As humans, we analyze more things than you would think. Before you take a bite of a dessert, you look to see how appetizing it is and then take a whiff of the chocolatey aroma before you dive into your first bite. Using your senses, you automatically think that you will LOVE it. Until you discover that the inside is full of strawberry filling that you absolutely hate. Your guest of honour on the other hand LOVES the strawberry filling, but everyone else at the table decides to put their fork down and skip out on dessert. Going forward, you will now all agree that you won’t order that dessert again.
Choosing which dessert to pick is like trial and error. You try it out, LOVE it, and recommend it to everyone you see, or write a bad review and move on to the next desert. How do we know this? Human experience. But, why are we talking about it? Because as a business owner, you want to be analyzing your customers’ buying patterns, experience, and feedback so that you can use that information to better serve your customers.
When you better serve your customers you make more money and give yourself a competitive edge.
A big part of marketing that many skip out on is what we call R&D: Research and Development. You have to analyze to learn what your customers are LOVING, and what your customers are not so crazy about to be able to make any improvements.
How do you think Coca-Cola became such a household name over the years? Not only buy selling coke.
They have so many different products they offer and each product has its own demographic that they market to. Now we’re not saying you have to have a million products to see consistent growth. You just need to pay attention as your business evolves and look for ways to cater to the right clientele you want to attract which in turn improves your ROI. In this article, we’re going to review a few definitions and key metrics, how to analyze them, and why you should. But first…
What is marketing optimization?
Marketing optimization is the process of using data and analysis to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of a marketing strategy. This can include testing different marketing tactics, analyzing customer data, and adjusting the strategy based on the results. The goal of marketing optimization is to maximize the return on investment (ROI) from your marketing efforts.
Why should you optimize your marketing?
There are several reasons why a business should optimize its marketing:
- Increases efficiency
Optimizing marketing efforts can help a business identify which tactics are most effective so that they can allocate resources accordingly. Spending more in the right places, and less in well, less effective places helps maximize your marketing budgets.
- Improves ROI
By identifying which tactics are most effective, a business can focus on those tactics and see a greater return on investment. When you intentionally build a system to track how much time and money is invested in creating and executing a specific marketing strategy with the goal of tying spend to return you start to see more clearly where your money is lost and gained.
- Improves targeting
Marketing optimization can help a business better understand its target audience and tailor its marketing efforts to reach them more effectively. You’ve heard that personalized marketing is the future and that people have come to expect that personal touch. Imagine how much more you could sell if you knew what they wanted to buy next. When you get to know your customer that closely you’ll start to see what some people buy and what order they buy it in so you can start recommending products in that order to other new customers.
- Allows you to stay competitive
By staying on top of marketing trends and constantly testing and optimizing efforts, a business can stay competitive in its industry. Think of all the business owners out there that never look at any data and do the same thing time and time again without making any changes. Every time you optimize your campaign you’re one step ahead of your competitors.
- Help to identify untapped opportunities
When you’re looking at data for trends and things like cause and effect sometimes you notice untapped areas of need or a problem your customers are looking for a solution to. When you see those new opportunities create an expansion plan and service that demand. - Gain better customer understanding
Optimizing marketing efforts can help a business understand their customers’ needs, interests and behaviour better so that they can provide them with a more personalized experience. You know that feeling when someone drops by to see you and brings you a cup of coffee or your favourite tea and you weren’t expecting it? When you can be that thoughtful of your customers they will notice the little things, the extra effort you put in to make their day and that’s what they will talk about.
The most evident reason really is: Why would you pay hundreds to thousands of dollars on your marketing and advertising campaigns when they aren’t bringing in any new business? And, if you’re not getting a return on your investment why do you continue to spend without looking for ways to improve your results? The more efficiently you spend your marketing dollars while actually getting a return on your investment, the higher your profit margins can be. If you analyze the results closely on an ongoing basis your results start to multiply so long as you are executing your improvement ideas consistently.
So, how do you get started when it comes to optimizing your marketing results?
- Define your goals and objectives: Clearly define what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts, such as increasing sales, building brand awareness, or acquiring new customers.
- Identify key performance indicators (KPIs): Determine which metrics are most important to track in order to measure the success of your marketing efforts. Common KPIs include website traffic, conversion rates, and customer acquisition costs.
- Collect your data: Use tools such as Google Analytics, social media analytics, or marketing automation software to collect data on your marketing efforts. At the very least make a list of all the places you promote your business so you know where to start looking for data to review.
- Analyze the data: Look for patterns and trends in the data to understand what is working and what is not. Use data visualization tools to make it easier to understand the data.
- Test and iterate: Use the insights from your data analysis to test new tactics and make adjustments to your marketing strategy. Continuously monitor the results and make adjustments as needed.
- Communicate the insights: Share the insights and results with the relevant stakeholders in the company even if that is just your internal team or staff so that they can understand the impact of the marketing efforts and make informed decisions themselves.
- Make data-driven decisions: Use the insights from the data analysis to make informed decisions about your marketing strategy and budget allocation.
It’s also important to note that data analysis is an ongoing process and it’s essential to continuously monitor and analyze the results in order to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and customer behaviours.
You want to look for indications of their buying behaviour so that you can fine-tune the path you are taking them down when they investigate your product or services specifically. For example, if 85% of customers click off from your “About Page”, then there might be something in the text that turns them off from buying from you. Or, maybe they want to learn more about you to see if you are the kind of person they want to do business with but, your about us page doesn’t really say anything. Or perhaps you make great how-to videos that you post to your social media pages but, people love them so much they follow your videos to do a project themselves instead of hiring you to do it for them. Sometimes great content doesn’t always have the impact you thought it would. But, you won’t know until you sit down and analyze all your data and come up with a specific plan you can execute to achieve the results you crave.
Don’t Forget to RINSE AND REPEAT!
Having the right marketing analytics solution in place is key to building a successful marketing program. By understanding where your audience is engaging and what is truly driving sales, you can make sure you are putting your money in the right place, at the right time, to achieve the right results.
If you’d like to analyze your current marketing results and get an outside opinion as to what is working, what isn’t, and what changes you could make to gain more from your marketing dollars, give us a call at 3SIXTY Marketing Solutions. We can provide you with the tools to capture your marketing data, understand how to analyze it, and how to implement changes to optimize your campaigns to increase your ROI.
Take advantage of our expertise, proven strategies, and advertising tactics now so that later this year, we can celebrate achieving all your marketing goals together.
