Since the internet and computer have taken over our day-to-day lives, it seems that there is more information on our hands than we know what to do with. With the development of search engines and social media as vehicles for advertising, marketers and researchers have an eye on nearly every aspect of the customer journey. While this may be overwhelming to the untrained eye, getting this information in the hands of someone who can make sense of it all will make all the difference.
One of the biggest advantages of search engine and social media marketing over traditional methods (television, print, etc.) is that advertising has become extremely targeted and customizable. Facebook currently offers hundreds of different factors to target, allowing you to deploy different ads based on these factors. These range from less personable demographics like geographic location and language spoken to very personal factors like traveling habits or even food and beverage preferences. While many of these categories may seem like white noise, finding the factors that have implications for your business will increase the chances that advertisements are being seen by your target audience.
Along with new methods to target your audience has come advanced advertising performance metrics. Some of the more popular metrics that people keep a close eye on are things like bounce rate, impressions, and conversion rate. Bounce rate, for example, is the percentage of people who visit your site and leave immediately without taking any action. This is an important metric because it gives you a gauge of your users’ experience with your web page. A high bounce rate likely means that there are aspects of your home page that need to be optimized, or that your targeting needs to be refined to a more accurate representation of your target audience.
So, what does all of this extra information mean for your business? Well, first off, you need somebody who understands all of it. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the CEO needs to take an SEO crash course, however, there has to be someone within the organization that is following the progress of ongoing campaigns and is able to translate the results to upper management. There are many minor details regarding the rules, methods, and metrics that can only be fully understood by somebody who has been working with online campaigns consistently for an extended period of time. Having somebody who can take meaningful insight from this seemingly daunting platform adds an entire new dimension to your marketing department’s decision making.
An employee who understands the nuances of online marketing also further potentiates other departments of your organization. Having your online marketing guru and finance department collaborate could bring to light some major room for improvement; a great example of this is the potential to drive higher margins. Using some commonplace analytical tools like R and PowerBI, analysts can help advise their marketing department on things like ROI, optimal advertising spend, and conducting attribution analysis. Furthermore, somebody with a deep understanding of both marketing and analytical principles can identify patterns in customers’ buying patterns to optimize targeting techniques.
The age of digital marketing is upon us. Whether you are B2B or B2C, it is inevitable that online marketing can have an impact on your bottom line.
