Data is the backbone of marketing. Metrics and analysis can mean the difference between a marketing campaign’s success or underperformance. But with so much data in increasingly larger sets, what information should marketers study and which should they cast aside. No matter how far technology progresses, some metrics will always be worth measuring. Here is a look at some of the most important data for marketers to track.
The era of big data has overwhelmed businesses with customer information – make sure you’re measuring the right data!
Know Your Customers – and Their Firms
Personal and business demographics are still the single most important category of data that marketers can collect. Knowing your buyers gives you the ability to create marketing personas, social media campaigns and landing pages that accurately target specific purchasers – even if those buyers are businesses instead of people.
As discussed in the article “5 Critical Pieces of Data for the Smart Marketer,” firmographics is the collection of identifying data points for companies. Astute marketers use firmographics to break down corporate buyers into distinct data points, so they target them with individualized marketing campaigns.
Measure Your Content
The content you produce can turn leads into prospects by informing your customers, creating brand awareness, spreading the word about your product and by leading people off of social media and on to your website – but not all content is created equal. Use sites like bit.ly to track your content, to see where your content goes, to see where it gets consumed, to see where it gets bypassed and to see which type of content works.
You can write the greatest articles on the Internet, but if your audience wants visual content, you’ll have to translate the information into infographics or slideshows. The only way to tell is to track your content same as you would any other metric.
Customer Service and Billing
The savviest marketers don’t only measure the effectiveness of the campaigns they create to reach out to their customers – they also measure when, how and why their customers reach out to their client business. Companies should include in their CRMs data regarding the frequency with which customers call customer service, billing or shipping. What are the reasons that most frequently trigger calls? What are the most common outcomes? Marketers should seek to answer these questions through tracking just as diligently as they would for questions about demographics.
Marketers should look past the obvious metrics and measure elements that impact brand loyalty and repeat business, such as billing, customer service and tech support. Content marketers must create great content, but they also have to track its performance and journey across the Internet. In the rush to micro-measure niche data segments, sometimes the importance of traditional demographics gets lost. Don’t neglect the basics – measure demographics for both the person and the business.
