MODULE 4: MEASUREMENT, ANALYSIS, AND OPTIMIZATION

The learning objectives of module 4 are: (1) Recognize the role of data and analytics in digital marketing; (2)
Demonstrate data analysis and storytelling skills; and (3) Predict how emerging trends in data collection and
analysis will impact the field.

INDEX

1. Fit: Are you a numbers person? (Pag 2)

1. Interview with Nick Lees

2. Measurement: Metrics that Matter (Pag 4opt)

1. A Differentiation: Marketing vs. Sales

2. What Are You Trying to Accomplish? How Will You Know If You've Done It?

3. Which Metrics Matter

4. Listening to Your Customers

3. Analysis: Testing (Pag 9)

1. What Should You Test?

2. What Test Should You Run?

4. Optimization: Making the Most of Your Learning (Pag 19)

1. Pre-Mortems and Post-Mortems

2. Ethics

3. Future-proofing

Introduction: One of the most important distinguishing factors between the age of broadcast marketing and
the world of digital marketing is the ability to measure almost everything. Our challenge as digital marketers
is not only to know what data is available and how to access it, but also what information is important, and how
to act on it. How do we measure what matters? Module 4 answers core questions of Digital Marketing. In a world
where we can measure almost anything, what should we measure? Once we have those metrics, how do
we draw insights from them? How do we translate those insights into action so that we can continually
learn and improve the results for our customers and our organizations? Acting ethically and being future-
oriented to understand where the field is going and how we might get there in an intentional, humane way. This
module provides an introduction to all of these ideas, so you can continue to navigate these big questions and
make smart strategic decisions as a digital marketer. The numbers side of this work is not intuitive. If data
analysis is intimidating, learn what you can to be able to speak the language and contribute to your team. But
there’s no need to be an expert on all fields. The point is to be able to get actionable insights from the numbers
we draw.

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 1. Fit: Are you a numbers person?

1. Interview with Nick Lees

Digital Marketing is a field where many different talents and skills are used, therefore there is great variety of
professionals working in this sector. It is important to know where you fit in and what you bring to the table.
Understanding this is a process that comes from experience. As you will see in the following interview, knowing
what you are good at comes both from success and failure, which helps you learn who you are as a Digital
Marketer.

Interview with Nick Lees

Nick Lees works in the marketing field, primarily in the area of Google ads. As a professional with over a decade
of experience in this industry, Lees offers his perspective on his own “zone of genius”. This is the place where
he really shines, or the aspect he loves most about working in Digital Marketing. In the following audio clip, Lees
specifically defines these areas in which he excels.

I've had a hard time narrowing it down to just one, so, I'm going to give you two. The first one is creativity, you
need to be quick on your feet and be able to think of new ideas. And the other one is adaptability:. Things change,
they're new features, new platforms to try new policies and regulations, and you have to just be very able to go
with the flow and adapt to changes as they arise.

How has your skill set led you to success in your work? So success I've had, there's a client that I've been
working with now for four years. And when they hired me, they were a relatively small team. And I began running
Google ads for them. They'd never run anything before. They're a startup, and for a medical device. And they
were really pleased with the leads that started coming in, not only with the quantity of leads, but the quality. And
they basically gave me an open book to increase the budgets as needed, as long as results continued to improve.
And I brought them to a place where they've had to triple their sales team, their revenue has gone through the
roof, and now their IPO-ing, they're going public for $120 million. And again, this was like a small company, when
I joined it was doing like a million dollars in revenue. So that's been very exciting for me, because I know that
they've told me that I've made the work that I'm doing, it makes up for about 40% of their sales revenue. So, I
mean, it's incredible for me to see that I'm having that sort of impact.

How has failure helped you to hone in on your “zone of genius”? There are a lot of failures in digital
marketing as a career, I can tell you about a lot of clients that I've worked with, you know, the results were not
great. By that, I mean, they're not profitable. And when that happens, looking bac there, there are usually two
reasons. One, the project was not a good fit. In the beginning, it was something that was just not a good fit for
my skills. And I've learned over time, what I'm really good at what niches... For instance, I specialize in lead
generation, that's just an area that I've had the most success in, I feel the most comfortable, I have the most
creative ideas, I really like it. When it comes to e-commerce or fundraising or other types of niches. That's, that's
less my forte. And so I've learned to really focus on what I'm good at and not take on projects that play to those
weaknesses of mine. The other the other thing, I suppose would be setting unrealistically high expectations. So,
when a client is expecting super quick and fantastic results when they've never run a campaign before that's,
that's a recipe for disaster. So what I've learned from that is not set expectations low, but to make them realistic.
For instance, I explain to clients that, especially if you've never run campaigns before that were, there's a testing
period, and I do not guarantee results. But we're going to need, you know, several months, one or two months
just to test things and see what's working, see what's will likely not be profitable. And once that's understood

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once that's the expectation, and the clients are okay with that, it makes it a lot smoother. And so yeah, there you
go.

Besides thinking about whether you are more of a creative or analytical type, it is also important to understand
which skills are the most valuable in the Digital Marketing field. Your zone of genius may lie more within one
area than another, but as Lees advises in the audio clip below, there are certain abilities that are particularly
useful in the industry. Therefore, you should try and add these skills to your tool box, regardless of which way
your talents naturally lean.

Piece of advice, two skills to work on that will if you want to go into this as a career and stay relevant, and kind
of be ahead of the competition. So when you're interviewing for jobs that you'll stand out, two skills that I think
are very relevant. One copywriting, you're able to write well. That will set you above competitors. And two,
technical skill sets. If you are able and interested in learning, Google Tag Manager, basic coding, HTML, CSS,
even JavaScript. Those are things that will serve you well, will open a lot of doors and will, whether you're doing
Google ads or SEO or really anything in digital marketing will serve you well.

Conclusions:

• Nick Lees has achieved success in his work by increasing leads and revenue for a client
• Failure has helped him to hone in on his “zone of genius”
• Creativity and adaptability are the most valuable / key skills in the marketing field
• Copywriting and technical skill sets are useful and should be added to one's toolbox

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 2. MEASUREMENT: METRICS THAT MATTER

1. A Differentiation: Marketing vs. Sales

Let’s take a moment and go back to what Digital Marketing is meant to do. Specifically, how to distinguish it from sales.
They both emphasize creating a customer, and the exchange of value. But, what are the differences? Sales is focused on
relationships, which requires deep, long-term effort, especially in B2B settings and nonprofits. Marketing’s job is to bring
in qualified leads—customers who are the most primed and ready to buy. The marketing department needs to:

● Research the target audience by beginning the conversation where they are, and constantly monitoring their
feedback.
● Establish and enforce a brand that communicates the company's values, promise, and positioning.
● Define strategic marketing plans that help the company achieve their overall goals

CONSIDER: In a nonprofit setting, fundraising plays the equivalent role of sales, and one of the most important jobs
marketing can do is to invite the best potential donors to get involved in the mission.

