In business, you should always be looking at how you better build those leads that you rely on. Sharpening the focus on your target market. Finding the most effective ways to reach more people in it. Seeing what messages have the most impact. That’s what you should be doing and it’s what data can help you excel at. If you want more clout to your marketing, this is what you should be looking at.
Where does your target market go?
Once you have a good idea of your target market, it’s all about finding the best ways to find them. You have your social media angles, first. Twitter and Facebook are always good choices and LinkedIn is important if you’re in the B2B world. But you want to find out where else they go. Looking at your competitors and where they market is a good start. But if you want to reach them where they’re most likely to heed your message, then you want to look at which influencers have the most reach and respect in your industry.
Are your ads doing the trick?
If you’re serious about online marketing, then a few pay-per-click campaigns are definitely going to be one of the tools you use. But you shouldn’t just hope for the best from them. You should use some of the scripts explored at Clicteq to explore the ads after they’ve launched. See what content gets you the most clicks. Which keywords work best with which content. Which landing pages work best with all combinations.
Which parts of your site work best?
The same kind of detail-oriented data collection is just as effective on the site. Google Analytics is one of the best tools to start off with, seeing how visitors behave on your site and where you get the most clicks. You can go deeper with conversion rate optimization techniques like heat maps and on-site search data to see where visitors are looking and what they’re looking for. Replicate the elements that get the most clicks, add the content people are searching for but not finding and use the hottest parts of your heat maps to place your lead-closing content and links.
How social is your social media?
Social media is a great tool to not only deliver the content you develop but engage organically with your target market. Most platforms give you some means of measuring the effectiveness, reach and interactivity of a post. But tools like Sproutsocial put all the posts on all the different channels in reports that are easier to understand and a lot more comprehensive.
Do you keep trends in mind?
A lot of the points above go into looking at data in the microcosm of your business and finding what works best. It’s not a bad idea to look at things from a macro angle, either. Keep an ear to the ground for the marketing campaigns with the most impact and identify the trends that you might be able to hop onto before it’s too late.
The data-driven approach is always going to be the most effective. Whether it’s in marketing, in making more productive teams or in managing a project. Take the values explored above and extend them through the whole business.
