Until the internet, marketers used to struggle to measure the efficacy of their advertising campaigns. There was no way to track whether or not a billboard, for example, directly influenced someone to buy from your business. Social media, email marketing and website traffic now provide a clear picture of what marketing efforts perform well.
Online marketing analytics are a good way to keep your finger on the pulse of customer trends and protect your budget from going to waste on ineffective outreach channels.
Here are a few of the best services and tools for measuring marketing analytics.
[Read more: How to Measure Content Marketing Success]
Best for website analytics
It’s perhaps the most obvious choice, but there are many good reasons why Google Analytics is a must-have for every business. Google Analytics can track your website traffic across a wide range of dimensions. It provides deeper insight into who your audience is, with widgets for user location, user retention, user demographics, user operating systems and much, much more. The best part? Google Analytics is free.
[Read more: 5 Website Analytics Tools for Your Business]
Best for organic social media
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter all have powerful native analytics tools built in. If you want to see how your campaigns are performing, simply log in to the admin role and get insights directly from the channel itself. However, if you want to see all your analytics in one place without flipping back and forth among apps, try Socialbakers.
Socialbakers offers a platform that lets you measure and analyze your content marketing efforts in one place. Compare how organic content is performing compared to paid campaigns and influencer collaborations. Socialbakers uses AI to go deeper into your analytics, helping your business identify trends and consumer behavior that you can then use for even smarter future campaigns.
Retargeted ads reach people who are already familiar with—and interested in—what you have to offer.
Best for SEO
There are a ton of great SEO analytics tools on the market, and it’s hard to pick just one platform. Moz, SEMRush and Ahrefs are three of the most popular options.
Moz Pro is a comprehensive solution that includes keyword research, link building, site audits and page optimization insights, all in one package. It offers some of the more traditional SEO analytics that can track rankings, monitor link-building efforts and provide data needed to improve content marketing campaigns.
SEMRush is a similar tool. SEMRush’s claim to fame is that its users get access to a database of 20 billion keywords, 310 million ads and 17 billion URLs crawled per day. In addition, SEMRush advertises a strategy service that provides insights into your specific metrics.
Last but not least, Ahrefs has a tool called Rank Tracker that lets you monitor your Google SEO rankings across 170 countries for both desktop and mobile visitors. These analytics can reveal how changes to your website impact your visibility to potential customers. Ahrefs also provides keyword data and site audit content to help you optimize your website.
Best for email marketing
Like social media, email marketing tools tend to offer their own native analytics that can prove useful in tracking open rates, conversion rates and how many emails got sent straight to spam. But for more advanced email marketing analytics, try a service like SegMetrics.
SegMetrics goes beyond standard web tracking to connect each website visitor to a lead email you sent out. “SegMetrics is the only tool we know of that lets you accurately calculate a dollar value to any action in your funnel. And the best part? It automatically connects to the tools you already use—no coding necessary,” wrote the experts at Rebrandly.
Best for display ads
Retargeting is becoming an increasingly popular way to increase conversion rates on a website. Retargeting works by surfacing ads to internet users who have already visited your website once, but haven’t completed a purchase. It’s highly effective because retargeted ads reach people who are already familiar with—and interested in—what you have to offer.
But display ad retargeting only works if you have the data and analytics in place. This is where AdRoll comes in. AdRoll is used by over 35,000 advertisers; users have access to over 500 ad exchanges, including most of the major social media channels. Powerful analytics in this platform have delivered amazing results for organizations, with some client reports ranging from a 35% lower CPC to a 265% lift in sales.
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