You’re struggling to make sense of your marketing data. What are the best analytics tools to help you?

In navigating the complexities of marketing data, using the right analytics tools is crucial. Tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and HubSpot provide accurate insights into website traffic, user behavior, and campaign performance. Also, analytics tools play a important role in understanding customer preferences, identifying trends, and measuring the impact of marketing initiatives. By tracking key metrics such as conversion rates, bounce rates, and return on investment (ROI), marketers can assess the effectiveness of their campaigns, refine their targeting strategies, and allocate resources more efficiently.

Understanding your data now has never been easier… ITS NOT EASY but it hasn’t ever been easier to understand. What used to cost an entire department could now be managed with a few teammates and the right tools. Some like northbeam, triplewhale or lifetimely can give you clarity on which campaigns to run and which channels are most profitable for you.

The majority of marketing information resides across various platforms, including social media sites, Google Analytics, a CRM, and Excel, as well as within the company's cloud storage. To streamline data accessibility and analysis, it is essential to aggregate this data into a unified format. For SMBs, a consolidated Excel spreadsheet is recommended, while enterprise organizations should utilize cloud-based storage. For economic analysis, employing the premium version of ChatGPT is advisable. For more extensive projects, a data scientist is beneficial. Additionally, it is crucial to ensure that this consolidated data is available to the heads of finance, marketing, sales, and other relevant departments for informed decision-making.

Incorporating analytics into PPC campaigns involves leveraging tools such as Google Analytics, SEMrush, Adobe Analytics, etc. I have used Google Analytics more than any other tool for PPC campaigns, and the profound insights about user behaviour and conversion tracking make it essential for understanding the effectiveness of keywords and ads. Marketers can use these tools to significantly enhance their decision-making process, refine their PPC strategies, and achieve a superior return on investment.

Most of what you need can be done using Excel, though there are vendors that will create a marketing dashboard for you to measure key performance indices you need. I've historically directed users towards access to a higher end product, such as SAS or SPSS for more advanced work, and they remain useful choices. I've used SPSS for analytics issues for a NFL team not otherwise possible. We are soon reaching a point where AI will likely replace some of the work previously done in analytics. Given current change rates, the marginal cost of AI will approach $0 in a a decade, resulting in new role for analytics staff: to assist the AI system (and create a smaller and cheaper analytics staff.)

You need to have confidence in the data. Use multiple data sources to increase confidence where the data aligns and investigate where it doesn’t.

Understanding your audience is key to PPC success. An e-learning platform called "EdTechMaster" could use a tool like "Google Data Studio" to ensure that their analytics is audience-focused. With Google Data Studio, EdTechMaster can seamlessly integrate data from multiple platforms like Google Ads, Google Analytics, and more, to craft audience-centric reports. These reports, fully customizable to fit EdTechMaster's unique goals, would reveal how different audience segments interact with their PPC ads. Being able to tailor both the PPC campaigns and reports to specific audience segments, EdTechMaster would derive better results from their efforts.

Integration stands out as a crucial feature, as it simplifies the management of campaigns across various platforms, offering a unified view that is essential for coherent strategy execution. This consolidation of data is invaluable, eliminating the inefficiencies associated with managing disparate systems and ensuring that decision-making is based on comprehensive insights.

Something I have not seen talked about is understanding what attribution/conversion windows to use - most Ads Manager platforms offer two types of actions you can customize the attribution/conversions windows for an - ad view (brand) and an ad click (performance). It's also good to know when to measure based on a shorter window, something like a 1-day view and a 1-day click (eCommerce) or longer window of 1-day view and a 7-day click (high-price point goods and services).

scalability, capability, ease of use, cost and roi and mainly the data security and privacy. These are the most required features for any tool

I am a BIG fan of tracking with codes, tags etc. Conversion metrics literally justify marketers' existence and we ought to track very throughly. With these tracking helpers, don't just stop at Conversion (CVR) itself. Go deeper and look at micro-conversion (mCVR). If we use Sephora's website for e.g. CVR = total site visits / total reach from ads mCVR1 = visit to Toner category / total site visits mCVR2 = visit to Mask category/ visit to Toner category There can be many permutations. mCVRs show you the lateral relationships between different categories and also the vertical funnel from consideration to checkout. Together they show you how consumers behave around your products and help you be sharper with retention.

