Marketing Data: What Matters And What Doesn't

AJ Agrawal ,

 CONTRIBUTOR

Data is big business in marketing. No successful company can escape from the need to track their performance and make decisions based on data. In 2015 marketing analyticsspending increased by 60%, according to the latest statistics. There are many statistics you can pick up, though.

The question you need to answer is what data matters and what doesn’t. You can learn absolutely anything from analytics, but not all of it is relevant.

The Importance Of Data Protection

Data is coveted and you must have a solid plan in place to protect it. Data bandwidth and data protection rates are increasing faster than anyone could have previously predicted. This is because as data becomes such a huge part of companies it’s naturally going to become a target for fraudsters who want the same information.

Your data should be fully encrypted and it should only be available to a select number of people. The consequences of leaked data and successful hack attacks are dire.

The Point Of Marketing Data 

To understand what data you should be looking at, consider what you will be using said data for. There are only two purposes here:

• To create the image of your perfect customers.

• To understand what’s working and what isn’t.

And you’ll notice that one directly links to the other. Once you refine the image of your perfect customer you can better target them. The problem with many companies is they don’t know who their target audience is, at least on a specific level.

Average Total Revenue Per Customer

This is a statistic you can work out by dividing your total revenue divided by the number of customers. This is the average value of every customer to you. If you have products and services at a range of prices, this will tell you whether you either need to upgrade your marketing campaign or change your focus.

You can dig deeper by only including the revenue and customer numbers from certain periods, such as per week or per month.

Percentage Of Converted Leads

Again, this is something you can measure over a specific period. The number of leads is all well and good, but it doesn’t actually mean anything. You can have thousands of leads and end up converting none of them. Look at your total number of leads and divide it by the number of leads you have successfully converted.

This will give you your strike rate. It will tell you two things. Your strategy for converting leads may be off or the leads you are gathering are not the leads that are right for your company.

Percentage Of Repeat Business

 This is exactly the same calculation as above, except you are dividing repeat customers by the total number of customers. You need this piece of data because it’s the only way you can tell how well you are doing with customer relationship management.

Repeat business is the bell that shows you are treating your customers right. Of course, you have to use a period of time that’s right for your niche or you can skew the results.

Cost Of Acquisition

 For this example, you are going to assume that your company operates exclusively online. You are using Facebook ads in order to attract new customers and you want to work out how much it’s costing you to make a conversion.

An easy example is to use Facebook ads for gathering newsletter subscribers. To work out the cost of acquisition you would divide the numbers for how much you spent on Facebook ads and the number of new newsletter subscribers over a specific time period.

You can steadily work on driving this down over time.

Bounce Rates

In regards to your website, make sure that your bounce rates are as low as possible. If your bounce rates are high, this shows that you are bringing in the wrong audience because they are clicking away almost immediately. Remember that bounce rates can be high because of a technical reason, such as your page takes a while to load.

Where Is The Traffic Metric?

 You will notice that of all the big marketing data on here not a single mention of traffic was made. This is because traffic means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. Unless you’re still living in 2001, there’s no point in having lots of traffic on your website.

Instead, you want leads that come in the form of laser targeted visitors. A lot of companies are happy to see traffic levels go down because they know that the people coming to their website are far more likely to make a purchase.

In your view, what are the most important pieces of marketing data you can have?