What is Marketing Data?
In the context of this post, marketing data is any measurement of a marketing channel’s effectiveness. Marketing data could include email open and clickthrough rates paired with the campaign data logged in Google Analytics to help you understand what visitors from your email newsletter did after clicking through to your website. Other marketing data might be the people who registered at your tradeshow booth. Still more data can be gleaned from Social Media. Ultimately you want to understand the effectiveness of your marketing activities toward some action by a prospect that engages with you.
Where to Find Good Marketing Data to Measure?
Good marketing data can be found in many places. Some of the more common places to find good marketing data are:
- Email Marketing Platform
- Marketing Automation System
- Website Analytics like Google Analytics
- Social Media Tools/Platforms like Facebook Insights.
- Search Engine Optimization Tools like Google Search Console
Should I Compare Our Company’s Marketing Data to Another Company for Measurement?
In general, we recommend you compare your marketing data to itself. Why is this? We have found that even within the same market verticals audiences tend to exhibit different characteristics between two companies. In addition, technical design factors can inhibit or, enhance a prospect’s path to purchase/lead. Put another way, your website or, your competitor’s could be faster, slower, look better or, worse on a smartphone. These and other factors would skew the comparison of your data to their data. Another example can be seen in comparing social media data to a competitor. Many factors influence the engagement of a post. From creative to the time of day, day of the week, to social channel posted, all of these factors can impact the data collected.
Can There Be Too Much Marketing Data?
Absolutely. If the data doesn’t contribute to some aspect of your marketing, be it the contribution of a programmatic ad campaign to awareness, effectiveness of your welcome/new subscriber email, defined goals in Google Analytics or, funnel steps in your marketing automation it might be data that you don’t need to track or, otherwise include.
Need Help with Your Marketing Data?
We’ve helped companies big and small with their marketing data questions. From Google Analytics to email, SEM, social media data and more. Sifting through it all can be a big deal and it’s mission critical. If you don’t have a measurement framework in place and know what you are measuring, contact us