2. What Are You Trying to Accomplish? How Will You Know If You've Done It?

The data you collect and analyze should tell you whether you are reaching your goals. Marketing is sometimes maligned
as the “make-it-pretty department.” But marketing is a core business function and should be treated and measured as
such. We have more opportunities to measure at our fingertips than ever before, so the challenge is not whether to
measure, but to decide:

● What metrics matter

● What insights you can draw from those metrics
● How you can turn those insights into action

There are three methods for establishing business goals and marketing objectives. Among the strategies outlined
throughout this course POST and SMART objectives are highlighted as a means to accomplish objectives. In addition, OKR
is introduced, which stands for objectives and key results and is a process used to establish a pathway to a desired result.

Business Goals and Marketing Objectives

In all industries or organizations, there is a business with certain goals like:

● increase revenues by X %
● maintain a particular profit margin
● Tapping into a new market
● Cross-selling products with existing customers
● Building a community outreach efforts
● Recruit donors
● Many more…

Digital marketers must understand what the company wants to achieve overall and set objectives that align with and
advance the bigger goals of the business. As you develop your marketing strategy, you should dig into those business goals
and consider how your marketing efforts can advance each one. This process fits into “People” and “Objectives” of the

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POST planning process. Ask yourself if you know the business wants to achieve X goal, who is the best audience to target,
and how might you define the specific objectives you want to hit within that group?

A helpful framework you may already be familiar with to set meaningful objectives is the acronym SMART:

● Specific
● Measurable
● Actionable
● Relevant
● Time Bound

Setting SMART objectives helps to get more focused and efficient in your efforts.

For instance, an objective of “increase customer retention” is good, but “increase customer retention by 10% in the next
three months” is better, because it tells you precisely what increase means 10%. After that set period of time, 3 months,
you will be able to look back and know precisely wether you hit that goal or not and adjust accordingly.

Another helpful process to name and track your progress is setting OKRs.

● Objectives
● Key results

Setting OKRs is a process used by some of the biggest brands in the world to outline a particular team´s objectives and the
measurable stops you will take along the way to reach those objectives. It is often used to mark the completion of a specific
activity, such as developing a strategy, launching an event or establishing a presence on a new social media platform. OKRs
are typically aggressive and ambitious, so they build momentum within the team.

Let´s consider an example that pulls this all together: An organization overall business goals is to increase brand awareness.
One of the digital marketing objectives might then be to increase engagement on instagram by 25% in the next quarter.
A key result from that objective may be that relationships have been established with three key Instagram influencer by a
certain date. Aligning with business goals, setting smart objectives and understanding the key results that will help show
that the work is happening, all level up to an effective, efficient digital marketing program.

3. Which Metrics Matter

The data you collect and analyze should tell you whether you are reaching your goals. Meaningful metrics help you ensure
your marketing efforts are aligned with the goals of the company and are helping drive success.

What goals and metrics make the most sense for your company or organization, at its particular stage, in the current
market environment? For example: The right metrics to track will be different for an early-stage startup company focused
on rapid growth vs. an established nonprofit organization looking to re-engage its lapsed supporters vs. a large company
working to retain its current customer base.

Tracking your metrics helps you continuously learn what’s working, and what’s not— the goal is to always be learning!

As the figure below illustrates, we start by learning about our (potential) customers. We then draw insights from that
learning to plan our digital marketing efforts. We want to apply that learning and execute our plans. Finally, we assess the
results of our work, and the process begins again. Drawing insight from your metrics to share with the rest of your team
helps you make the case for your marketing efforts, and the changes you might want to make.

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KPIs - key performance indicators - are the specific metrics you decide to track to get the best sense of whether your
digital marketing efforts are headed in the right direction.

How to set KPIs nd how KPIs work together to evaluate your marketing efforts

We have already discussed the importance of OKRs, objectives and key results. Now lets talk about a related term that
helps you track your progress from a different angle, KPIs. The Key performance indicators are metrics that act as clues to
tell us how are doing our digital marketing efforts.

● OKRs are about the performance of the team and the process itself.
● KPIs are about the outputs, the performance of the content and campaigns we do.

There are a few especially important ideas to remember about KPIs:

1º Individual KPIs are not particularly valuable, because they work as a team. Its necessary to decide which metrics matter
and which combinations of metrics work best together to tell your organization´s story. For example: If you invest in
advertising and your website views increases month to month. That alone, could be seen as a success.

● But if the time spent on the website is going down, bounce rates are high and conversions aren't increasing. The
number of website hits suddenly becomes part of a very different story. You might not be getting the right people
to your website or that the user experience is not effective.
● On the other hand, quality of traffic is also important: if the total number of hits to the website is going down,
but all those metrics are increasing or staying the same. That combination tells you that while the traffic may be
lower, the quality of the traffic is higher. Which means you are getting in front of the right people. What can you
do to find more of the right people?

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2º Vanity Metrics are measurements that make you feel good about your marketing efforts, but don't actually translate
into measurable results. For instance: The number of views on a particular video. It may be great to see that number
increase into the tens of thousands or more. But how much of that video are people actually watching? Are they
commenting? Sharing? Subscribing? Liking? Or clicking in your website link? If you can not demonstrate the role that the
metric plays in moving towards your goals, you have to make the call as to whether it is worth tracking at all. Or, as our
previous point illustrated, if it is only useful in combination with other metrics.

3º The Key is to set KPIs that give you actionable insight. This means, you should choose the KPIs that both have an impact
on the success of your organization and over which you have some control.

● If you can not exert any meaningful control over the number of times a particular # is used, and the use of that #
does not correlate to more people visiting your website or showing interest in your product, there is no actionable
insight there, and it may not be a metric worth tracking.
● On the other hand, if the number of positive Google reviews is driving more traffic to your website, which is then
translating to more sales, then it is something to track, learn from and build into your strategy.

When it comes to KPIs, less is often more. Take the necessary time to figure out which metrics are most useful in
determining your success. Keep a pulse on them and always be willing to learn, iterate and improve.

4. Listening to Your Customers

We use data to help us listen to what our customers are saying and be more responsive and able to predict outcomes. As
we learned in the section on market research, listening to and understanding your customers is best done through
multiple channels. Social media listening is one way of gathering important information about your customers that you
can combine with other kinds of market research and data analysis to ultimately drive better business decisions.

Examples of Social Listening

ROI: the hardest simple formula out there. ROI stands for “return on investment.” ROI answers the question of whether
the money and resources an organization is putting into its marketing is paying off. Knowing the ROI of your marketing
efforts is crucial to making the case for your strategy, and ensuring that your marketing is making an impact.

