How do you balance online metrics and insights?

In the real world, KPIs are harder to understand. keep them as simple as possible and also avoid metrics that could be hard to measure For example if you are trying to generate leads from email marketing Open rate could be a misleading KPI because it always has some wrong data in it due to the technology tools used to calculate that. I suggest starting the process by your funnel, and creating simple KPIs for each stage and simple ones for connecting those stages. Like if you are going to build awareness you need KPIs for awareness and then have KPIs for the people who go to the second stage which will be MQL or consideration or website clicks and for these people, you have other KPIs like conversion rate, ... and go on.

Metrics be treasures, but goals guide the map. Treasure hunt: Define your main goal - sales, brand love, engagement? That's your island! Smaller islands: Break your goal into achievable milestones - your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Compass course: Choose metrics for each KPI, like sales conversions or website traffic. They guide your ship. Clear waters: Focus on a few key metrics, avoid data overload. Prioritize those that impact your KPIs. Map check: Regularly review your metrics, see if they lead to your islands. Adjust course if needed! Crew wisdom: Listen to your team and customers, gather insights and avoid hidden reefs. Fair winds: It's a journey, be patient, adapt, and the treasure will be yours!

It is essential to not solely rely on metrics alone when making strategic decisions. While metrics may provide you with quantitative data about website traffic, conversion rates, and social media engagement, they do not reveal the reasons behind these figures. Insights, on the other hand, delve into the qualitative aspects of consumer behavior by analyzing feedback, comments, and testimonials. By combining both metrics and insights, businesses can gain a comprehensive view of their online presence and make more informed choices.

Data ≠ Truth From your strategy you can derive the objectives for your online marketing and identify the cascading KPIs that can help you steer towards that objective. An effective KPI overview is a dashboard with a limited number of date-dependent metrics that shows your performance towards objectives in the most efficient way. It can be tempting to take "the data you have" rather than the data you need. But if you use that data for building your KPI, your data will mislead you. Be certain to verify the reliability and availability of the data sources used to build your dashboard. The better your choice of KPI, the better the insights you will get, and the more likely you are to be guided to achieving your objectives.

Start by establishing clear marketing objectives. Determine what specific goals you want to achieve and the metrics that align with those goals. This clarity ensures that your metrics are directly tied to strategic objectives. Then make sure to choose metrics that are directly related to those objectives. Focus on the KPIs that provide the most meaningful insights into the successes or challenges of your marketing efforts. Don't be distracted by metrics that may not contribute to your overall goals.

You have two options, First tools that show you the big picture, and tools that go deeper into an important KPI. If your KPI is related to the conversion rate of your landing page GA4 and Hotjar are the best for the big picture but if it's getting the targeted audience you need first-party intent data and you need identification. Keep that in mind you either combine some tools and get an insight or use all-in-one solutions. Always choose all-in-one because when your data is separated between all these different tools you are going to have some errors in your calculations.

In this phase, it's crucial to have your marketing funnel clearly outlined. 1. Identify a key metric for each stage of the funnel that aligns closely with your business and commercial goals. 2. Determine where the most significant drop-off occurs; this area is where you want to focus on first. Without visitors to your website, there's no audience to engage with your product. So in this case, prioritizing the top of the funnel is your starting point. 3. Establish SMART objectives to enhance this 'one metric that matters' (OMTM). 4. At the end of your test period, assess whether the targeted improvements were achieved. If successful, you can then shift your focus to another metric within the funnel - that needs most attention.

Identify & and prioritize KPIs and metrics that seamlessly integrate with the overarching business strategy. By adhering to this discerning approach, organizations can make judicious, data-informed decisions and enact purposeful measures that propel them toward their desired outcomes. It is worth emphasizing that this pursuit does not entail indiscriminate data accumulation; instead, it entails the astute utilization of pertinent data points to engender substantive and measurable achievements.

Understand the context. Metrics provide data points, but insights come from understanding the context around those data points. Analyze metrics in the context of your business environment, industry trends, and competitive landscape and that should help generate meaningful insights.

At the conclusion of each analysis, we recommend including a set of bullet points summarizing the key findings from the analysis and outlining the subsequent steps based on these findings. Typically, these next steps take the form of hypotheses.

The marketing or even business strategy and plans start with customer insights and the actions feed into customer insights. This should be clearly identifiable and actionable, so in that sense prescriptive and not just descriptive. Then these actions should be measurable and feedback into insights so that the actions can be refined further , e.g. If insights tell you that a customer segment likes to shop electronics and they usually like offer with x% deal , then use that data to create campaigns around this and then once the campaign has been launched use the insights based on actions of customers to refine the campaign further which in this case could be they likex% deal but only on xyz brand and for rest they will click if deal is X+10

As your company goals, your goals will change -- so your metrics to define success will change. Be cautious to not change these metrics too often and give your team the time to optimize and identify growth opportunities.

Establish a routine for regularly reviewing marketing metrics and insights. Create reports that highlight the numerical data and the insights gained from that data. Share these reports with everyone necessary and make data analysis and reporting a regular and recurring part of your company.

Balancing online metrics and insights in digital marketing is crucial for informed decision-making. For instance, consider the scenario of an e-commerce business. While tracking various metrics like website traffic, conversion rates, and revenue is essential, it's equally vital to delve into insights like user behavior. Let's say the bounce rate on the website is high. By analyzing this metric alongside insights from user feedback and heatmaps, you might discover that users are bouncing because of a confusing checkout process. This insight can lead to actionable changes, like simplifying the checkout flow, ultimately improving conversion rates and revenue.

In my experience I’ve looked at metrics and insights in the form of analytics (metrics) and emotional (insights). Taking the undisputed truths of analytics and data, overlaying it with the emotional based feedback often consolidated from consumer insights, we can then identify key red threads or similarities. The connection between these two perspectives can often lead to a more widely accepted and appealing message landing with your potential audience.