits of setting up a BI system, let’s take a look at how to actually do it. Here are the steps you need to follow:

Decide on your goals

The first step in setting up a marketing analytics strategy is to decide which metrics you want to track.

This will vary depending on your business goals, but some common metrics include website traffic, conversion rate, bounce rate, email open rate, and click-through rate.

How should you determine which metrics to track? Start by thinking about your business goals and what success looks like. Once you know that, you can reverse engineer the process and determine which metrics will help you achieve those goals.

Collect your data

The next step is to actually collect the data. Many marketing tools, like Google Analytics, offer dynamic reporting, while other sources are harder to track in real time. One marketing source that’s especially popular nowadays is social media analytics, which helps to track customer sentiment.

BI tools allow you to collect data from multiple sources and connect it all in one place. This can give you a more comprehensive view of your marketing performance and help you spot trends that you might otherwise miss.

 
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Analyze your data

Now that you have all of the necessary data, it’s time to start analyzing it. Look for trends and patterns in your results to see what’s working and what isn’t. Notice where there are spikes or dips in performance and try to determine the cause.

The goal here is to gain insights into your marketing campaigns so that you can make improvements and get better results. Once you understand your data well, you can start making changes to your campaigns accordingly.

Visualize your data

BI tools allow you to visualize your data so that it’s easy to understand and share with others. With features such as dashboards and data visualizations, you can quickly see how your marketing campaigns are performing and make decisions accordingly.

In many tools, users can visualize their data while they analyze it in an ad-hoc way. Not only does this make analysis much easier, since you’re dealing with graphs and not numbers, but it gives users a better idea of how to visualize their data.

Create your dashboards

Once you have all of your data organized and visualized, it’s time to create shareable dashboards for key stakeholders such as your boss or clients.

Dashboards allow anyone who’s interested in your results to quickly and easily see how you’re doing without having to wade through tons of data themselves.

Make use of dashboard features like filtering and drill-downs to give people the ability to customize the information they see. In many of these tools, you can embed your dashboards on external sites and apps to boost access.

Who should receive your dashboards and reports? It depends on your organization, but some common stakeholders include your boss, clients, and other team members. Typically, you’ll want to share dashboards with people who are decision-makers or who need to be kept updated on your marketing progress.

Adjust your strategy

Finally, don’t forget that a marketing strategy is never “finished.”

As your business goals change over time, so too will the metrics you need to track to measure success. Be sure to adjust and adapt your system on an ongoing basis so that it always meets the needs of your business.

Adjusting your marketing campaigns based on your findings is an important part of the process. By constantly tweaking and improving your campaigns, you can ensure that you’re always getting the best results possible.

By making small changes to your campaigns, you can have a big impact on your results. And, over time, these changes can add up to big improvements in your marketing performance.

 

The bottom line

Marketing analytics is a powerful tool that can help you improve your marketing campaigns and get better results.

Following the steps outlined above, you can set up your own BI system and start reaping the benefits immediately. And once you have a BI system in place, you’ll be able to make better-informed decisions about your marketing campaigns and ultimately save your company time and money.

Check out some related resources:

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