ROE: Return on Engagement (or, some say Return on Emotion, or Return on Experience), is a more qualitative approach
to understanding how customers interact with a brand, and what might come of those interactions. (AMA New York 2021)
Though some marketers think that ROE is beside the point and that ROI is the bottom-line goal in any job. (Harris 2020)

Benchmarking: It is the practice of objectively evaluating your organization’s current performance in order to create a
snapshot, or tell a story, of where your efforts stand today. The article, "Essential 7-Step Guide on How to Benchmark
Marketing Activities" (ANNEX 1) provides additional information about the practice of benchmarking (Rooke 2020):

• Benchmarking is a method of objectively evaluating your digital marketing activities.

• Choose between one and three marketing activities to focus on, and between three and five metrics to measure.
• Use powerful tools such as Google Analytics, MailChimp and Twitter Analytics to carry out your benchmarking.
• Carry out competitor analysis too.
• Create a report summarizing your benchmarking and use it to create a Dig-Mark strategy to improve your metrics.
• Review your benchmarking on a regular basis to measure the impact of your strategy.

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Attribution: It is the science of using advanced analytics to allocate proportional credit to each marketing touch point
across all online and offline channels, leading to a desired customer action. Things to note: Although the industry has
made significant advances in using analytics to determine attribution, it is not completely there yet. Owners of media
vehicles have vested interest in advancing ROI to their media... so, trust them but verify first. The level of sophistication
of attribution and ROI calculation depends on the capabilities of your business and available affordable tools.

Drawing Actionable Insights from Testing

With over fifteen years of experience working in nonprofit advocacy, fundraising, and marketing, Emily P. Goodstein has
worked with an extensive portfolio of clients to help them achieve their fundraising and advocacy goals. Goodstein worked
in the public sector as Director of Student Outreach for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), and the
Tzedek Fellow at Hillel’s international offices in Washington, DC, prior to moving into the private sector. (Goodstein 2021).
She has been featured on National Public Radio and WTOP, in the Washington Post, the Washington Jewish Week and
Washingtonian and on DCist, Apartment Therapy, and the Huffington Post. She is a graduate of Selah, the Rockwood
Leadership Training Program’s collaboration with Bend the Arc, an active member of the Women’s Information Network,
Sixth & I Synagogue, and the Jewish Democratic Council’s NextGen Leadership Council. In 2021, she became a founding
member of the Statecraft Collective. (Goodstein 2021). Goodstein explains the truth behind failing and succeeding in the
field of Digital Marketing and how this is linked to the area of testing:

“So, one quality that I think successful digital marketers have is that they're willing to fail. And the truth is
that when you are a digital marketer, you actually have all these mini opportunities to fail and succeed.
And that's what I love about digital marketing is that we have so much data associated with the work that
we do. And we can do kind of small inconsequential tests to figure out what's going to perform well and
what's gonna not perform well. And the fear of failure, I think, is what actually gets in the way of thinking
big and thinking creatively, and trying new things. And so we really do have to be comfortable with the
possibility of a failure in an effort to grow and learn and thrive and then succeed. So, in general, I actually
love digital marketing specifically because we can kind of fail safely, and fail fast, and fail smart, and we
don't to be scared of failing”.

In summary: 1. Digital marketers need to be willing to fail in order to succeed; 2. Digital marketing offers the opportunity
to test and learn from failures. 3. Fear of failure can prevent digital marketers from thinking creatively and trying new
things. 4. Digital marketing allows for "safe" failures, which can help marketers grow and learn.

Setting smart goals is key to successful Digital Marketing. But if you’re a brand new organization, or are taking your efforts
in an entirely new direction, it can be hard to know where to start. That’s where benchmarking, attribution, testing, and
optimization come in.

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 3. ANALYSIS: TESTING

Testing is about using those benchmarks to form a hypothesis, and learn from the results. Testing in digital marketing can
happen at many levels, from the strategic (we want to test how this new audience responds to our messaging), to the
very tactical (we want to know which color button works best, the red or the green). Testing is a way of constantly learning,
adjusting, and improving your digital strategy.

1. What Should You Test?

Karen J. Marchetti offers three simple guidelines for deciding what to test in her book, The Results Obsession:

1. Test your biggest questions. Which elements are you most unsure about? Are you having disagreements about which
offer to use, or can’t decide which headline is better? Test to find out.
2. Test the big things. For each media channel, certain elements have the most impact on response. These are where
you should focus your testing.
3. Test significant differences. For the biggest change in results, test completely different layouts or creative approaches.
Or, test single elements for example, and even completely different offers.

2. What Test Should You Run?

You can have data without information, but you can’t have information without data. (Daniel Keys Moran, AMERICAN
COMPUTER PROGRAMMER). There are many kinds of tests we can run. Here are a few of the most important ones:

1. A/B Testing:

A/B testing is the easiest and most important kind of testing for digital marketers to become familiar with. Essentially, it’s
taking two versions of the same thing, and pitting them against one another to see which performs better, and then going
forward with whichever option is best. There are lots of things marketers may test, such as:

● Subject lines, such as for an email

● Website copy
● Calls-to-action (CTAs)
● Colors
● Fields in a form
● ...and much more

The key is to choose one thing to test, and ensure that all the other variables in the test remain the same. Let’s say you
are putting together a marketing campaign for a new office space, and you decide to run ads on LinkedIn targeting small
business owners in the area. You may decide to test two images to see which performs better in the ad. The target
audience, headline, copy, link, and CTA would all remain the same in both versions of the ad, but perhaps one ad features
a sleek office space with one person, while another features the same office space with several people. You would launch
the ads, watch the performances (the click-through rate would be the most important KPI), and after a predetermined
amount of time, evaluate the performance of one ad over the other. If, for instance, the ad with a single person performs
better, you would then move the ad dollars from the overall spend into that version. Neil Patel offers an easy A/B testing
checklist:

1. Decide what feature you want to test.

2. Create two versions of the same ad, landing page, app, etc.

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3. Decide how long your test will run. I suggest at least two weeks, but it may be longer or slightly shorter depending on
your traffic and industry.
4. Choose a testing tool to help you run your test.
5. Launch!
6. After a couple of weeks, take a look at the results. Which version won?
7. Rinse and repeat. A/B testing is most effective when done continually.

Point 1 is actually the hardest aspect of the A/B test, because, first, you have limited capacity as a digital marketer and
can’t possibly test everything—so you need to be strategic and selective. Second, your test has to be grounded in a theory
with a developed hypothesis that comes from your knowledge of the audience.

For instance, consider the example of the hypothetical LinkedIn ad above. Based on your audience research, you may have
learned that the kind of business owners you are targeting are self-directed and value their independence. Because of
that, you may believe that the image with the single person would perform better. The test can be used to confirm, or
challenge, that hypothesis.

