Smart Marketing: The Evolution And Importance of Tracking Your Marketing Analytics

The Evolution of Marketing Analytics

Marketing has come a long way, becoming more sophisticated over the years. It began with newspaper ads in the 1700s before expanding to other formats over the next century.

In 1892, Sears ran the first direct mail campaign. It also entailed a very simple measurement strategy. Sears sent out 8,000 postcards and gained 2,000 new orders. That’s it!

During the next 100 years, people invented new forms of marketing such as radio, tv, telemarketing, and email. And as marketing became more complex, so did tracking the data.

Website Marketing Analytics

Fast forward to the 1990s, which marked the adoption of personal computer ownership. Subsequently, there was rapid growth in digital marketing and data capture as well. Banner ads, visit counters, and search engine marketing all began to take shape.

Do you remember these? The ‘Hit Counter’ was a common element on many websites in the late 1990s.

Web analytics became more intricate after the advent of search and the rise of Google in the late 1990s. And in the 2000s, social media networks appeared.

Social Media Marketing Analytics

MySpace pioneered social media marketing in partnership with Google in 2006. This collaboration turned into what’s known as Google Advertising. Marketers ran ads on MySpace using contextual advertising by way of Google AdSense. Each Google ad selected for display on MySpace was determined by multiple components such as keyword analysis. Of course, today social media marketing analytics are much more complex. There are many robust social media platforms today, such as Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, WeChat, and YouTube. Each has its long list of trackable metrics.

Mobile Marketing Analytics

 Also, let’s also not forget the mobile phone, on which the first ad went out in the early 2000s. Mobile marketing has now expanded from SMS into many forms including mobile apps. Marketers can use mobile data to analyze audiences by helpful details, including location.

So why the history lesson? Because as marketing tools have become more intricate, so has the need to analyze performance effectively.

Marketing today is smarter than ever.

Why You Should Track Your Marketing Analytics

Marketing analytics tools now give us what seems to be unlimited measurement options. But there are a few significant benefits to using marketing analytics.

• Get a complete view of all marketing activities.

  • It's important to review how each marketing tactic is performing on its own and how they work together.

• Understand your audience's behavior and preferences.

  • Review your audience’s actions. Look at how they search, the products they buy, the social media posts they engage with, and the emails they open. And look at the demographics of who engages.

• Improve your marketing strategy.

  • Optimization is key with digital marketing! Adjust components such as keywords, creative, or targeting.

• Predict the success of your future marketing campaigns.

  • Nothing can predict your campaign success quite like the data of older campaigns. Learn from what aspects didn’t drive results and use inspiration from what aspects do work.

Marketing analytics has been around for decades now, so it’s impossible to fit an entire historical recap into just one blog post. However, this topic is really fascinating as it’s really about understanding why people are attracted to certain content.