Why Digital Marketing Managers Should Be Obsessed With Data Analysis

According to an IPMARK article, 30% of companies do not measure the return on investment (ROI) of their digital marketing strategy. At a time when outbound strategies are long passed and the attention of marketing professionals must focus 100% on Inbound techniques, measuring the results of your campaigns is critical to knowing if a strategy has been successful or not.

The consumer rarely makes a purchase decision according to a catalogue or an advertising brochure received at home. These days, they investigate their needs online and search for the opinions of other users...until finally, they decide to make the purchase. Most of these searches are done from their mobile phone.

Therefore, the need to perform a data analysis must be fundamental in the marketing manager’s strategy. Here’s why:

SMART Goal Setting

Each company needs to set measurable goals according to its business strategy. It is important to set 12-month targets to set the course; we set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound) goals.



Image: HubSpot


If, as a marketing manager, you work with your team on SMART goals, you'll be able to accurately define your goals and measure the success of each step your team takes. That is, you will set your marketing goals based on business objectives.

For example, instead of facing this (wrong) strategy: “I want more visits on my website, leads and sales”, your goal should be quantified: “We need 20,000 visitors, 500 leads and 12 customers within the next 12 months, with the goal of reaching $600,000 in revenue”.

Set metrics

Once we have defined the marketing objectives according to the business objectives, it is important to establish the metrics needed to measure the results and draw the correct conclusions.

The most practical way to understand and improve the performance of any action or activity is through measurements. When these are part of the processes, certain metrics must be organised to obtain specific, reliable and timely information that allows for better decision making.

How can we define a metric system? Mainly, by establishing measurable KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

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KPIs help us measure performance based on goals and objectives for the different areas of our company.

For example, a study by the technology company Contently highlights that 73% of marketers identify Brand Awareness as the main objective of their content marketing. However, 90% have doubts that the metrics they use are actually measuring the desired results.

According to Avinash Kaushik, a digital marketing expert, “metrics help you understand what you're doing against your goals”.

Therefore, identifying which KPIs to measure (and, indeed, be measurable) in your marketing strategy is critical to business growth. Among the main marketing KPIs are sales revenue, cost per lead, return on investment (ROI) in Inbound Marketing or Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), among others.

Constant monitoring and analysis of results

This has already been said by William Thomson Kelvin, British physicist and mathematician (1824–1907): “What is not measured, can not be improved”. In the world of digital marketing, the same is true. Each month, it is necessary to monitor, through specific reports, the results we are getting.

Marketing actions depend on the metrics of the KPIs. If we are not getting to them, that means that we have to rethink the strategy or establish other types of actions.

As for measurement tools, some examples are Google Analytics or Webtrends. To measure your strategy in SEO, a good tool is SEMrush. And, if you want to study your competitors, one option is Alexa.

Given the rapid growth of data volume, it is important to have a data scientist profile.

This professional should be able to identify the business challenges and problems that may arise, analyse the different sources of data available and define guidelines for business growth (or to solve a problem that may have arisen).

The main obsession of marketing managers, therefore, when it comes to monitoring metrics and conducting data driven marketing, should be ROI.

Implementation of improvements

Constant monitoring of data analysis is what will lead us to make decisions and implement improvements.

According to a study by Ernst & Young, leaders using data-driven decision-making improve their strategic and operational information. “Our experience demonstrates that having a driver-based approach tends to facilitate better alignment of key goals across the enterprise”.


To ensure that your efforts in measurement and analysis of data are translated into efficient results in your marketing strategy, it is important to have a strategic partner. At We Are Marketing, we work with Marketing Automation and growth solutions to help grow our customers.

Our solutions are based on data and the synergy between our team and yours working toward a common goal: to help you achieve great results.