2. Multivariate Testing:

Multivariate testing, a process of testing out multiple elements of your content at the same time. It operates on the same
principles as A/B testing, but incorporates a higher number of variables, and can help you see how those variables interact
with each other. Whereas A/B testing tests individual components, multivariate testing test combinations. It’s a more
complex, but ultimately more powerful approach to testing.

Let’s go back to the LinkedIn example. Say you want to test not only the image, but the headline as well. You would need
to then develop four versions of the ad instead of two: Picture 1 + Headline A; Picture 1 + Headline B; Picture 2 + Headline
A; Picture 2 + Headline B. Here is a comparison of A/B testing and multivariate testing for a website:

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1. The above example is testing the impact of the color of the “buy now” button. 2. The above example is testing
combinations of images and headlines on a web page.

3. User (or Usability) Testing:

User testing comes from the world of User Experience Design (UXD or UED), a design process devoted to making individual
experiences in websites and other digital applications as pleasant and efficient as possible. User testing, then, is the
process of understanding the roadblocks to that excellent experience, and naming the tasks needed to improve it. A single
facilitator often works with a single user to uncover these roadblocks, as in the image below, and this can be done live or
remotely for quantitative or qualitative results.

4. Incrementality Testing:

In the course of a digital marketing campaign, it’s important to understand the real value of your ad dollars. It would be
helpful to know how well this campaign would have performed without the ad boost. Incrementality is a term that refers
to understanding which elements of your media are actually driving the conversion.

Imagine a relay race in which each runner takes a quarter of the track, then passes the baton to their teammate, with the
last runner bringing the baton over the finish line. Was it only the last runner who won the race? No, the entire team was
needed. Incrementality testing is the equivalent of understanding how much each runner contributed to the win.

In digital marketing, we can easily see our customers’ last clicks before the conversion. This leads us to put too much
emphasis on certain marketing efforts, while discounting others. Incrementality testing helps adjust for that.

4.1. Google Marketing proposes a helpful analogy for understanding incremental testing

Erin Clement and Tom Garvey are Performance Media Manager and Incrementality Lead, respectively, for Media Lab
within Google Marketing.

Defining what incrementality and attribution are: Incrementality is the answer to the question, "How many sales, leads,
sign-ups, etcetera would have happened even if I hadn’t spent a penny on media?" In other words, it is the benefit that
can be definitively proven to have been driven by marketing budget. Attribution is how credit is assigned for sales and
conversions across different touchpoints in a conversion path. There are rules-based models, such as last click, first click,
and time decay, as well as data-driven models that use machine learning to assign fractional credit to various touchpoints.

Why attribution and incrementality are in the same presentation: they are two separate marketing buzzwords describing
two different problems, but both are integral parts of an effective performance media plan. Most marketers are relying
on outdated metrics to make decisions, such as the last click model, which assigns 100% of the credit to the last interaction
a user had with an ad, even if they saw other touchpoints before converting.

The difference between incrementality and attribution. In a 4x100 relay race, where each member of the team runs a
quarter of the way around the track and passes the baton between them. Usain Bolt as an example: someone who ran
only one quarter of the race, but still received a medal for his contribution. He then asked why marketers would optimize
their media like the last step is all that matters.

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Incrementality and attribution are two separate problems that require different solutions, but both are necessary for
an effective performance media plan. How outdated metrics, such as the last click model, can devalue upper funnel
tactics. To illustrate the difference between the two, Tom used an analogy of a 4x100 relay race. At this point, I think
you’ve decoded our very heavy-handed analogy. The baton? That’s your sale, lead, install, or whatever is key to your
business. Usain Bolt? He’s the last interaction your media had with that customer before they converted. And his
teammates are all those channels that rarely get the credit they deserve for nurturing that sale. Sure, Usain Bolt may have
mattered more than literally any other sprinter ever has during the final leg, but to prove it, Jamaica would have to be
willing to conduct a control race with Bolt as a holdout. I don’t think we’re going to see that. And even if they did, I still
wouldn’t be giving him 4 medals for his team’s race.

Fortunately, you can do a test like this with your media and not cost yourself the race, or the sale. So what part of your
media “matters”? That’s where incrementality comes in. You probably know what that means at this point, but you might
not actually know how to measure it. Measuring incrementality can be done in a few ways, starting off with measuring
channel silos. Google offers Conversion Lifts studies, or you could do these on your own with well-controlled experiments.
But, what the key is here is understanding the data you will get as a result, leading to better in-flight optimizations and
better spending decisions for your business.

Let’s say your investment appears to be 20% incremental. You know what the positive side means. But, does this mean
80% was wasted? Very importantly, no. It simply means that you really don’t know much about the other 80%. That 80%
may have been the reason someone’s coworker told their mother-in-law about a great product they saw in a video that
they eventually went home 3 states away and bought 6 months later. You just don’t know these things when you’re
measuring in channel silos. That’s where much more complex solutions come into play.

So, if there’s one takeaway here, it’s simply that you need to understand the right questions to ask when talking about
incrementality, and that they should be related to “How can I make sure that I’m putting more of my marketing budget
behind media that I can prove is driving impact that I would not have gotten otherwise?”

All of this incrementality work Tom talked about is a huge step in the right direction. Now that we know which channels
and tactics are driving incremental value, we’re left with the challenge of translating that insight into action. There are a
number of tools available today that we use to help us get closer, but no 1 solution checks all the boxes on our criteria for
data coverage and actionability.

At a macro level, we use Ads Data Hub or Google Analytics to help us make decisions around how we allocate budget
across channels and tactics. But these high-level insights are incredibly challenging to translate into real-time, granular
optimizations. At a micro level, we’re leaning into data-driven attribution models within Google Ads or SA360, which allow
us to make smarter real-time bidding decisions and move us a little bit further away from giving Mr. Bolt 100% of the
credit.

As we look to the future of attribution and incrementality in a postcookie, privacy-safe world, we are using attribution
reporting in the new Google Analytics Advertising Workspace. In this new workspace, we’re able to compare attribution
models and forecast cross-channel or platform-specific media budgets and use real-time data to take action. Google
Analytics 4 will also bring our measurement workstreams closer together, with attribution models that are trained on and
validated against incrementality experiments.

We recommend getting started today with a dual setup. This means setting up a new Google Analytics 4 property alongside

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your existing Analytics implementation. This approach will allow you to use your existing Analytics as your source of truth,
build data history in Google Analytics 4, and take advantage of new features and functionality as they become available.
Eventually Google Analytics 4 will become your new source of truth.

I hope you aren’t tired of this analogy yet, because I can’t let it go without a good one-liner. Don’t forget who deserves
the medals: everybody on the team, not just the one who crosses the finish line.

4.2. Five Ways to Do Incrementality Testing with Digital Ads

Considering the challenges that all marketers face with accurately measuring the impact each channel has on overall
business revenue, especially as purchase paths become increasingly complex, measuring ad performance by
incrementality is one way to get closer to understanding the true performance lift a given tactic contributes to your
business. Our CMO even noted it to be one of the most important tools in a digital marketer’s toolbox in 2020 as cookie-
based tracking becomes harder to rely on.

