Did We Ever Really Leave?
While the evolution of marketing continues to reveal diverse iterations of how to best achieve our marketing objectives and win new business, the question is: have the core principles really changed that much?
The basics of
– identifying our target audience and
– creating the message to best reach, motivate, inspire and move to respond are still with us.
But one big difference between now and then is that back then we did not have digital tools to fully measure our efforts through to conversion. Fortunately, now we do. These are the differentiators that let us see source of traffic, time on site, and a myriad of other behavioral factors. We can even analyze comparable measurements to see which of our own messages outperform each other through:
As a result of all of this access to so much data, we can learn who is getting our message, why one approach works better for a particular audience , and further hone in on the emotional impact that prompts one response over another.
Tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and other dashboard minded platforms are great. These tools give us a solid sense of how our sites are performing technically, and how that translates to revenue. But we also need marketing analytics tools, so we can gain a big-picture view of our marketing efforts.
The fact is you need both web analytics and marketing analytics. If you spend time analyzing both your site’s performance and your efforts’ performance you will have a clear picture of what’s working, what needs help, and what demands a change.
As more tools and resources become available to us and marketing analytics continues to evolve, we should see a game plan emerge on how to make it a smoother, more repeatable process, helping us become more efficient, successful marketers.