Once the analytics tools are in place, marketers need to set up tracking codes and integrate them with their website, social media accounts, and other digital channels. This ensures that data is collected accurately and consistently. With data flowing into the analytics platform, marketers can then analyze the results, identify trends and patterns, and draw insights that inform their marketing strategies. Regular updations are essential to track progress towards goals, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions that drive business growth.

I suggest using Google Analytics for website insights, native social media analytics for engagement tracking, and CRM systems like Salesforce or HubSpot for customer interaction management, ensuring comprehensive marketing data analysis.

Woopra: Known for its real-time analytics, Woopra helps track customer journeys across multiple touchpoints and channels, providing a detailed understanding of the customer lifecycle. Triplewhale: Offers product insights, creative analysis, and other visual tools to show how users interact with your website. It’s particularly useful for optimizing landing pages and improving user experience.

There are also some more great tools out there if you want to dvelve into the data some more: Hotjar: Combines analytics and feedback tools, allowing marketers to understand user behavior through heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys. SEMrush: A comprehensive SEO and marketing tool offering competitive analysis, keyword research, and backlink tracking. Also: don't forget that all of social medias have their own analytics platforms - so you don't need to do a blind ride there!

Woopra: Known for its real-time analytics, Woopra helps track customer journeys across multiple touchpoints and channels, providing a detailed understanding of the customer lifecycle. Triplewhale: Offers product insights, creative analysis, and other visual tools to show how users interact with your website. It’s particularly useful for optimizing landing pages and improving user experience.

Northbeam, triplewhale, google analytics + tag manager and Microsoft clarity are great examples of analytics tools that can help you better understand how your marketing campaigns are performing. All provide in depth and first party data similar to the old days of facebooks pixel tracking. It is important to note that you do not need all of them. I use clarity and triple whale which in conjunction give me the full journey analytics of my customers and how they interact with our website and product.

There are several excellent analytic tools available to help make sense of marketing data, each offering unique features and insights tailored to different needs: Google Analytics: A comprehensive web analytics tool that provides insights into website traffic, user behavior, conversion tracking, and more. It's free to use and offers robust reporting capabilities. HubSpot: A powerful inbound marketing platform that includes analytics tools to track website performance, email marketing metrics, social media engagement, and lead generation efforts. Are two that I use!!

When tackling marketing data, it's crucial to choose analytics tools that align with your goals. For direct selling, where personal connections matter, tools like Google Analytics provide insightful website data. Social media platforms offer native analytics, empowering you to track engagement and demographics. CRM systems like Salesforce or HubSpot aid in managing customer interactions. Additionally, consider specialized direct selling software like DirectScale for comprehensive insights tailored to the industry. Experiment, track results, and refine your strategy based on data-driven insights for optimal success.

For making sense of marketing data, consider analytics tools like - Google Analytics - Adobe Analytics - HubSpot Analytics for their comprehensive insights into website traffic, user behavior, and campaign performance.

One of the most important elements to fully leveraging your analytics tools is accurate tracking. If you’re an ecommerce business operating on Shopify, use a tool like Elevar to help you correctly configure Google Tag Manager and server-side conversion tracking to ensure that your Google Analytics, Meta Ads, Google Ads, Klaviyo, and other analytics, advertising, and martech tools have the most accurate, up-to-date, and clean tracking data possible. This establishes a strong foundation for your digital marketing success.

In the world where we can measure literally everything be smart about what you choose to measure. Less is more. You do not need to follow every single statistic. Choose the ones that are relevant to your goals and focus on these. Just because you can does not mean you should measure every single thing.

To be able to use these tools effectively, we need to have essential skills to crunch the numbers & get the insights because it's not just the tool: 1. Communication. Be able to contextualise the data that people can understand within the organisation that you work with. 2. Critical Thinking. It helps you evaluate the information needed, organize insights as there will be numerous data points. The idea is to make inferences about your findings and always keep an open mind. 3. Willingness to experiment and learn more. A lot of these tools have free trials. Learn and use them to your advantage. 4. Story-telling. How you show your data is important for effective decision making. Visualization should be simple, engaging.