Online Marketing and Data Analysis

How does data analysis enhance online marketing?

The beauty of internet marketing is that if properly set up, everything can be tracked. And since impressions, clicks, and conversions can be tracked, data is available for analysis.

Data analysis can provide strategic insight and answer questions like:

• How many search conversions can we expect if we increase search spend by 50%?

• Should we implement a frequency cap on our display ads?
• When running thousands of keywords, how can we optimize quickly and reduce spend?

• How does media activity in one channel impact the performance of another channel?
• Is there a better metric to look at than CTR and CPC?

Great, so how can we start using data analysis? Do we log into Google and press a ‘Data Analysis’ button?

Unfortunately it is not that easy, at least not yet. There are ‘Analytics’ people you can try and hire, but you may have a tough time since this kind of work is relatively new and there are not many experienced online marketing analyst around. Moreover, not every online analyst will be able to answer these questions. Some analysts just focus on research and know how to use tools like Comscore and Nielsen. Other analysts just do reporting and database management. The kind of analyst you need is someone who is focused primarily in digital media and has experience performing data analysis with REAL campaign data. They should at minimum know how to:

• perform a diminishing returns model (forecast conversions based on historical spend)
• know how to rank variables from best to worst across multiple metrics (rank mobile publishers)
• perform an Independent T-test (so they can know which creative statistically works better)
• do a regression analysis (understand how TV or online display impacts paid search)
• know how to use Vlookups and pivot tables (organize data quickly and create reports)

Well I can go on and on, but these are some of the basics that an online marketing analyst should know. You can also learn how to do these in your MBA program. The stats class should cover these techniques. Or you can save money and time by just learning from the data analysis tutorials that I provide.

Sooner or later, your clients are going to start demanding accountability if they haven’t already. And data analysis is the answer.

If you have any thoughts or opinions, please share. Thanks.

Eric Melchor

Founder of Smart Digital Spending