Back for another year, the 2016 Canadian Internet Marketing Conference (CIMC) will feature a powerhouse line-up of more than 30 of the world’s top minds and movers of the digital marketing industry. FreshGigs.ca got the awesome opportunity to have a pre-conference brain-picking sesh with each of the keynote speakers and panelists. Today’s Q & A is with Nate Baker, content marketing specialist at Raven.
What exactly does reporting digital marketing entail? Why should the public be interested in it?
The public won’t be interested in digital marketing reporting unless they are creating or receiving a report. A marketing report uses text, numbers and graphs to show someone what they are getting for their money. A great report isn’t just information, it’s analysis. It explains what’s going right or wrong with a marketing campaign and what’s being done about it.
Reporting digital marketing sounds very mathematical and analytical. What aspects of it would you say are fun and user-friendly?
If you’re a metrics nerd, all reporting is fun. If this is you, analyzing graphs and segmenting data in different ways is like looking for buried treasure. Though, some people find reporting cumbersome. Generally tracking things like sales, email subscribers, and follower counts are most fun because these metrics are easy to understand. You can easily see how they have a direct impact on your business.
Normally analytics are recorded and reported to clients. What, if any, value is there in sharing this information with customers (members of the general public)?
Sharing metrics with your audience can have marketing value, but it carries some risks. If you regularly are public about your metrics, you have the same issues that publicly traded companies face. If people know you had a good year, then a bad year, people could begin to form a negative opinion of you or expect more information than you’re willing to share.
On the other hand, if you’re a startup or a particularly transparent company, sharing metrics can attract more customers. If you educate your audience about what you’re learning, it can encourage more people to follow your story over time. Sharing at a deep level also tends to translate to more engaging content that drives more search traffic over time.
A great report isn’t just information, it’s analysis. It explains what’s going right or wrong with a marketing campaign and what’s being done about it.
A more conservative approach is to share big milestones rather than yearly comparisons. For instance, you could share the first time your company hires its 50th team member or when your new app hits 1 million downloads.
What’s the best way to use analytics tools to facilitate customer engagement? (How can companies best encourage media-savvy customers to engage with them in the digital realm without appearing to be manipulative?)
You can use analytics to easily find your most engaged fans. This allows you to reward them or to invite them into a bigger role. The trick to not appearing manipulative is to be helpful and to only automate what you would want automated as a consumer.
What are some of the fun ways in which you can distill and use analytics/data?
Enabling demographic and interests reports in Google Analytics can be a fun way to see if your content is resonating with your current audience. It’s also easy to get lost in as platforms such Facebook Ads and LinkedIn because there are so many filtering and testing options when trying ads on different segments of people.
Nathan T. Baker is a content marketing specialist at Raven, a reporting tool for marketing agencies. He’s helped hundreds of marketers automate their reporting process. Nate’s been published in NPR and Inbound.org to name a few. At night you can find him playing board games or enjoying a movie with his family.
The CIMC runs April 14-15, 2016 at the West Coast Railway Heritage Park in Squamish BC, Canada. For more conference and ticket info, click here