When implementing a digital marketing strategy, knowing how to create high-quality campaigns is only the first part of the equation. The latter part is monitoring, evaluating, and updating your strategy over time.
Behind every digital marketing tactic is a wealth of data that signifies the good and the bad, as well as opportunities for improvement. Understanding these analytics will allow you to optimize campaigns in the short-term, as well as provide long-term insights to improve future digital marketing efforts.
However, this advice does not simply jump off your excel spreadsheet. You’ll need to know which metrics to look for, how to interpret them, and how to apply them. If these are skills you’d like to develop, read on for three reasons why they’re skills you’ll be happy to have.
1. Understanding Your Audience Is Essential for Digital Marketing Careers
When initiating any sort of digital marketing campaign during your digital marketing career, the first step is always to think about who you are hoping to reach. But where do you find this information?
For many companies, Google Analytics is the primary measurement platform for all things data—digital marketing-related and otherwise. Google Analytics, or GA as it is colloquially called, shows you who visits your website, how they got there, and what they do when they get there.
The Audience section of GA contains a variety of reports that offer useful demographic information such as age and gender, as well as your audience’s interests, location, and which device they use to engage with your company.
Not only does this information help you strategize your digital marketing efforts—but you can also use it to monitor their success. Creating a campaign targeted at tech-savvy millennials, for instance? GA can help you figure out whether you’ve hit the mark.
2. Analytics and SEO Go Hand-In-Hand After Digital Marketing School
As discussed in our SEO basics blog, there is no underestimating the importance of search visibility for any business. The more traffic your website generates, the more leads—and ultimately, customers—you will acquire.
Understanding website analytics will allow you to track which queries are driving the most traffic, as well as monitor other important metrics such as total clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and average position for specific keywords. You can also use the Referral report to analyze your backlinks and ensure they are from reputable websites.
With this data, the SEO possibilities are endless: you can optimize web pages for key queries, create targeted content, refine your keyword strategy, and more.
3. You Can Discover Your Digital Marketing ROI
No matter which domain you work in after digital marketing training, knowing the overall effectiveness of your projects is essential. Being able to say exactly how many people became customers out of your ad campaigns, social media strategy, or content marketing efforts is crucial.
The Conversions section of GA is dedicated to these metrics. Here, you can learn the amount of revenue generated from each channel (such as paid search, email, and referral traffic), as well as compare how this revenue has changed over time.
Are you interested in obtaining your digital marketing diploma?
Contact Cumberland College to learn more!