There are a lot of ways you could measure incrementality, but we’ve rounded up five of the ways we’ve done it to
summarize how you can set up a test, how measurement will work, and the pros and cons of each approach.

Important notes: With all incrementality testing, you must put enough spend behind the test to get meaningful insights.
It may seem like you can do a small-scale test, but you likely won’t get enough data to develop actionable learnings. Some
tests will require more spend to get the level of result you need than others, but be prepared to invest. Secondly, you
might notice that it’s nearly impossible to design tests that don’t have some level of potential bias or externality involved.
Don’t let that deter you! There is still great insight to be gained, but maybe just know that this data should be used
directionally and not as a direct statement of exact return.

Geographical Split Testing

How it’s set up: Geographical split tests are set up by choosing a subset of geographies (states, cities, etc.) to show ads to,
and a set of geographies with similar characteristics to the test group (size, region, demographics, behavior, market
density, etc.) where you won’t show ads. When selecting what geographies to use, it’s important to make sure you are
selecting places where no other tests will be running and where you will be able to hold other marketing efforts relatively
steady to get the cleanest possible results.

Measurement: After running your test, you will be able to measure changes in metrics like new site visitors from Direct
and Organic channels, as well as brand searches and revenue in the exposed areas compared to the control areas. From
there, you can calculate the incremental lift that your ads drove.

Pros:

· Easy to set up for almost every channel

· Can concentrate spend in a few areas to stretch a relatively small incrementality testing budget

Cons:

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· Data sets can easily get muddy if other marketing efforts change in test markets mid-test
· Geographical locations don’t create truly randomized groups – there will always be natural variances in behavior
between states

Customer List Segmentation

How it’s set up: Customer list segmentation takes customer lists and splits them into different segments to serve on
different channels to measure the incremental impact each additional channel has on performance.

For example, if you have five segments of your list, the set up might look like this:

· Segment 1: No marketing
· Segment 2: Only email
· Segment 3: Email + Facebook/GDN retargeting
· Segment 4: Email + Facebook/GDN retargeting + YouTube retargeting

Measurement: After running your test, you will be able to compare overall revenue for each segment to determine the
incremental revenue driven by each additional channel

Pros:

· Reliable and clean measurement

· Easy to set up once audience segments are created
· Can help to measure incrementality across various channels with one test

Cons:

· Requires upfront time investment to create audience segments

· Can be difficult to control for unintended bias in audience sets
· Audience is limited to current customers or email lists – in most cases not possible to use this method with prospecting
efforts

“Dummy Ad” Holdout Testing

How it’s set up: “Dummy Ad” holdout tests are set up by choosing a percentage of your traffic to receive an ad for your
company and serving the rest of the traffic an ad for something completely unrelated to your business, typically a public
service ad or nonprofit cause. This will allow you to measure conversions for both sets of ads and compare conversion
rates for each just like you would do between two standard campaigns.

Measurement: After running your test, you will be able to compare the performance between the two groups and
determine the incremental lift in conversion rate, conversions and revenue that seeing your ad drove.

Pros:

· Allows you to measure lift in conversions and/or revenue in-channel, which can be preferable when you don’t see a

14
lot of direct conversions in your web analytics software for the channel you want to measure (YouTube is a good example)
· You can choose to serve dummy ads to a small subset of the audience to mitigate wasted spend and then scale up
the results to be similar volume to the control group

Cons:

· Spend is going to serving the “dummy ads,” rather than your business

YouTube Brand Lift Studies

How it’s set up: YouTube Brand Lift Studies are set upright in the Google Ads platform. They are survey-based studies, and
the metrics that the advertiser chooses to measure determine what survey questions are asked. For example, if an
advertiser chooses to measure brand awareness, viewers would receive a survey question asking something like “which
of the following brands have you heard of?” with options for that advertiser and their competitors.

After selecting which metrics you’d like to measure from Brand Awareness, Brand Recall, Brand Consideration, Brand
Favorability, and Purchase Intent and setting up the study, Google will automatically hold out half of your chosen audience
from seeing your ads in order to be able to measure the difference in responses between the exposed and holdout groups.

There is also an option to measure Brand Interest, which looks at the increase in brand searches across Google and
YouTube from people that see the ads vs. people that don’t. However, this metric requires a higher level of spend to get
statistically significant data.

This is different than the other tests noted above. It’s much more useful for understanding the power of the creative you
use in capturing your audience’s attention or moving them to act than it will be to gain insight on incremental conversions
or purchases.

Measurement: Google will calculate the difference in “positive” responses (meaning that people selected your brand from
the list of options) between the exposed and holdout groups to calculate lift. You can see metrics directly in the Google
Ads interface for relative lift, absolute lift, lifted users and cost per lifted user.

Pros:

· Relatively easy to set up in the Google Ads interface

· Multiple lift metrics to choose from
· Can customize what competitors you want to show alongside your brand
· The test setup is one of the most controllable available

Cons:

· Can only be used with YouTube campaigns

· No metric that measures conversion lift
· Minimum spend requirements that need to be met to use the tool (currently a minimum of $5,000 in the first seven
days for one question)
Facebook Lift Studies

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How it’s set up: Similar to Google’s Brand Lift Study, Facebook Lift Studies are set up in the Facebook platform and are
specific to Facebook and Instagram campaigns. However, instead of being survey based, Facebook Lift Studies
automatically split your audience into two groups (one that receives ads and one that doesn’t). Also, unlike YouTube Brand
Lift, Facebook will measure incremental conversions and revenue driven by the exposed group compared to the control
group.

Measurement: Facebook automatically calculates the lift driven by users exposed to the ad compared to users that didn’t
see an ad.

Pros:

· Easy to set up in the Facebook platform

· Allows us to measure conversion lift and determine true incrementality

Cons:

· Only works for Facebook & Instagram

There you have it! Those are five methods available to any digital marketer now to start gaining an understanding of the
incrementality of running ads on any number of popular channels. We hope it makes you feel incrementally more in
control of your ad budgets!

5. Optimization:

This process of incremental improvement in order to maximize your desired business results, in digital marketing, is called
optimization. It’s really about making the most of your efforts to meet your goals. So, everything we’ve discussed up to
this point: Understanding your customer, researching your competition, choosing the right channels, developing powerful
messaging, and, of course, testing, all play a part in optimization.

Optimization is all about making your marketing as effective as possible, which means speaking to the customer, but also
understanding the algorithms that drive engagement online. Optimizing your Facebook presence means taking into
account the kinds of content and behaviors the Facebook algorithm prioritizes. Optimizing your brand for searches means
having a clear understanding of what your customers are looking for, and how different keywords perform in Google
search.

