Marketing for small businesses requires a lot of trial and error. Smart business owners want to pass more trials and limit those errors.
The way to make this happen is straightforward, but not simple. To determine a marketing initiative’s success, you must track your data and identify campaign insights. Only then can you keep learning with each effort.
However, the actual tracking process itself can be filled with trial and error, too. How do you know if you’re collecting the right data? How do you know what that data means?
You’ve come to the right place. In this guide, we’ll break down the specifics regarding the best key performance indicators, or KPIs, and how the insights gained from those metrics can guide you to better marketing.
Understanding the difference between data and insights
Campaign performance metrics are different from data. Data are the results collected for your campaign. If your campaign aims to drive readers to a promotional campaign on your website, the first piece of information to look at is the click-through rate on your product page call to action (CTA). These results can be quantitative, which is objective numerical data like website visitor counts and email list sign-ups, or qualitative, which is non-numerical data like customer feedback and social media comment sentiment.
Campaign insights, in comparison, are based on the analysis of specific data that speaks directly to the goals you set at the beginning of your campaign.
When you track the key performance indicators (KPIs) that relate directly to your marketing goals, you’ll unlock useful information that can transform your efforts. You can learn what works, what doesn’t, and how you can best allocate your limited budget. You’ll be less distracted by digital marketing trends and more focused on the bottom line.
What are campaign insights?
Campaign insights are the “why” and the “how” behind your marketing strategy’s results. As you gather data from your campaign, you should regularly analyze your results to determine why they occurred and how you could improve them in the future. Through this process, you’ll measure your digital marketing impact and gain a better understanding of customer behavior, market trends, and the overall performance of your outreach efforts.
It’s important to note, however, that campaign insights go well beyond simple campaign reporting. When you report on the basic results of a campaign, you track and analyze data as part of the process. But that’s where it ends. Reporting is just saying how it went, rather than what you’ve learned to improve your strategy for the next campaign.
Campaign insights give business leaders a clear focus for strategic decision-making. Let’s use social media as an example. In reporting the results of a campaign on Facebook and Instagram, you note that you gained 100 new followers in a week on both platforms.
But let’s say you received 20% more comments, DMs, and sales conversions through Instagram. That’s an insight with a clear action step toward allocating a greater budget percentage for Instagram ads in the future.
The 4 types of insights in marketing
Next, let’s take a closer look at the four kinds of insights marketers use when analyzing the impact of a campaign and determining how to move forward in the future.
1. Descriptive insights: What happened
While the term “descriptive” seems to indicate qualitative data, in reality, this insight can also be numerical. Both numbers and sentiment show what is happening in the data and offer a current picture of your market performance.
The earlier example of gaining 100 new followers is numerical data, but if you also see that 20% of your followers comment on your posts, what they write is also data. You can gain insights about their priorities and motivations for purchase, which is all data that can help you tweak your website or future marketing strategy.
2. Diagnostic insights: Why it happened
What was it about your campaign that resonated with these new followers, and why was one platform more effective at encouraging audience engagement? Here’s where the next level of campaign insights comes in. Determine if the messaging, visuals, timing, or offer was the root cause of that descriptive insight.
3. Predictive insights: What might happen next
Predictive insights look ahead to what will happen next. With these kinds of campaign analytics, you can consider trends and predict what’s next regarding your marketing goals.
4. Prescriptive insights: What actions to take
Finally, the last step is to take what you’ve learned from your campaign insights and create a course of action to improve performance for future efforts. In our current example, say you’ve identified fun graphics and a limited-time deal as the primary engagement drivers. Now you can consider hiring a graphic designer or using social media marketing tools to create another campaign with similar visuals for a new deal. Then, you can complete this cycle again at the end of the next campaign to see the impact of your actions.
Key campaign performance metrics
Not all campaign performance metrics are worth tracking. The more targeted your data sets are, the easier you can translate campaign insights into an actionable strategy.
The engagement metrics that matter are the ones that are directly connected to your business goals. To continue with our example of the increase in social media followers, tracking your follower metric is key if you want to increase your brand awareness. But if the goal is to have a greater sales conversion rate and none of those followers turned into hot leads, then your follower data isn’t worth collecting.
Some KPIs you may want to track include:
- Sales conversion metrics: This shows the percentage of leads that make a purchase compared to the total number of leads. However, don’t just look at the number as the bottom line. Continue with campaign insights to understand what is attributed to these conversions.
- Return on investment, or ROI: Financial performance indicators are common methods of analyzing whether a marketing effort was successful. You calculate the return on investment (ROI) by dividing the net profit by the initial cost. Keep in mind that some marketing efforts, like content marketing, may not fully pay off until months after the initial campaign ends.
- Platform-specific KPIs: Get familiar with the backend of your social media platforms as well as how to interpret your email reporting. For example, you could discover that your click-through rates are better indicators of success than open rates and shift your priorities accordingly. Use a critical eye as you decide which KPI best measures the outcomes you seek.
Finally, be aware of the common mistake of tracking vanity metrics. Let’s jump back to that example about gaining followers. It may have felt great to see that your Facebook following grew so quickly, but if no one commented, clicked on the links you posted, or downloaded your resources, what good are they?
Always bring your tracking process back to your business goals, especially with multi-channel marketing campaigns, for the most actionable insights.
Setting up for insight success
When crafting the marketing strategy for your next campaign, follow these four steps to get the most out of your campaign insights.
1. Establish clear campaign objectives
As Stephen Covey writes in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” start with the end in mind. Write down the specific goals you aim to meet at the end of the marketing campaign, then craft the work and the tracking mechanisms around that goal.
2. Build proper tracking and measurement systems
Once you know your goal, pick a few KPIs that speak directly to it. Find where in the platform or process you can gather this data, then integrate the collection and analysis into your marketing plan timeline. This way, you won’t forget to follow up with your insights at the end.
