Maximizing results: The importance of analytics in marketing

One of the things that marketing managers learn first is that modern marketing is far more complicated than meets the eye. In order to introduce your brand to a decent online audience you need to create a good website, tackle SEO, tackle social media, and use the right promotional content. You also need to develop a deep understanding of your target audience and find a unique way to address them. And, to make any of this possible, you need to know how to gather and utilize marketing analytics. To help highlight the last point, we will use this article to outline the importance of analytics in marketing. Furthermore, we will outline the key analytics that will aid you with data-driven marketing when it comes to web stories.

The importance of analytics in marketing

Marketing without analytics is essentially impossible. While we can end our article with this sentence, let's dig a bit deeper. Namely, the reason why analytics is so important in marketing is that it tells you precisely where your marketing is, was, and ought to be. If you properly rely on marketing analytics you will gain valuable data that will help you spearhead your brand in the right direction. Meanwhile, if you don't use marketing analytics properly, you will likely waste a lot of time and money on fruitless endeavors.

Understanding your marketing efforts

The importance of analytics in marketing lies in the fact that it attaches numbers to your marketing. Without proper analytics, the only way to determine whether your marketing is successful is either by feel or by rudimentary descriptions. And while it can be beneficial to say that your brand is doing better than it once did, doing so doesn't really paint the whole picture. In order to know if your marketing efforts are worthwhile you need to rely on proper analytics. Through them, you can not only track how you are doing but also compare yourself to prior results.

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Making data-driven campaigns

It is also worth mentioning that the point of marketing analytics isn't solely to overview the marketing campaigns you have in play. You should also use marketing analytics to make data-driven campaigns that stand to yield decent results. Through careful analytics, you can outline which areas of your marketing are the most flawed. And you can also outline which ones tend to perform best. If you combine this with a decent knowledge of your target audience, you will come out with an effective marketing campaign.

Proper testing

Even with ample prior knowledge and marketing experience, developing a decent marketing campaign will require testing. Even if you follow all the ongoing marketing trends, you still cannot predict how effective your marketing will be, or whether you'll hit the right note with your target audience. So, in order to run and develop a marketing campaign you will have to experiment with different marketing approaches and tweak them until they yield results. Well, the only way to do this effectively is by relying on marketing analytics.

If you have proper marketing analytics set up, it is only a matter of time before you hit your mark. Each change you perform will, or at least should, show results in analytics. Based on those results, you can look to modify or completely change your approach to a certain marketing segment. The more experienced you get with marketing, the easier it will be to determine which segments you ought to change. But, it is only through time and careful testing that you'll be able to find out whether your changes are for the better.

How to use marketing analytics with web stories

What we've outlined so far are the fairly broad advantages that emphasize the importance of analytics in marketing. But, while it is important to have a broad understanding of analytics, we feel that you should also grow to appreciate it on a more individual level. Analytics in marketing doesn't have to only be used for large-scale campaigns or full branding overhauls. You can, and should, also use analytics for smaller projects and decisions. Especially if you feel that these smaller projects and decisions can have a ripple effect on your entire marketing.

As an example we are closest to, we will use web stories.

Learning which type of stories perform best

The point of web stories is to capture and maintain the audience's attention. Some are better at this than others. And, unfortunately, there is no one clear solution to creating engaging web stories, or how you should use them in your marketing. As we've often mentioned, you will need to understand both the web story format and your target audience in order to create engaging web stories. But, you also need to understand how various aspects of your web stories can impact your marketing. And you have to have clear metrics that outline these impacts. Both long-term and short-term.

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Through analytics, you may find that web stories that contain video content draw in a bigger crowd. But, web stories that have some form of written content have better conversion rates. Now, the question becomes what your marketing goals are. And, how you can set your web stories up so that they meet these goals. Even smaller differences like the tone of the web story, the length, or even the color palette can be surprisingly impactful. Among the metrics you can track are:

• Story views.
• Slide views
• CTA clicks
• AVG story depth.
• AVG reading time.

These metrics can give you a precise idea of how well your web stories are doing. And, whether certain design choices could improve them.

A/B testing

We already mentioned that experimentation is a big part of data-driven marketing development. Well, one of the best ways to experiment with web stories is through A/B testing. A/B testing will give you a clear idea of which version of a certain web story element will perform better. The more minute the difference is, the more precise you can be with your conclusion. Of course, performing A/B testing will require some industry and marketing experience. But, the more you get into it, the easier it will become to deduce which web stories will serve you best.

Conclusion

By now you should have a fairly good idea of the importance of analytics in marketing. Keep in mind that when it comes to web stories, StorifyMe is here to help you track, analyze, compare, and improve your content. So, don't shy away from contacting us. The sooner you do so, the sooner you will start to reap the benefits of having top-notch story content.

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