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Analyzing Marketing Data: What Works and What Doesn’t?

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CopyPress

October 4, 2022

Analyzing marketing data is crucial for developing successful strategies. Data analysis allows marketers to track and measure the performance of their campaigns, identify what’s working and what isn’t, and make more informed decisions about where to allocate their resources. While data is a valuable asset, it’s only helpful if you know how to use it. Analyzing marketing data can be a complex task, but it’s not impossible. Today, we’re walking through everything you need to know about the process with these topics:

What Is Data Analysis for Marketing?
Importance of Data Analysis in Content Marketing
How To Analyze Marketing Data
Types of Data in Marketing Analysis
Categories of Marketing Data
Tips for Using Content Marketing Data
Tips for Running Your Marketing Analysis
What To Avoid When Analyzing Marketing Data

What Is Data Analysis for Marketing?

If you’re reviewing the effectiveness of a recent campaign, you’ll need to look at the marketing data and analytics to find what works and what doesn’t. But where do you start? And what should you look for? This is where marketing data analysis comes in handy. Content marketing analysis involves reviewing, cleaning, and organizing data to obtain valuable insights that help you make better decisions and plans.

HBS Online notes that marketing analytics can help organizations better understand their customers, get more value from their marketing budget, and plan future marketing campaigns. Marketing data analysis also gives you a closer look at what’s working, what isn’t, and where you can improve. It also helps you identify trends and patterns that can inform your future marketing decisions.

For example, historical data analysis can help you understand how your target audience has responded to similar campaigns in the past, giving you a better idea of what to expect from your current campaign. You can also monitor the real-time data to see if any problems with your campaign need to address immediately. There are several different marketing data analysis techniques you can use for measuring marketing performance, but some of the most common include:

A/B testing compares two versions of a marketing asset (such as an email subject line) to see which performs better.
Market research involves surveys, interviews, and focus groups to understand consumer behavior.
Surveys gather feedback from customers or prospects about their experience with your product or service.
Focus groups bring people together to discuss their thoughts and feelings about a product or service.
A competitive analysis looks at your competitor’s marketing campaigns to see what’s working for them and where they can improve.
Social media listening monitors social media platforms for mentions of your brand, product, or service.
Website analytics track user behavior and can help you understand how people interact with your site.

Marketing data analysis is a complex process, but it’s essential for anyone looking to run successful marketing campaigns. It involves taking information from your campaigns and understanding their implications. It might appear to be a complicated process, but it doesn’t have to be if you follow the right strategy.

Importance of Data Analysis in Content Marketing

Data analysis is critical to your content marketing efforts. Take a look at the image below:

Image via MarketingCharts

According to the above data, 85% of senior managers say data and insight are essential skills for a successful marketing career. And it’s easy to see why. This just goes to show that if you want to be a successful marketer, you need to understand and make use of data.

Data analysis is vital for marketing because it allows you to understand the performance of your campaigns and make more informed decisions about where to allocate your resources. Without data, you’re essentially flying blind. You won’t know what’s working and what isn’t, which makes it challenging to optimize your campaigns or determine where to allocate your budget best.

Analyzing content marketing data also helps you track your progress over time. It’s essential for understanding your marketing efforts’ long-term impact and ensuring you’re on track to meet your goals. Moreover, data analysis can help you identify new growth opportunities. You might notice patterns or trends you can capitalize on by studying your data to improve your results.

For example, you might notice that a particular type of customer is more likely to convert than others. You maximize this information to inform your target marketing efforts in the future. Another way to think of it: suppose you see a surge in traffic from a particular region or country. In this case, it could be an opportunity to expand into new markets.

How To Analyze Marketing Data

As you plan your strategies, analyzing marketing data requires continuous review and performance measurement. The steps below simplify the process by breaking down each stage of your data analysis.

Collect the data. Collect all the data from your marketing campaigns, both digital and offline.
Cleanse the data. Cleaning data involves removing any duplicate or inaccurate data.
Organize the data. Put the data into a format that is easy to understand and work with.
Analyze the data. Review data and look for patterns, trends, and insights that can inform your marketing decisions.

By breaking the process down, you can ensure that you’re collecting and analyzing the right information and applying it to your marketing plans. And if you’re wondering just where to start gathering content performance data, CopyPress has you covered. With our content analysis tool, you’ll have the info you need on content performance and competitor activities so you can improve your strategy and drive results.

Types of Data in Marketing Analysis

Image via Statista

If you want to be successful in marketing, you need to understand the customer. And that means using data to make decisions. According to the above image from Statista, 36% of marketers worldwide reported using consumer data in their decision-making process, followed by 28% who said they’d done so at some point. And as your team gets into the data, you’ll notice several types of analytics:

Sales data: This includes revenue, conversion rate, cart size, and average order value. This data helps you measure content marketing ROI and performance so you can see the value in these efforts.
Engagement data: This includes website traffic, time on site, page views, and bounce rates. This data may help you determine how people engage with your marketing efforts and what kind of engagement they’re getting.
Lead data: This data includes lead sources, lead quality, and conversion rate. This information can help you measure how well your marketing is working. You can see how many leads you are getting and how many of those leads turn into customers.

