What Are Analytics?

The value of analytics

Marketers use analytics to identify valuable patterns and information in recorded data. Analytics help companies determine the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. Much of the time, marketers use analytics to make predictions and to calculate conversion rates to determine how well their strategies are performing. The insights gained from analytics are valuable in helping companies determine where to make improvements and how they can best reach their goals. For example, if a brand publishes a whiteboard animation video and the analytics highlight a high conversion rate, this means the video content resonates well with the audience. As a result, the marketing team knows to create more whiteboard animations on the same and related topics to achieve an even higher ROI.

Analytics as the core of digital marketing

Wikipedia defines analytics as the discovery and interpretation of data patterns. Analytics also aims to communicate these data patterns to an audience.

When applied to internet marketing, analytics refers to such aspects as user demographics, user interaction with websites, and mapping paths to conversion, among other functions.

Analytics is an integral part of internet marketing and often represents the core of digital marketing. Most activities related to digital marketing wouldn’t be possible without the data available via analytics.

Analytics mainly involves discovering patterns and correlations in data. This helps avoid the inaccuracy and erroneousness of information resulting from intuition and guesswork. Among other things, it seeks to explore the following:

a) What particular event or occurrence took place

b) How or why the event occurred

c) What is taking place at present

d) What event is likely to take place next

Applicability

Analytics serves many purposes in various areas of business and industry. It can help determine credit risk, aid in the development of new medicines, and help researchers develop more efficient product and service delivery methods. Analytics could also help prevent fraud, reveal cyberthreats, and assist companies in retaining their valued customers. For many companies, analytics is essential for developing a deeper understanding of the organization and the setting around which it revolves.

Web analytics vs. marketing analytics

In most everyday usage, the phrase “measuring analytics” usually refers to “Google Analytics”, which is the search engine’s free analytics platform. The platform helps webmasters and site owners gauge the performance of their websites by measuring relevant data.

Marketers often make a distinction between “web analytics” and “marketing analytics”. In the marketing context, web analytics refers to metrics that are specific to websites. These include page loading times, the time users spend on a particular page, and the number of pages that users view every time they visit. Marketing analytics may also refer to factors such as overall traffic, acquired leads, conversions, and sales funnel.

Web marketing relies on web analytics and marketing analytics to make informed decisions about the presence and performance of websites. Making these decisions wouldn’t be possible without analyzing relevant data. Analytics also make it possible to replicate successful results repeatedly. Effective analysis of data allows marketers to determine the effects of changes to a particular marketing strategy. Analytics, therefore, plays a crucial role in the improvement and optimization of online marketing campaigns.

Additional benefits of analytics

One of the most significant benefits of analytics is that it helps users pinpoint areas of strength and weakness. Website owners can use the information derived from data analysis to determine which posts generate the most traffic and which types of content readers find the most valuable. Site owners can also use analytics to measure the bounce rate of their web pages or specific sections of their website. Data analysis could, therefore, be essential for helping site owners identify aspects of their sites that need improvement.

Blog owners stand to gain many benefits from effective data analysis, including improving their perception of their content. By enabling bloggers to figure out what works and what doesn’t, analytics keeps bloggers from wasting time and effort on less valuable content and become more effective in their roles.