3. Create dashboards that reveal meaningful patterns
Graphs are your friends! Use email and social media marketing software to make better sense of the KPI data you collect in association with your campaign. Some platforms will do this for you, but it’s best to ensure you have a way to visualize the meaningful patterns that you could otherwise overlook.
4. Set benchmarks for performance comparison
Don’t forget to get snapshots along the way. Track your KPIs at the beginning, middle, and end of the campaign. This way, you can pivot if you see an insight midway through the campaign that suggests something needs to change.
Tools for gathering campaign data
Wonderfully, many tracking tools are available to make campaign insights easier than ever. You can integrate Google Analytics into your website’s backend to track visitors to your various landing pages. If you’re focusing on reach, you can set up a Google Alert to see when others share content from your content marketing campaign.
Regardless of your chosen platforms, your business social media profiles come with plenty of measurement tools in their analytics pages. Spend time understanding each platform’s capabilities before moving forward with a social media outreach campaign.
Email marketing, too, has tracking software designed for marketing success. This can be especially powerful if you integrate your email marketing with customer relationship management (CRM) software. Then, you can track the impact of your campaign from the first email sent to the end of your customer journey.
Yes, it’s possible to market your small business on a shoestring budget. Look for tracking systems that are built into your marketing platforms and use them to maximize your reach while minimizing your investment.
Turning data into actionable insights
Once you’ve familiarized yourself with email marketing metrics and other available data collection tools, you must create a framework for analyzing campaign data. Set times throughout the campaign to gather and analyze data. Don’t wait until the end, since this is the kind of work that often gets overlooked.
With the proper framework, you can identify the outliers within your data and consider the reasons behind unexpected results. The goal in this process is to move from the “what” to the “why” — and then to “what’s next.”
Email campaign insights deep dive
Email marketing offers one of the best returns on investment, so let’s look at how to create a successful email marketing campaign. As mentioned earlier, click-through rates are often more indicative of your success than open rates; if people are opening your email newsletters but not clicking your links, identifying the root cause is well worth your strategic analysis.
Track subscriber behavior patterns throughout your campaign — if you have an uptick in unsubscribes, for example, dig into your messaging for possible insights. Maybe you need to increase your personalization through list segmentation to refine messages to exactly what the recipient wants.
Another way to gather data and perform campaign analytics is through A/B testing. This is when you offer two slightly different versions of a campaign and see which performs better.
Insights across the customer journey
Keep in mind that campaign insights can — and should! — be identified throughout the entire campaign. Many business owners make the mistake of waiting until the campaign ends to review their data (if they even go through the analysis at all). The problem there is that you miss the opportunity to watch customers traverse the journey you’ve mapped out for them.
Think about the insights you can gain at each stage of the customer journey. Identify how your prospects interact with your marketing efforts and then analyze ways to improve and reach your desired results.
There are five main steps in the journey to consider in relation to your campaign insights:
- Awareness stage campaign insights: How do your email and digital marketing integrations support this awareness?
- Consideration phase performance analysis: What is influencing customer considerations, and what would encourage them to take the next important step?
- Decision time: How did your marketing campaign help or hinder the customer’s decision to buy or not buy? How can you increase this rate?
- Retention marketing measurement: Are there methods you’ve integrated to retain these new customers? What is working, and what needs improvement?
- Lifetime value and loyalty indicators: Don’t forget to collect data on these valuable customers and consider how integrated marketing can make them loyal advocates of your brand.
Common challenges with getting insights
Now, you’re ready to start diving into the campaign insight process! But first, let’s go over some of the common pitfalls associated with data collection and analysis to ensure you sidestep these roadblocks.
It can take time to get comfortable with reviewing critical data and trusting the results of your analysis. Even seasoned marketing professionals must keep a learning mindset and seek answers (the Constant Contact Marketing Advice blog can help!) whenever necessary.
First, beware of keeping data in silos. Always look for ways to integrate the quantitative and qualitative data you gather from social media, your website’s backend, email marketing automation software, and other digital marketing platforms. You won’t know how many unique prospects come from a campaign if the data is kept separate.
That said, it can be hard to properly attribute impact when your marketing campaign involves multiple channels. You can address this by sending a survey when someone signs up for your email list. Ask them where they first became aware of your brand.
Another common challenge with campaign analysis is simply feeling overwhelmed by all the data. Only look at a few KPIs instead of all of them. That’s a one-way ticket to analysis paralysis!
Remember, good data yields thorough, actionable analysis, while bad data makes for poor planning and inaccurate goals. Compare apples to apples and be critical when something seems off. You want to maintain quality and consistency during your analysis.
And finally, be sure to balance quantitative data with qualitative insights. Create opportunities to listen and respond to what your current and potential customers say about your campaigns, products, and brand identity. The more curious and aware you are, the easier it’ll be for you to remain flexible and adaptable in the ever-changing market.
Leverage campaign insights to grow your business
So many small business owners embark on marketing campaigns without taking the time to gain insights and lessons from past efforts, but you don’t have to! By integrating campaign analysis into your plans, you can position your brand to continually grow and become more effective with each effort.
Add descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive insights into your marketing plan. Track specific KPIs related directly to your business objectives and build frameworks within your strategies to make it easy to see what is working and what may require a pivot.
Growing your business through setting and achieving insight-based goals is possible! Start small and know that iterative improvement will be a pursuit that lasts as long as you’re in business.
As a first step, log on to your platform backend to see what data you’re already collecting. Look at your social media business pages, the reporting section of an email marketing platform like Constant Contact, and your website’s Google Analytics page. Soon, collecting and analyzing data to make objective, smart decisions for your business’s success will be a breeze!