So it’s clear data is essential to making decisions. But what other data should you be analyzing? You should be analyzing customer behavior and market data. Understanding how customers engage with your brand is the goal of customer behavior. What are they doing when engaging on your website? Which pages do they view most? Why are they buying your products or services? Your data analysis can help your team answer these questions to create more personalized messaging.

You should also be looking at the market data, which tells you what’s trending and what your competitors are doing. You can usually find this data through case studies, news stories, and economic reports. By analyzing these data types, you can develop a deep understanding of your customers and the market and use that knowledge to make better marketing decisions.

Categories of Marketing Data

While there are different types of data that show you where leads are going and what they’re doing, you’ll also see data types fall under several key categories:

Demographic data includes information about age, gender, income, education, and location.
Census data is data that the government collects about the population.
Market research data includes information about the market, like size, growth, and trends.
Customer data is information about your customers, such as their behavior, preferences, and needs.

Understanding the different categories of marketing data supports effective performance measurement and planning. For example, demographic data can help you segment your audience and create targeted messaging. In contrast, census data help you understand the population in a particular area so you can tailor your marketing efforts locally.

Market research also supports competitor analysis and can guide decisions about where to focus your resources. This data also provides insights into improving marketing messages and the customer experience. A performance marketing plan applies customer data to create marketing campaigns relevant to target audiences. No matter what type of data you’re working with, it’s important to remember that it’s only helpful if you know how to use it.

Tips for Using Content Marketing Data

Once you’ve collected and organized your marketing data, it’s time to analyze it. But where do you begin? Here are some tips for making the most of your marketing data:

Start with a question. Before analyzing the marketing data, you must have a question in mind that you want to answer. It will help you focus your analysis on looking for the correct information.
Look for patterns. Once you have a question in mind, start looking for patterns in the data. It can be anything from a trend in customer behavior to a drop-off in conversion rates. By finding patterns, see how different factors affect your marketing efforts.
Make comparisons. Another way to make sense of your data is to compare it to other data sets. For example, you might reach your marketing data to sales data to see if there is a correlation between the two. Or you might compare your data to industry benchmarks to see how your performance stacks up.
Conclude. Once you’ve looked at the data from all angles, answer the question you started with and decide how to move forward.

For example, suppose you’re trying to improve your search rankings on top SERPs. In this case, the data you’d want to prioritize in your analysis would be keyword research. Look at competitor rankings and review keywords you’re not ranking for but could be. Using data in this way allows you to optimize content for your target market.

Related: How To Improve SERP Rankings

Tips for Running Your Marketing Analysis

As a marketer, data can be your best friend. By understanding your customer base and collecting data points on their behavior, you can create marketing campaigns far more likely to hit the target. But data analysis isn’t a one-time project. It’s an ongoing process requiring constant adjustments. That said, here are a few tips to help you get the most out of your marketing data:

Know your goals. Before collecting data, define the goals of your analysis. What do you want to learn from this information? What do you want to use it for? With these questions in mind, you can focus on the most relevant objectives and avoid getting bogged down in the details.
Collect data from multiple sources. There’s no such thing as too much data regarding marketing analysis. In addition to standard customer surveys and market research, try collecting data from social media, web analytics, and offline channels for more detailed insights.
Use multiple analysis methods. Just because you have a vast database of customer info doesn’t mean you need to spend weeks sifting through it all manually. Use powerful analytical tools like Excel or Tableau to identify trends and patterns quickly.
Focus on actionable insights. Marketing data analysis gives insights into how you can improve your campaigns and grow your business. So don’t get lost in the numbers—always ask yourself how to put the information you’re seeing for practical use.
Make it a team effort. Marketing data analysis is not something businesses do in a silo. Collaborate with other departments, such as sales or customer service, to get a well-rounded view of your customers and what they want.

The goal is to maximize the benefits of marketing data analysis. Understanding how customers engage with your business can help you optimize campaigns and maximize the ROI of your efforts.

What To Avoid When Analyzing Marketing Data

One of the most common pitfalls to avoid in marketing data analysis is failing to track all of your data. It happens for several reasons, such as not having adequate tracking tools or not tracking offline sales data. Another common pitfall is not cleansing the data. Looking for and removing duplicate and incomplete data can be time-consuming, but ensuring that it’s accurate is essential. Another mistake to avoid is not tracking and organizing information, as this makes it hard to understand and work with. Make sure to put your data into a format that’s easy to use and understand.

It’s also important to avoid mistaking correlation for causation. Just because it looks like a specific activity is related to various outcomes in content marketing performance, it doesn’t mean the activity is the cause of these outcomes. Always look for hidden relationships between different metrics. Don’t assume that just because two things are happening at the same time that they’re causative. By avoiding these mistakes, you can ensure that your data is accurate and informative.

Use the CopyPress Content Marketing Analysis Tool

Stay on top of performance with our content marketing analysis tool. Understand your audience, content gaps, and relevant competitor data, and use this information to plan a strategy that gets results. Be sure to sign up for your free content analysis and find out how CopyPress helps businesses and agencies rank higher, reach more customers, and increase conversions.

Lauren Oliver

Digital Marketing Manager at CopyPress