Any and every aspect of your digital marketing can be optimized through smart strategy and consistent testing. Your job
is to decide where the most potential for improvement lies; focus your efforts and continue to learn every day.

5.1. Data, Storytelling, and Strategy

We have already learned the importance of storytelling in conveying information—both when it comes to sharing the
findings of market research, and also in terms of the marketing efforts themselves. Let’s briefly revisit this and add some

16
new tools to our toolbox to ensure that we are equipped to share the results of our marketing efforts in a way that can
be heard and understood.

Data storytelling couples data visualization with compelling narratives that help audiences better comprehend and take
action based on data analysis. While effective data visualization helps people grasp and remember key takeaways, data
storytelling is essential for helping them understand why those takeaways matter. (Lydia Hopper - DATA VISUALIZATION
EXPERT AND INFORMATION DESIGN WRITER).

We have already emphasized how important it is to choose the most important KPIs (measure what matters), to draw
insight from that data, and make adjustments accordingly. When you need to explain your insights and the actions you
choose to take because of them, data storytelling is a powerful tool.

5.2. What Sort of Data Do Marketers Communicate?

Maybe stories are just data with a soul. (Brene Brown, AMERICAN RESEARCHER AND AUTHOR OF DARE TO LEAD).

What kind of data do digital marketers need to communicate through stories to their leadership and teams? Research
tells us that sales data tops the list, followed by stories of customer success and market research.

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5.3. Example of Effective Data Storytelling

In the figure below, we see the increase of interest in online education opportunities, classified into “virtual field trips,”
“virtual classrooms,” and “virtual learning.”.

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 4. OPTIMIZATION: MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR LEARNING

1. Pre-Mortems and Post-Mortems

Trying your hand at a “pre-mortem” at the beginning of your project? Gamestorming.com offers a template for creating
yours, and a process for conducting a pre-mortem with your team.

2. Ethics

This module focuses on measurement, analysis, and optimization; which is essentially data and how to use it to create
value for your organization. When discussing data and analytics, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the data points are
describing real people and their actions. The moment we lose sight of this is the moment we not only lose our connection
to our customers, but also our ethical grounding. There have been some important recent efforts to help consumers
maintain control of their data. In 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)–the world’s strongest set of data
protection rules–came into effect across the European Union. (Burgess 2020). The State of California, which happens to
be the fifth largest economy in the world on its own, followed suit with the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA)
which took effect in 2020. (Edelman 2020). Data rights and consumer protection should be on every digital marketer’s
radar. Ignoring or exploiting data is not only unethical, it can also have significant consequences for businesses.

RECOMMENDED READING: Read the following article about privacy and data protection Ethical data usage in an era of
digital technology and regulation to learn more about how organizations are responding to the pressure of improving their
use of their customers’ data. In addition, you may be interested in the following articles about data management, Ethical
data management is a win for marketers, which argues that ethical data use goes beyond legal data use.

3. Future-proofing

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Big data is at the foundation of all of the megatrends that are happening today, from social to mobile to the cloud to
gaming. (Chris Lynch, AMERICAN VENTURE CAPITALIST).

Big Data: Large data sets that are used by organizations to find patterns, trends, and associations, typically related to our
behavior or interactions.

3.1. The Four V’s of Big Data

1. Volume - Big data can be drawn from:

● Point-of-sale data
● Social media platforms
● e-commerce sites
● “Internet of Things” devices

2. Variety - Big data comes in a variety of formats, including:

● Ad responses
● Social media sentiment
● Email actions

3. Velocity- Big data statistics can be delivered much faster than conventional data thanks to:
● Internet of Things technology
● 5G data streaming
● RFID chips (radio frequency identification tags)

4. Veracity - This refers to the accuracy and trustworthiness of big data thanks to:
● Large sample sizes
● Real-time collection

Audience Segmentation: Big data allows marketers to compile, explore, and analyze various aspects of behavioral
criteria—how people use their products and services—as well as social and demographic factors. The findings can help
determine consumer personas and preferences more efficiently so marketing messages can be enhanced and optimized.

Sentiment Analysis: By analyzing social media posts, reviews, and search queries, marketers can better understand how
consumers feel about their brand.

Targeted Marketing: Product recommendations, social media advertising, and email drip campaigns use big data analytics
to deliver more relevant content to consumers.

Predictive and Prescriptive Analysis: Marketers can work with the supply chain to help ensure more adequate production
of goods based on demand forecasting that is driven by big data.

Result Measurement: Campaigns can be measured and adjusted in real time for budget optimization.

Sales Growth: The factors above could potentially drive increased sales.

In the age of digital marketing, organizations are inundated with data. And, as we’ve discussed, the real challenge is not
in accessing that data, but in deciding what data to analyze in order to make the best decisions for your business.

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The Streetlight Effect: Unfortunately, many organizations tend to fall prey to what’s called “the streetlight effect,” or an
overreliance on the most readily available and easily accessible data. We look at what’s in the "light" by measuring what’s
most convenient, not necessarily what’s most useful, important, or what will genuinely help us grow our organizations.

One secret to success in the age of big data is ensuring that data isn’t sequestered into a single department. Especially
when the market is uncertain, it’s important to ensure decision-makers can all access important data, and take an
integrated approach to translating insights into action.

Barkha Saxena, chief data officer for social commerce site Poshmark, uses a simple framework: evaluate the data, execute
the plan, learn what worked and what didn’t, then repeat. “We have the foundation of very centralized, reliable, and easy-
to-access data, but then it’s delivered to all the teams" which "...allows for the data to be accessible to all the business
users at the time of the decision.” This, she argues, is how you turn data into an operating tool. (Wharton 2020)

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who see organizations relying too much on data. Big data is a huge
industry, but can become a crutch —especially when combined with the streetlight effect.

Big data, says Abe Kasbo, CEO of Verasoni Worldwide, is only as good as the insights that come from it. We stick to the
saying, “Not everything that’s worthy is measurable and not every measurable is worthy.” And because there is no
shortage of analytics, we’re cautious about data "rabbit holes"; data that leads you astray from your original goal. Our
guidelines for data must always have two fundamental elements: relevant and actionable, meaning any data we collect
and use must lead to productive action.” (Conick 2019)

The real connection with customers, though, comes from something much more basic—and perhaps more elusive:
creativity grounded in understanding. He argues, “Companies who have a fundamental understanding of their brand and
their customers are usually more comfortable with using creativity to create new products, meaningful campaigns, and
venture into new markets. Ideally, insights should inform strategy and creative aspects, but creativity is what gets people
to buy. It’s what connects brands to consumers." (Conick 2019)

RECOMMENDED READINGS: If you would like to learn more about the future of data in the world of Digital Marketing, you
may explore the following articles:

● Big Data and Digital Marketing: How Are They Connected?

