Are statistics the new secret weapon?
During a recent interview, one of our agency partners was posed with a question about the integration of statistics by FUEL’s team into our client strategies. This prompted us to contemplate the frequency and significance of statistics within the realm of marketing.
It’s essential to harness both critical-marketing-expertise and statistical know-how… your new secret weapon in advertising. Marketers should have an excellent grasp of statistics, measurements, and methodologies to craft effective, compelling campaigns. Every aspect of advertising should be driven by data, from the ad messaging to the optimization-roadmap. Utilizing statistics gives marketing recommendations credibility, helps define target audiences, and improves the likelihood of success.
Why should the entire agency have these capabilities?
Media buying is one branch of an agency that uses an immense amount of data including demographics, behavioral analysis and customer sentiment data. When advertising to the public, marketers receive a massive influx of data in return. Key metrics, or KPIs, that help evaluate the performance of an ad include an ad’s traffic, bounce rate, click through rate, and conversion rate. These metrics are constantly fluctuating, and marketers must question what is causing the ebb and flow. Having a big picture view of competitors, market changes, and other outside influences can help identify what is triggering the changes.
Evaluating statistics and implementing findings is a daily task for social and digital marketers. For effective social or digital ads, it is vital to understand how to fully optimize each ad. Tracking the demographic and the frequency rate helps to define the ideal target audience. These audiences can be found by tracking clicks per platform, ages, gender as well as new or returning users.
Statistics in Practice
A statistical analysis of who is buying, when they buy, how many times they buy, and how much money they spend is also crucial to success. Analyzing consumer behavior enables better forecasting and provides a layer of information that will ensure success. On digital platforms, lookalike audiences can be created by using current client data to find people who have similar behavior patterns and are likely to purchase or engage with your brand. Messaging can then be tailored to this more statistically valid group of interested parties.
“A/B testing” is a buzz-term in marketing, and is a method marketers use to compare two versions of ads to determine which performs better. If you have the luxury of time and budget, it’s important to do A/B testing on nearly all your campaigns. This tried-and-true method provides the stats and knowledge to create better content and rationale. Marketers learn what images or layout works best, what colors inspire action, when headlines capture more attention, what CTA drives clicks, and more. One out of eight A/B tests results in a change in ads, and about 60 percent of agencies surveyed state that this testing plays a big role in improving conversion rates.*
Our media team is constantly analyzing and interpreting statistics to determine how to optimize campaigns for clients. Data is an elemental piece of marketing that is required for success. At FUEL, we live by the words of the groundbreaking statistician W. Edwards Deming, “In God we trust. All others must bring data.” For more information, contact us.
