Paid campaigns are an important channel to use if you are looking to build brand awareness. But, running a successful campaign is not as easy as it seems. Not only do you need to monitor your performance across various channels, but you also need to keep an eye on spend, ad copy, keyword performance, and much more.
With that being said, it’s safe to say that success boils down to your ability to track every aspect of your campaign using data. In order for you to boost efficiency, find value, and drive conversions, you need to invest a lot of time into understanding the data and what it means.
This may seem like an overwhelming task, but by implementing better data habits you will be able to better understand your performance and use that knowledge to maximize your results.
In this blog, we will look at 5 bad analytics habits and how we at CREW broke these habits using our partner tool Databox.
Improving your analytics habits is the best way to maximize campaign results as it allows you to generate insights that help drive action. But, failing to address your bad habits can lead to costly mistakes and missed opportunities.
Here are the 5 bad analytics habits to look out for:
Paid advertising is available on many platforms, which means you are probably running multiple campaigns across various tools. In order to maximize results, you need to invest a lot of time and effort into understanding your data and translating that knowledge into actionable next steps.
But, with so much data at your disposal, it can be hard to identify changes in your performance. That is why it’s important to establish a strong process around data collection to ensure you are not wasting your time and budget on inefficient channels.
A common solution to this problem is to manually collect data by compiling it into a Google Sheet or Excel Sheet. But, one of the biggest problems with this method is that it leaves you subject to human error. In other words, it lowers the quality of the data you have collected.
Additionally, manual data collection can lead to poor decision-making, reduced productivity, and outdated information. Let’s take a look at each of these in more detail:
Initially, we would have to log into Google and Facebook separately to review data, then manually input it into a spreadsheet. This made it impossible for us to register the fluctuations in performance for all of our clients and fully understand their data. We often skipped through account reviews which limited our ability to spot important trends or changes.
With Databox, we are able to pull all of our data into a single platform using the Data Manager. By connecting Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Google Analytics, we are able to get real-time insights into campaign performance. Every hour, new data is automatically synced in the platform (depending on your plan) allowing us to easily stay on top of metrics like spend and total budget - for every client.
Instead of wasting hours of our day recording each metric into a Google Sheet, we can now get a clear overview of all our client's KPIs in a matter of minutes using the Metrics Screen.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of analyzing performance for each channel independently. But, how will this help you identify the channels or campaigns that are driving the best results?
The answer…it won’t.
This is because when you create data silos you only get a small piece of the puzzle. It creates disconnected views that inhibit your ability to perform holistic data analysis. Additionally, the decisions you make will not be fully informed as you don’t have complete visibility into the bigger picture.
In order to have a clear understanding of how to maximize your budget and improve performance, you should focus on introducing data from other platforms into a single view to improve campaign comparison.
Using Databox’s dashboards we are able to combine data from multiple platforms into a single view. In one dashboard we report on the cost, ROAS, and conversions across Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and Google Analytics. This dashboard allows us to spot trends across channels and respond quickly to changes in performance. We can also use this dashboard to:
We can also choose to group dashboards together to quickly access performance across all of our channels. This provides us with more visibility into our metrics and allows us to have more context into our performance.
A dashboard can give you a lot of information about your campaign performance, but generating actionable insights goes far beyond just looking at your dashboard every now and then. In order for you to create recommendations and drive actions you need to understand the ‘why’ behind the trends you have noticed in your data.
Monitoring campaign metrics on a weekly or even monthly basis, might not give you all the information that you need to allow you to comment on these changes. Understanding what data is, how it is tracked, what it’s measuring is and what you can perceive from patterns and trends is not something that happens overnight.
Data literacy is something that takes time. By regularly monitoring your data you will have a better understanding of the causes behind any sudden changes to performance.
With Databox, we were able to make data a more regular part of our routine. By adding dashboards, metrics, and goals to the Home Screen, we are able to get a quick overview of all the things that are important to us as soon as we log in to the tool. This was one of the features that made Databox an everyday tool for our team. On the home screen we can:
We start our day by logging into Databox and checking all of our important metrics and dashboards. If necessary, we write down any remarkable data that we would like to discuss with the team that day. Tracking our campaign performance daily allowed us to:
The digital environment is changing faster than ever, meaning businesses had to learn how to quickly respond to data trends. With paid advertising, this is no different!
When you are running paid campaigns, you need to be instantly aware of any trends and fluctuations in your data. Waiting a few days or weeks to analyze these results means you are not able to act in time, leading to missed opportunities and potentially costly mistakes.
Using Alerts has facilitated our ability to stay up-to-date on what is happening. With Alerts, we are able to trigger automatic notifications once a specific condition has been hit. As an example, we have created Alerts against metrics like cost and cost per lead (CPL) to monitor our spend within a given quarter. When our spending is too high, we receive notifications that allow us to respond to these higher costs immediately.
Lastly, it’s important to establish a process around how you monitor, analyze and report on your findings. This will help improve efficiency and data management as you don't have to spend hours discussing how the data is delivered to the end user.
Streamlining your reporting process will also allow you to rapidly make changes to your dashboards, focus on more critical tasks, achieve faster time to insights, and easily manage your entire reporting process.
Using Databox we have been able to streamline the reporting process for our clients. From defining key metrics to scheduling automated reports, we are able to manage our entire reporting process from one place.
Currently, we are experimenting with the Reports feature in order to automate reports for our clients. This will allow us to build and share reports right inside the tool in order to analyze historical data, add context and share insights into past performance.
Data monitoring is often an item on your ‘to-do’ list that gets put to the side because it’s too overwhelming and confusing. But, without knowing how to interpret your results you face continuous uncertainties around the effectiveness of your paid campaigns.
Implementing better data habits will help you have a better understanding of your data and will allow you to use that knowledge to improve performance.