● What is Real-Time Marketing? (In 300 Words or Less)
● Real-time data: The 8 Best Examples Of Real-Time Data Analytics
● Person-level data and unified measurement: New Research Shows Person-Level Data Measurement Critical for
Marketers to Reach Their Key Objectives

Glossary

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Attribution: Attribution is advanced analytics using online and offline channels to adhere a certain set of user actions that
lead to desired customer action.
Benchmarking: The practice of objectively evaluating the performance of an organization by marking current progress.
Big Data: Large sets of data used by organizations to identify patterns, trends, and associations related to behavior or
interactions.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI): Measurements used to evaluate an organization’s targets and pathways to
achievements.
Return on Engagement (ROE): Return on Engagment (ROE) is also known as Return on Emotion or Return on Experience.
An approach that seeks to understand how customers currently interact with a brand and how this may evolve over time.
Return on Investment (ROI): A metric used to determine the performance of an investment.
Social Listening: Ways of gathering information about a customer base to combine with other types of market research
and data analysis.
Vanity Metrics: Measurements that boost morale but do not result in any advancement towards the intended target.

Forum

Netflix Case Study

Netflix is one of the biggest on-demand video streaming services today with over 200 million subscribers. It leans heavily
on big data derived from its users to make smart decisions.

Consider the following challenge: While on any streaming platform that offers tons of content, viewers typically lose
interest altogether after 60 to 90 seconds of choosing something to watch. This happens a lot, especially when the choice
of watching material is vast. Users ultimately give up and exit the platform altogether after browsing its selection with no
hope of finding something of interest to them.

How would you frame the problem Netflix has to solve? What is the problem from the point of view of the user?
How might Netflix solve this problem? What other data would you want to collect and analyze in order to make the right
move(s)?
If you are familiar with streaming platforms, what are some ways you’ve noticed that they use to combat this problem?
Based on your experience and what you’ve learned so far in this course about digital marketing, what else might you
suggest?
What do you think digital marketers can learn from Netflix that could be applied to other industries and organizations?
The Problem: Netflix has a problem of viewers losing interest after 60-90 seconds of choosing something to watch. This
leads to users giving up and exiting the platform altogether.

The Problem from the Point of View of the User: From the user's point of view, the problem is that they are
overwhelmed with the amount of content available, and can't find something of interest to watch in a reasonable
amount of time.

How Netflix Might Solve This Problem: Netflix could solve this problem by collecting and analyzing more data on user
preferences and behavior. This could include data on what types of content the user has watched in the past, what
content they have skipped, how long they have watched certain types of content, and what content they have liked or
disliked. This data can then be used to create personalized recommendations for each user, tailored to their interests
and preferences.

22
Other Data to Collect and Analyze: In addition to collecting data on user preferences and behavior, Netflix could also
collect and analyze data on user demographics, such as gender, age, and location. This data could be used to create
more targeted content recommendations and tailor the user experience to better meet the needs of different types of
users.

Ways Streaming Platforms Combat This Problem: Streaming platforms typically use algorithms to generate personalized
recommendations for each user, based on their past viewing habits and preferences. They also use a variety of
techniques to reduce the amount of time it takes for a user to find something to watch, such as providing curated lists of
content, or allowing users to quickly search for content by genre or keyword.

Suggestions for Digital Marketers: Digital marketers should focus on personalizing the user experience and making it as
easy as possible for users to find the content they are looking for. This could include providing personalized
recommendations, curating content, and allowing users to quickly search for content. Additionally, digital marketers
should collect and analyze data on user preferences and behavior in order to better understand their target audience
and tailor their marketing strategies accordingly.

What Digital Marketers Can Learn From Netflix: Digital marketers can learn from Netflix that collecting and analyzing
data on user preferences and behavior is essential for creating a personalized experience for users. Additionally, digital
marketers can learn from Netflix that providing personalized recommendations, curating content, and allowing users to
quickly search for content can help reduce the amount of time it takes for users to find something to watch. Finally,
digital marketers can learn from Netflix that understanding user demographics and tailoring marketing strategies
accordingly is important for creating a successful user experience.

Forum

23
1. How would you frame the problem Netflix has to solve? What is the problem from the point of view of the user?

Problem Framing: After browsing the movies/series for a while, Netflix users lose their interest and exit the platform,
due to the lack of hope of finding interesting content. This is a major problem because it results in users not engaging
and leaving the platform.

From the point of view of the users, the problem consists of the inability to find interesting content on the platform.
They are overwhelmed with the vast selection of content and unable to find something that they are interested in
watching.

2. How might Netflix solve this problem? What other data would you want to collect and analyze in order to make the
right move(s)?

Potential measures to solve/mitigate the issue:

According to Netflix Help Center and Privacy (Source):

● Netflix estimates the likelihood of the user engagement to a particular title in their catalog based (but not
limited) to:

○ your interactions with our service (I guess this would be the viewing and search history as well as rated
and reviewed titles).
○ other members with similar tastes and preferences on our service.
○ information about the titles, such as their genre, categories, actors, release year, etc.
○ the time of day you watch.
○ the devices you are watching Netflix on.
○ how long you watch.

● Netflix does not use demographic information (such as age or gender) to estimate the likelihood of the user
engagement.

● Regarding what they do with the data: “We take feedback from every visit to the Netflix service and continually
re-train our algorithms with those signals to improve the accuracy of their prediction of what you’re most likely
to watch. Our data, algorithms, and computation systems continue to feed into each other to produce fresh
recommendations to provide you with a product that brings you joy”.

Potential measures

Netflix could solve this problem by collecting and analyzing more and better data on user preferences and behavior,
which can be used to create more accurate personalized recommendations for each user, better tailored to their
interests and preferences. In order to better understand user preferences and recommend content that is more likely to
be of interest, Netflix could collect and analyze data on user demographics as well as data from 3rd parties (HBO, HULU,
PRIME, Youtube, etc):
● Analyzing the competitors and what measures they implement on this issue.
● Implement cookies using their information, like user behavior, time spent on searching for content,

24
 methodologies to provide accurate content, among others.
● A/B and/or Multivariate testing on thumbnails, searching results and content categories.
● User testing (getting feedback).
● The product itself: If netflix continues its focus on exclusive content, the engagement of users will increase, since
the content they look for, could be only found in netflix catalog.

3. What are some ways you’ve noticed that streaming platforms use to combat this problem? Based on your
experience and what you’ve learned so far in this course about digital marketing, what else might you suggest?

As I already mentioned in the second answer, streaming platforms combat this problem by using algorithms to
recommend content to users based on their past viewing habits and preferences. They also use personalization
techniques to tailor the user experience, such as offering curated content lists and suggesting content that is similar to
what the user has previously watched.

