Every marketer knows it’s table stakes to collect data
through the course of a digital campaign. After you’ve spent some time and
money distributing your message, it’s natural to want to know if it worked (or
not).
Let’s say you’re reading a report on Google Analytics after investing in
a series of ads. Your data is in front of you. Now what?
Sherpa makes sense of these numbers through something we
call Business Intelligence.
It takes a certain skill set to look at a page of analytics
and pick out which numbers really say something about the efficacy of a
campaign. Some metrics may tell you a lot, others may just be noise to filter
out.
Beyond having the skills, you also need the tools. Pulling
data from a single source gives you a flat snapshot. Software such as Simply Measured Tableau and good old Microsoft Excel
need to be used in tandem to put the big picture in 3-D.
Then, you need to interpret those results and translate them
into user behavior. Let’s say one ad performed four times better than another
in the same SEM campaign. Why could that
be? Does the copy tell a story that’s more resonant with the audience? Is the
design more eye-catching? Answers to questions like these can shape a
campaign’s outcome.
The final step in the process is the most important: it’s
taking these insights and using them to make data-driven recommendations. In
marketing, that’s the difference between “we think this will work” and “we know
this will work, based on what your customers are doing right now.”
Our Business Intelligence department is a full-time team of
skilled digital marketers, data analysts and programmers with the competencies
that turn raw data into clear plans of action. It’s the “BI” team’s job to
examine a platform—be it Twitter,
LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or any digital space with
a market—and identify the purchase intent behaviours. From a single like to a
rave review, understanding patterns in brand engagement is foundational to
developing efficient and effective content strategies.
While content is the catalyst that drives users from website
to shopping cart, Business Intelligence doesn’t stop at the checkout page. It
also pays to know where your traffic is coming from, and where you’re missing
out. Using tools like UTM codes and advanced analytics software, BI’s shed
light into “dark social” platforms like instant messengers, email and SMS. They
look for SEO problems on your
website that might be unintentionally keeping your audience at arm’s length.
Keeping an eye on where conversions are really coming from—and where you’re
losing them—lets you focus your spend on the channels with the highest impact.
With a roster of complementary competencies, the
Business Intelligence department works at every level of digital to understand
what the results are, what they tell us, and what should be done next. In
today’s market, you can’t afford to guess.