Isolating and monitoring every factor that impacts your revenue is not an easy task. But data analyticsAnalytics are used for websites, as well as in social media and email campaigns. When reviewing or t... More can be your best friend here. It’s important to make use of tools that let you track, analyze, and optimize the performance of your campaign. But before being able to use these, it’s first important to set data objectives. It doesn’t matter how advanced your web-based or mobile analytics are. If you do not have narrow and specific campaign objectives, you won’t be able to capitalize on data. It would be impossible to evaluate the success and know where to improve.
Data objectives, goals, and KPIs are the measures that can decide on the success of your campaign. However, these terminologies can be confusing for some. Here are the definitions of objectives, goals, and KPIs.
Data Objectives
The campaign or website’s objective must be aligned with the desired strategies and outcomes of your businessBusiness-to-business (B2B), also known as B-to-B, is a form of transaction between businesses, such ... More, meaning it is much broader than the outcomes as it answers the question, “what should this marketing campaign achieve?” Your objective can be to grow brand awareness, increase web traffic, increase your sales, and more.
Goal vs. Data Objectives
On the other hand, the goal of a campaign or website is the actions that the person performs on your site. Unlike data objectives, goals are a type of user behavior. These may include creating a transaction or signing up for newsletters. Your goal can also be to reach a certain page number when visiting your site. Goals are associated with the word conversion. This is defined as the completed goal. Take note that goals come from objectives. They are not necessarily narrower than objectives because they are simply the behaviors. They answer the question, “what should users do to achieve the data objective?”
KPIs
These are the metrics that show whether the target are being realized. These are the components that are analyzed in data analytics. They also help decide the necessary aspects to consider in the campaign. It asks, “which indicators matter in this campaign?” It also asks “what data are needed to decide on the attainment of goals?” These questions prove how KPIs are closely associated with goals instead of data objectives. But they are still related. For example, if you aim to increase website traffic, check the number of visitors. You may also take a look at the length of time the user stays on the website and the percentage of new users on the site.
Example of Data Objective, Goal, KPIs
Here’s an example of data objectives, goals, and KPIs that are aligned with one another:
- Objective: increase bookings
- Goal: customers make an online reservation
- KPIs: conversion quota, the costs you will spend per each visitor, order value
As you can see, KPIs allow you to focus on the facts that can affect the process of conversion. For example, you need to look at how you can increase your rate of conversion if you have the objective of increasing revenue. This may be the number of visitors who buy your product or service. Additionally, you can also increase the conversion rateThe conversion rate is the percentage of people who take the desired action on your website or socia... More by providing discounts to potential consumers. This would entail having more sales but a lower average order value. But you can also find ways to increase the average order value with the same conversion rate. However, you have to increase the revenue for each conversion with this.
Then, you want to track these data objectives once they are established along with the goals and KPIs. This will help you analyze how well your performance is, and how you can improve your overall campaign.
Data Tracking and Collection
The two main ways to monitor whether the data objectives are being met are through cookie-based tracking and server-based tracking. But there is also a third option. It is called universal analytics.
Again, objectives are aligned with specific outcomes. Goals are the user behavior that must be executed to carry out the objective. Lastly, key performance indicators or KPIs are the factors that determine success.
LOOKING FOR A ONE-STOP SOLUTION TO YOUR GROWTH NEEDS?
These pieces of information are captured through data analytics.
Cookie-Based Tracking
Cookie-based tracking is one way to ensure the data objectives are being met. It’s also the most typical way of tracking. It is usually done by adding a page tag at every webpage through JavaScript codes. Once a user accesses the page, the code works and sends details on Google Analytics or other third-party servers.
Server-Based Tracking
On the other hand, server-based tracking requires looking at log files. These are the documents that are created by servers or computers that save sites. They also record the clicks done on the server. This type of tracking is helpful for monitoring visitors on mobile devices. That’s because various phones are not capable of executing cookie-based JavaScript tags. This is also crucial to the use of universal analytics.
Universal Analytics
When referring to universal analytics, it talks about Google’s all-new feature. This now allows the tracking of individual people. It’s also a solution to the decline of cookies. Many browsers now let you block cookies. In fact, some mobile devices cannot reach or execute them at all. Privacy concerns are also a huge issue with cookie-based tracking, so universal analytics can address it. It lets you track visitors instead of sessions. That means it counts your mobile device, laptop, and tablet as one user as long as there is a unique identifier among them.
Analyzing Data
Once you have gathered enough data, it is finally time to analyze them. To do this, you need to take note of the acronym TAO of conversion optimization. It refers to Track, Analyze, and Optimize.
To analyze, you want to infer the intent of the visitors. What made them go to your site? What is their purpose? Then you want to indicate the outcomes metrics. This reveals who or how many users performed the goal actions on your site. That’s because not everyone who visits will offer conversion. Lastly, check the user experience for behavioral patterns. Here, you have to answer the question, what can we do to influence the, and achieve our objectives?
© Image credits to Steve Johnson
LOOKING FOR A ONE-STOP SOLUTION TO YOUR GROWTH NEEDS?