I think digital marketers can learn from Netflix that data strategy is key to understanding user preferences and
behaviors. By collecting and analyzing data, digital marketers can better understand the expectations of the target
audience, create more personalized results for them, and track the success of their efforts.

QUIZ

Question 1

25
1 / 1 pts
How would you describe the relationship between marketing and sales?
Marketing and sales work separately
Correct!
Marketing and sales work closely; the job of marketing is to bring in qualified leads for sales
Marketing and sales are essentially the same function
None of the above

Question 2
1 / 1 pts
Put the following practices in the correct order for a digital marketer looking to make the most of their metrics:
Correct!
Learn
1
Correct!
Plan
2
Correct!
Apply
3
Correct!
Assess
4

Question 3
1 / 1 pts
A gym creates a series of TikToks teaching followers about their unique approach to fitness, with the goal of bringing in
new members. All of the metrics below may be important for them to track. Which KPI (key performance indicator) will
be the most important in determining the success of the series?
Video views
Comments
New followers
Correct!
New member inquiries

Question 4
1 / 1 pts
Which of the following is true of A/B testing for a digital ad?
It allows you to test the effectiveness of one element of the ad campaign at a time
Everything but the specific element being tested (say, an image or a subject line) should remain the same
Once a “winner” has been determined in the test, the ad spend should be directed toward the more effective ad
It is best practice to test often and continually improve
Correct!
All of the above

Question 5
1 / 1 pts
Match the terms with their definitions

26
Correct!
Benchmarking
The practice of objectively evaluating the performance of an organization by marking current progress.
Correct!
The Streetlight Effect
An overreliance on the most readily available and easily accessible data.
Correct!
Vanity Metrics
Measurements that boost morale but do not result in any advancement towards the intended target.
Correct!
ROI
A metric used to determine the performance of an investment.
Correct!
ROE
An approach that seeks to understand how customers currently interact with a brand and how this may evolve over time.

ANNEX 1

7-Step guide on how to benchmark your marketing activities

27
Want to evaluate your company’s digital marketing activities? This guide will teach you how to benchmark marketing
activities. What do running a successful sports team and managing a B2B marketing department have in common? Quite
a lot, in fact – if you know the value of digital benchmarking.

Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball is the famous story of how Oakland Athletics – a small and relatively poor baseball team
– went on to have huge success in the 2002/2003 Major League Baseball season. Their achievements are widely credited
to manager Billy Beane. Beane introduced the (then unheard-of) sabermetric approach – which involves using intensive
objective benchmarking to understand performance.

Moneyball has been heralded as a ‘business bible’; and when it comes to knowing how to benchmark marketing, the
book’s themes offer a lot of inspiration to digital marketers. Let’s look at how B2B technology marketers can benefit from
digital benchmarking.

How to benchmark marketing?

Benchmarking is a method of objectively evaluating your company’s digital marketing activities. You need to carry out an
assessment of your existing digital marketing activities, tracking how often they are carried out, how much they are
engaged with and what effect they have. Once you have a snapshot of the quality of your digital marketing today, the next
step is to use this information as a reference to help you keep on improving. Let’s explore some of the best methods of
gathering the objective data that can give you a snapshot of your digital marketing efforts. Below are seven steps to take
that will ensure you can effectively benchmark marketing activities at your organisation.

1. Narrow down the digital marketing activities you want to focus on

There are countless variables that you could use when you benchmark marketing – from email open rates, to the length
of time customers spend reading your blogs, to how many times your latest whitepaper has been downloaded. So, how
do you decide what you’re going to benchmark?

We recommend choosing between one and three marketing activities you carry out – be that your blog, social media,
emails, website analytics or anything else. Deciding which activity to focus on ultimately depends on your wider marketing
goals. Do you want to increase the number of visitors to your website? Or the amount of engagement your tweets receive?

2. Choose the right metrics

There are thousands of potential data points you could choose when measuring your digital marketing. Don’t be tempted
to go overboard! Your benchmarking needs to be detailed, yet also provide you with enough clarity and simplicity to
support action. We’d recommend choosing between three and five metrics to monitor. Examples would include: How
often do you tweet/blog/send emails? How many people react/read/open your content? What do people do once they
see your content? Where do readers come from? How long do people interact with your digital marketing content? How
often do people click on your call to action (CTA)?

3. Do your initial benchmarking against these metrics

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Once you have the focus for your analysis, plus a selection of metrics you want to measure, now’s the time to use powerful
tools to carry out your digital benchmarking.

You also need to choose a reasonable time period in which you are going to review your digital marketing. Most companies
carry out their analysis based on the three previous months.

You might begin your analysis by simply tallying up numbers – of blogs, of tweets, of emails sent, etc. But, for more detail,
the following four tools give you a lot of powerful extra detail for digital benchmarking.

Google Analytics: Analyse visitor traffic and paint a picture of your audience. Discover the routes they take and devices
they use to reach your site, and track what they do while on there. Reporting features display this in a clear and actionable
manner.

MailChimp: MailChimp lets you build your email campaigns with ease and monitor their effectiveness. Features such
as A/B testing and campaign reporting help you get an understanding of what’s drawing your audience in, and what’s
getting ignored.

Twitter Analytics: Twitter Analytics help you understand how the content you share on Twitter is being received. Month-
by-month statistics on the ‘success’ of your tweets and audience insights give you better knowledge of your audience and
how best to attract their attention. Read our exclusive free eBook about the three tools that can boost your Twitter
presence here.

4. Carry out competitor analysis too

Of course, you can’t use Google Analytics on your competitor’s website (although the Partner Benchmarking Tool does let
you test any website you like). Nonetheless, you should carry out a basic analysis of your competitors’ digital marketing
in the areas you focus on. Compare how often they blog, tweet or otherwise promote themselves during the same time
period.

5. Create a report that summarises your marketing benchmarking

Once you have completed your first round of analysis, you are now able to take stock of where you are objectively. Create
a report that gives an honest view of where you are today and include comparable data from your competitors.

6. Create a digital marketing strategy to improve your metrics

Now you have your digital benchmark, the next natural step is to create a strategy which will help you improve on those
metrics. Now’s the time to aim high:

Double click-through-rate from your emails

Treble inbound web traffic

Increase leads from your blog by 50%

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At Fifty Five and Five, we know how important creating a B2B marketing strategy is. Learn how we work with clients on
campaign strategy here.

7. Review then repeat

A one-off benchmark is pretty pointless. To get real value from digital benchmarking, you need to carry out regular analysis
to get a feel for how you are improving and to get a taste of the impact your strategy is having. If you use our Partner
Benchmarking Tool for digital benchmarking, you can track and record all your analyses over time.

Don’t wait to get started

When you benchmark marketing activities, you get a transparent and objective way of tracking the effects and impacts of
your work. This should help you develop your marketing strategy and generate more leads.

And remember: once you have an idea of where you are, it’s a lot easier to plan where you’re going.

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