Do you ever feel like you don’t have enough time in the day to get everything done? You’re not alone. Managing your time is an important skill in advertising and marketing. If you work at a data, advertising, or marketing agency, it’s the difference between gaining and losing clients. You simply can’t afford to make marketing decisions based only on incomplete data, a gut reaction, and past experience. Today’s influential marketing decisions are now determined by big data and analytics. Data analytics can help you identify effective activities. In addition, data analytics identifies where your time should be spent to get the best results!
In a recent study by the Martech Industry Council, some interesting statistics arise from advertisers and marketers:
- 85% said they were spending more time managing marketing technology, at the expense of spending time better marketing and engaging with customers.
- 98% said they wanted more information about the individuals and companies in their databases.
- 60% were asking for a more accurate understanding of the buyer persona and person most likely to buy.
- 75% surveyed said they’d prefer to spend more time developing and launching new campaigns.
The marketers surveyed acknowledged that they spend as little time as possible dealing with it. Moreover, marketers want to be able to utilize data more efficiently to increase time management in marketing and advertising campaigns.
Let’s take a look at five ways data analytics can save you time on advertising and marketing campaigns.
Right Data
You probably know that having accurate data is necessary for making effective marketing decisions. It may be surprising that having too much data can actually harm your marketing strategy if not utilized correctly. For example, Forbes recommends start with key performance indicators (KPIs) and work backward. For those unfamiliar with the concept, KPIs represent measurable values that give an indication of a campaign’s performance. Some examples of KPIs for marketing include visitors to the site, landing page visitors, email collections, registrations, and click-to-calls.
Stay away from vanity measures. Likes on social media do not equal MQLs and SQLs. Quality beats quantity hands down every day. A million likes do not equal an increase in sales. For example, if you have CMOs, CFOs, or others with purchasing power engaging with you, you are making an impact where it is important. Evaluate that you’re getting the right data…the data where it counts. As a result, this will help you focus on what’s effective.
Audience and Channels
Data analytics allows you to know who you should be targeting in your marketing campaigns. However, by tracking the type of visitors who come to your site, you can build personas around those who engage. Data can be used to determine what your audience interacts with on your site and in your campaigns. This approach relates back to having set KPIs to make content decisions (like blog posts) for your audience. One example of an important data set to take into account is your traffic sources from devices.
The more social media channels you focus on the less time you’ll have to dedicate to each channel. Very rarely is it important for your company’s image that you are present on every channel. You should focus on one or two channels. For example, if the target audience is on Facebook and LinkedIn, cease using Instagram where you won’t reach your intended audience. There’s nothing wrong with spending time trying to gain an audience on other channels. If you’re looking to be efficient with your time, focus on those channels where your buyers/potential buyers are.
Target the Right Keywords
Data analytics reveals what frustrations buyers are searching to eliminate. As a result, you want to focus on what your audience is looking for. Using the correct keywords can help drive traffic to your channels. The amounts of data provided by the Google AdWords Keyword Tool can help you determine your potential keywords. Moreover, this can be used to see which keywords your competitors are targeting. And this can determine which keywords are worth bidding against. These keywords can drive your business forward by inserting them into social media marketing, content marketing on the website.
Optimize
Past data can be used to predict future outcomes of your campaigns. For example, by studying the performance of your past campaigns and ad-targeting efforts, you can see what has worked and what hasn’t. If Facebook ads are out-performing Google ads, you should allocate your budget more toward Facebook, for instance. And you can optimize for different demographics within your audience. If you know that your target audience frequents certain particular sites, focus your ad targeting on those sites. The more time spent on meaningful contact, the less time spent on activities that produce little to no results.
Prioritize
In conclusion, a crucial part of using your time wisely is focusing on important tasks. Know which actions you can take to generate immediate and short-term results. Knowing which tasks are tied to success over others should inform how you organize your day. Write down all the aspects of the campaign you need to complete and break them into smaller, more manageable groups. One should always ask “Is this working?” Marketers and advertisers can be guilty of not engaging in activities that add the most value to the campaign. Identify important components to your buyers. As an example – a lot of buyers listen to podcasts. If your buyers listen to podcasts, create a podcast.
Finally, data analytics gives meaning to the data collected. Without analytics — examining the data to discover patterns, correlations, insights, and trends, the data is meaningless. Applying analytics to data will lead to improved customer service, greater efficiency, increased sales, and a boost in competitiveness. Therefore, data analytics involves examining data sets to gain insights or draw conclusions or predictions about future activity and trends. As a result, data analytics means greater efficiency in managing the amount of time you’re spending on any one campaign. This allows you to get better results in less time in marketing and advertising campagins.
