We all want our websites to rank on search engines and convert leads into sales. But selling products and services takes more than just creating an appealing product page. As a company, you also need to understand your data and use it to boost your tracking and conversions. This is where digital marketing analytics tools come into play.
Quick Links:
What Are Digital Marketing Analytics Tools?
Marketing analytics tools help to measure marketing performance. They collect data from multiple channels and create reports tracking user behavior and campaign success. With this information, marketing teams can gather insights and test new ideas. With these tools, marketers can maximize their campaigns’ effectiveness and understand what’s worth investing in.
Companies that use marketing analytics tools address three main areas of marketing management: optimization, attribution, and rationalization. Choosing the right marketing analytics tools can make the difference between meeting one’s marketing goals or completely failing.
How to Understand Data-Driven Marketing
But are marketing analytics tools really that necessary? The answer is yes. As a Marketing Director/Manager, you want to learn more about your target audience and place your marketing budget into effective channels. Complex data management platforms (DMPs) help marketers look through piles of data and present the information in a usable way.
Data-driven marketing uses marketing analytics tools to help create an effective marketing strategy. Without data, marketers would struggle to create a customized plan to meet a company’s needs. Since data plays a crucial role in marketing, it’s understandable why there’s an emphasis on using the right tools.
Types of Digital Marketing Analytics Tools According to Strategy
You want to make sure your company has the right tools to help understand its marketing data. There are a couple of different digital marketing analytics tools to choose from that will help your company’s marketing results.
Events Based Tools
Events based tools help track user’s behavior, conversions, and events, whether on your website or mobile app. If you’re looking to understand how a user interacts with your website or a product, then this is what you need. These tools are ideal for marketers or product managers who want to identify user behavior and optimize funnels.
Make sure you choose event based tools that have broad-ranging capabilities. The more events you can track, the easier it is to unify the data. These tools include programs such as Heap, KissMetrics, Oribi, and Mix Panel. By understanding your user, you’ll make changes on your site that improve customer engagement.
Traffic Oriented Tools
Of course, as a business, you want to know how much traffic is coming to your site and where your website traffic is coming from. Programs like Google Analytics and Piwik provide free tracking of your website. You’ll be able to see where your visitors are coming from, how they landed on your website, how much time they spent on each page, and what pages they clicked on.
This information is very helpful when creating ad campaigns. Traffic-oriented tools are great for individuals, small and large businesses. If you’re interested in tracking new conversions or see how users actually use your site, this will not be enough.
Search Engine Analytics
When it comes to ranking on search engines, SEO is crucial on your website. Without SEO, your website and its content will go unseen on search engines. This means you will lose out on reaching your target audience and bringing that traffic to your website. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is an absolute must, as you need to be able to see which keywords are doing the job.
With the right skillset there are many tools to help you find the right keywords. A great option to maximise your success on keyword ranking is using a marketing network. Marketing networks have best in class SEO experts that can guide and manage this process for you. You can also track performance using search engine analytics to analyze the traffic you receive from search engines, showing you which search terms brought users to your website.
Google Console is an example of search engine analytics and is an excellent tool for marketers who want more traffic. Google AdWords or Bing Ads also provides analytics for ads as you’ll be able to view ad results, tracking their spending, and test variants. By knowing which keywords work, you’ll know how to improve paid and organic traffic.
Marketing Dashboards Tools
If you’re using different marketing tools, it can feel a little overwhelming as they’re not all visible on one dashboard. However, marketing dashboard tools take that pressure off by collecting data from multiple marketing channels and create a tailored dashboard.
Depending on the program, you’ll be able to track data from all social media platforms, sales platforms, traffic analytics platforms and pay-per-click channels. By monitoring multiple channels on one screen, you’ll be able to see the entire marketing performance. And when you’re marketing on various platforms, this creates functionality and flow that makes your job a little bit easier. Google Data Studio is a great tool to start.
Visual Behavior Tools
When it comes to conversions, the key is understanding how users behave on your website. If visitors aren’t making their way through the funnel, you need to figure out what’s stopping them from converting. This is where visual behavior tools help you out.
Programs like Hotjar and Crazyegg help you understand how your website design affects user behavior. These programs provide the data as a heat map highlighting the most clicked areas. You’ll see where visitors are clicking, their scrolling behavior, and where they stop.
This information is crucial in helping you create a successful buyer’s journey and reach your conversion goals. This tool is great for websites that are new or frequently changing.
A/B Testing Tools
It’s common for companies to test out different variations of their websites or specific pages to see which one gains the most engagement and conversions. Knowing how to read those variations can be a challenge for the untrained eye, while impeding results.
A/B testing is an essential part of website optimization and cannot be overlooked. Fortunately, using a marketing networks can help remove the guesswork, setting up and managing the tests using their wealth of existing knowledge and best practices.
Of course, creating A/B testing is one thing, but you also want an insight into how effective the variations are and what you need to do moving forward. This tool is useful for marketers who are interested in the site’s performance. A/B testing can help push visitors through the sales funnel and increase sales.
Competitor Analysis Tools
If there’s one thing company’s worry about, it’s their competition. Regardless of the industry, you’re not alone in it. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as you can learn a lot from your competitors. You want to be able to gain insight into competing businesses and see their strengths and weaknesses. By doing so, you can form an effective marketing strategy.
Though this wasn’t possible ten years ago, the beauty of technology today is you can find out what’s going on with your competitors without leaving your desk. Competitor Analysis Tools can compare traffic, analyze their social media, overview backlinks, country, and link age of your competitor’s website.
How Can I Integrate Digital Marketing Analytics Tools Across Platforms?
It’s a marketer’s dream to unify all their data in one place, but is it possible? Yes. Integrating data can be done with an anchor tool. It’s an all-in-one marketing analytics platform that covers the five most important analytics tools: event tracking, A/B testing, pre-built integrations, messaging, and API. By unifying data, marketing teams reduce the time spent resolving discrepancies and improve reporting time.
Conclusion
Each of these digital marketing analytics tools has its strengths and focus on specific areas. At the end of the day, as a marketing director, you need to choose the right marketing analytics tools that focus on your company’s needs.
That’s easier said than done as it’s hard to be an expert in everything. Luckily, you don’t need to be. Marketing networks have best in class experts in each area, using their know-how to help guide you and manage the process so you can achieve the best results.
