Imagine starting the new year with a marketing strategy that’s already fine-tuned for success — using the data you’ve already collected. 

This month on the blog, we’re sharing our insight on how to use your year-end qualitative and quantitative data review to craft next year’s marketing plan. 

Because according to experts like Entrepreneur Magazine, “Data-driven marketing is no longer a luxury — it’s a necessity.” 

So, skip the “hunches” and “just a gut feeling” moments and opt for understanding your audience better, predicting trends, and making the right decisions for your business based on what’s really happening inside it.

Let’s get to it. 

Exploring Your Quantitative Data 

Website Analytics

You can start your exploration of your quantitative data with your website analytics. Consider your page views, bounce rates, session durations, and conversion rates. When you pull these metrics from Google Analytics, HubSpot, or Adobe Analytics, be sure you put them into some sort of table so you can track changes over time and monitor progress.

You’ll also want to be sure that you prioritize your key website analytics and set goals based on the outcomes that mean the most to your marketing and business growth.

Want to grow your blog? Focus on reducing bounce rates? Want to grow your email list? Boost those newsletter conversion rates.

Digging in here can be really rewarding.

Social Media Metrics

Your social media data can give you valuable feedback as well. Check on your engagement rates, follower growth, impressions, and click-through rates (CTRs). You can garner these data points from your Instagram and Facebook Insights, LinkedIn Analytics, and Sprout Social or other social channel backends. Most platforms allow you to download this data into a spreadsheet so you can track growth over time. 

The key here is to cut through the noise of all of the available data points and to pick out the ones that matter most. Likes might be a vanity metric, but you and your team will want to take a critical look at what really moves the needle when it comes to growth and income for your organization. 

Your data can also help you identify holes in your marketing. For example: Do people click the link in your Instagram bio and purchase your product from the landing page? Or do you perhaps need to work on that page’s copy and design? In this case, examining your CTR and conversion rates can give you a heads-up on where to put your marketing energy to achieve the outcome you want.

Email Marketing Performance

Your email open rates, click rates, unsubscribe rates, and ROI are key metrics to examine when it comes to your email marketing. And whether you use MailChimp, Constant Contact, or another platform, examining your email marketing platform’s data can help you refine and improve your marketing campaigns and plan new ones as well.

From nurture campaigns to abandoned cart sequences, there are so many possible places to spend your energy with email marketing. So, looking at your data first helps you to spend your team’s time wisely and in service to your annual or quarterly marketing milestone goals. 

Email marketing is so vast that you’ll be glad you prioritized your focus!

Sales Data

Your sales data can be a gold mine when properly evaluated. Revenue trends, customer lifetime value (CLV), and sales by channel from sources like your CRM can help you to dive into what’s working and what’s not when it comes to your sales approaches. 

So, whether you have Salesforce or Shopify analytics at your disposal, diving into the numbers allows you to fuse informed marketing with data-driven sales practices. And with refined sales goals, you can better explore sales opportunities, approaches, and how to align your marketing and sales teams in the year ahead.

Ad Performance Metrics

Your Google Ads, Facebook Ads Manager and other PPC platforms can offer you a wealth of quantitative data including cost per click (CPC), return on ad spend (ROAS), and impressions. 

These ad performance metrics, when properly evaluated, offer insights that can help you save money, create more opportunities for growth, and develop better marketing strategies.

• Are certain keywords or demographics offering explosive growth? 
• Are some falling flat? 
• What might that mean? 
• What adjustments might be warranted? 
• Where can you adjust course to make improvements? 
• Are you heading in the right direction? 
• Where do you want to go from here? 
• Do you need to invest more to see a greater ROAS? 
• Is it time to bring on a new team member? 

These questions can help you to explore your ad performance metrics mean for you in the new year.

Qualitative Data

Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is an essential part of any successful marketing campaign. From survey responses to testimonials to product reviews, understanding how your customers interact with and feel about your organization, products, and services is vital. 

Whether you use a Typeform style survey, or other means to gather feedback, the fact remains: Garnering information from customers helps you to take the temperature of your marketing and business success so that you can make better, more aligned decisions in the future.

Customer feedback also makes for great testimonials on your website as well as great content for social media and other assets (with permission as needed).

Social Listening

Social listening offers sentiment analysis, trending topics, and direct comments from followers.

And while you might use Hootsuite, Brandwatch, or Mention, the important note here is to ensure that you understand your clients and customers better at the end of the exercise. 

This qualitative data can be mined for better copy and content but also better customer interactions and better services or product lines. As you plan your marketing for the year ahead, social listening data can help you to discern where your marketing messaging may need some attention or where you are really making your mark in terms of branding as well.

Competitor Analysis

Conducting a well-executed competitor analysis gives your team a chance to garner insights from monitoring competitor content, marketing campaigns, or reviews. Resources like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and SimilarWeb can assist you in the process of conducting this analysis. 

But it’s also essential that your team take the time to clarify who the key competitors are and in what ways you see these organizations or companies as competitors. This will help you to see your data from multiple perspectives and to get the most out of the exercise of conducting the analysis.

Once you dissect your competitor analysis, you can begin to market your organization more effectively based on your key differentiators. Afterall, in a crowded market place it pays to stand out in a good way.

Market Research

Conducting market research includes deciphering information from industry reports, focus group findings, and customer interviews. You can garner this information from sources like Nielsen, Statista, and even direct interviews. Market research must be truly focused in scope so that it can be helpful to you as you plan your marketing for the year to come. And you should have a set of questions in mind so that you can evaluate resources for whether they’re useful to the market research questions you’re asking. 

Market research and updating your existing market research can help you reevaluate your position in the current market. It can also help you to refocus or recommit yourself to your brand positioning and messaging. None of us exist in a bubble, and so this information is invaluable and cannot be ignored when we consider how we craft our marketing plans each year.

Event and Campaign Feedback

One of the biggest benefits of hosting an event or running a campaign is that each experience offers a vast array of data points and often a great deal of event attendee feedback.  

Audience responses to past campaigns, webinars, or events can be a source of qualitative data and post-event surveys, and engagement stats from hosted events can give you insight that leads you to create even better campaigns and events in the future.

Creating better events that clients and customers can’t wait to go to is an amazing marketing goal, and achieving this goal is only possible if you understand how your customers perceived prior events.

The Bottom Line about Using Data to Guide Your Year

By diving into both quantitative numbers and qualitative insights, you can make better decisions and craft marketing that resonates with your customers. Not only that, you can drive your business forward. Navigating your marketing metrics properly is about more than just looking at the numbers — it’s understanding what they’re telling you and creating a marketing plan that drives you toward your goals. 

And when you blend the right data sets with customer feedback, you’ll have a clearer picture of what’s working and what’s not. Whether you’re refining your website, optimizing your social media, or improving customer engagement, a data-driven approach ensures you’re making more informed choices in the year ahead.

Ready to take your marketing to the next level?

If you’re looking to create a smarter, more effective marketing strategy, Revelation Creative is here to help. Let’s turn your data into a plan that works for your business. Reach out today!