Your business is only as effective as its marketing strategy. That’s why marketing reports are great instruments to show which tactics are working and which are not. However, you must be able to properly interpret the data so you can apply it to your future marketing efforts.
The experts at Forbes Agency Council have a lot of experience creating and analyzing marketing reports for their businesses and clients. Below, 12 of them share effective ways to identify and make necessary adjustments to marketing strategy based on report data.
Members of Forbes Agency Council share effective ways to use data to adjust marketing strategy.Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Look At Market Research Responses
Effectively interpret data to separate the answers by key data points and concerns. Market research questions are generally presented with logic and fluidity. There are hidden gems within those responses that can paint a clear picture of how those respondents really feel and think. Critical assessment of results leads to more questions, which should be answered before strategy adjustment. – Pat Fiore, FIORE
2. Consider What Data Is Truly Important And Unique To Your Business
With the vast amount of marketing data available to marketers today, it’s key to first think about what data is important and unique to your business. Benchmarks can lead you astray. Secondly, it is key to focus on the data that can give you specific answers and directions. All data isn’t useful data, and more data isn’t better data. – A. Lee Judge, Content Monsta
3. Look At The Relationships Between Each Campaign And Revenue
The best way to interpret data for marketing is to track all marketing campaigns back to revenue. Even in top of mind awareness marketing, you can study the relationships between these tactics and direct response. Cost per lead, impressions and likes can be leading indicators, but success is driven by return on marketing spend. – Marcia Barnes, Valve+Meter Performance Marketing
4. Do Comprehensive Strategy Reassessments Each Quarter
One of the most important things for a company to do is to sit down and to look at their strategy quarterly. That means looking at all of the Social Media as well as looking at the website numbers. It is necessary to figure out where your strategy is low and then from there adjust accordingly. It is important to look at it from all sides. – Jon James, Ignited Results
5. Take A Holistic Approach
An important and often overlooked aspect of marketing analytics is assessing performance across channels simultaneously. Different channels play different roles in the consumer path to purchase, and one can impact the performance of another. For example, you may see a lift in online search activity when running TV ads, but if you only assess search in isolation you may not realize that correlation. – Stephanie Rogers, MERGE Boston
6. Increase Reporting Frequency
Increase the frequency of your reporting and constantly be looking to introduce new metrics that add value and inform strategy. Weekly or monthly reports on sales enablement feedback, the sharing of voice against competitors, press effectiveness or sentiment, and others can better inform overall marketing strategy and help decision makers make the necessary adjustments. – Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications
7. Look At Attribution
All business decisions need to be based on consistently increasing revenue and maintaining costs. Set up pixels and lead funnels that make it easier to attribute goals to specific marketing channels. From there, evaluate which channels are delivering the highest return on investment and determine what portion of your marketing budget should be allocated to each of them. – Kristopher Jones, SEO.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow noopener noreferrer” data-ga-track=”ExternalLink:http://lSEO.com/”>LSEO.com
8. Standardize Your Metrics
With so many different programs, you have to figure out a common metric—a standard way of measuring in order to effectively compare various components of the marketing strategy. It also takes time and discipline to interpret reports accurately. From there, marketers should always continue testing and learning. As marketers, we must continue to adjust in order to keep pace with our consumers. – Lori Paikin, NaviStone®
9. Define What Wins And Losses Look Like
The first step is to identify organizational objectives and decide which metrics matter. What does a win or loss look like? Then pinpoint the activities that are generating the desired outcomes and the ones that are inefficient or ineffective. Lastly, allocate the appropriate resources to activities that are creating inefficiencies while continuing to maintain and manage what’s working well. – Jeeyan Rostam-Abadi, Hawke Media LLC
10. Set Benchmarks For Testing Initiatives
A big obstacle to building successful strategies is the inability to read data properly and not adjusting as necessary. This is why a data-based benchmark approach can be helpful. Test an initiative you want to adopt for some months, making some assumptions. Then use data to learn what worked and what didn’t and adjust your approach accordingly, benchmarking your starting point. – Daniela Pavan, The Ad Store New York
11. Find The Story Behind The Data
We help dozens of companies improve marketing performance through optimization. The biggest thing you need to figure out is what story the data is telling you. What are the visitors paying attention to, what are they ignoring and where are they falling off? Find the hot buttons on what they care about most and leverage that to then remove friction points from point A to B. – Justin Christianson, Conversion Fanatics
12. Be Flexible And Learn How To Evolve
Data is only useful if it can provide marketers with actionable insights to help them adapt their plans to increase their effectiveness. There’s no one-size-fits-all, but some fundamentals include: Know what you are measuring, establish your baseline, track data over time, don’t act on one set of data alone and test adjustments in strategy with a smaller subset before making a wholesale change. – Chris Cavanaugh, Freeman
