- Reading time: 3 mins
- Topics:
- Inbound Marketing
What do your business’ email newsletter, social media, and website have in common? Other than being part of your online marketing, they are valuable sources of data. Collecting and analyzing this data can help to inform your business’ marketing strategies and overall performance. To be most effective, you must track only the data that is relevant to your business’ goals.
To help you figure out the right types of data to track and why, we’ve put together a brief guide:
1. Website Data. In today’s world, your website is your storefront. That being said, data produced by it should be tracked as it is extremely valuable. Data to track includes visitors to your website, pages viewed, bounce rate, and sources of traffic. This tells you who is visiting your website, where they’re coming from, and how long they stay on your website. What is considered a good rate for any of these metrics can vary by industry. The best part is, this information is available for free through Google Analytics. All you need to do to get started is create an account and add a tracking code to your website.
2. Social Media Data. Engaging with your followers on social media is a worthwhile marketing activity. One of these benefits is that social media provides a wealth of data for not just your respective profiles but for your other content as well. If you share content such as photos, videos, or links on your profile, you can track users’ engagement with it in the form of likes, shares, or comments. You can also narrow your focus to study users who fit a certain demographic including age, gender, or geographic location. This information can be used to build your customer personas and determine which content resonates with your target audience.
3. Lead Generation Data. The true test of your content’s effectiveness is how well it generates leads for your business. Lead generation is essential to your inbound marketing strategy. Inbound marketing is all about turning readers of your content into loyal customers. Customer relationship management systems (CRM) can help you to track this information including opt-in rates for offers, email opens, lead generation, and conversion rate.
4. ROI. Ultimately, all of these types of data make up your return on investment (ROI). Your ROI is revenue generated through content marketing compared to total investment in content creation and distribution. This data can tell you the value of certain marketing activities and inform your strategies so that you can choose where to invest more of your time and resources.
Knowing what marketing data to analyze can not only inform your business’ strategies but it can also help you to get to know your clients better. In order to make the most of this data, first you must track it.
