Digital Marketing Analysis: How to Do Research for a Successful Digital Strategy?
Not understanding the market and not understanding what to do is a recipe for disaster. This is why thorough research is vital for any successful marketing strategy.
This article will guide you through the essential steps of conducting digital marketing analysis, ensuring your strategies are built on solid research.
Set Your Goals
Before you even begin doing any research, you have to understand what you want to achieve. Here are three things to set achievable goals that will help your growth.
1. Setting SMART Goals
The best framework for creating goals is SMART. Make sure your goals are always:
● Specific. Instead of “increase website traffic,” a specific goal would be to “increase organic website traffic by 20%.”
● Measurable. You should be able to track and quantify the goal. This often involves numbers or percentages, like “generate 100 new leads per month.”
● Achievable. While goals should be challenging, they should also be realistic.
● Relevant. The goal should be in line with your business objectives and make sense within your strategy. If your business focus is on customer retention, a goal to dramatically increase new customer acquisition would be irrelevant.
● Time-bound. Set a clear timeframe for achieving the goal. This creates urgency and helps in planning and prioritization. For example, “increase email subscribers by 15% by the end of Q3.”
2. Setting Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
Keep a good balance of short-term and long-term goals. If you only set up long-term goals, you’re going to feel overwhelmed with all the things you have to do. If you only set short-term goals, you might lose your focus and work on random things that don’t meaningfully contribute to your business growth.
A short-term goal would be something you can achieve within the next 3–12 months. For example, getting 20 B2B backlinks in Q2. A long-term goal is usually set for 1–3 years, something along the lines of increasing organic traffic by 200% in 2 years.
3. Selecting KPIs
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are important metrics for tracking your success. If you buy SEO, content, or use link building services, you want to monitor their performance to know your money is well-spent. Some common KPIs include:
● Website traffic (total visits, unique visitors, page views)
● Conversion rate
● Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
● Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
● Email open and click-through rates (OR and CTR)
● Social media engagement (likes, shares, comments)
● Search engine rankings for target keywords
● Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
Movia’s website suggests you analyze the digital marketing data you gather, as it will help you better understand the interactions between different marketing strategies and the metrics they affect.
Understand Your Target Audience
The very first thing you need to research if you want to run a successful business is your audience. Their wants, needs, and pain points.
Your online marketing analysis should start with buyer personas. These are basically the profile of your typical buyers, that allow you to understand the general needs and problems of customers. Pay attention to the following when creating buyer personas:
● Demographics. Age, gender, income, education, occupation, and location.
● Psychographics. Values, interests, attitudes, and lifestyle choices.
● Goals and Challenges. What they're trying to achieve and what obstacles they face.
● Buying behavior. Typical decision-making process, preferred channels, and what influences their purchasing decisions.
● Pain points. Problems or frustrations they experience that your product or service can address.
● Objections. Potential reasons why they might not choose your product or service.
If you want to go deeper than surface-level research, try one of the Voice of Customer (VoC) research methods. These include studying the surveys, interviews, social media, customer support interactions, reviews, and ratings, as well as targeted user tests.
Competitor Analysis
You don’t want to base your research simply on what customers need and want, you also want to see what your competitors are doing. Here is a short step-by-step guide for analysis of digital marketing campaigns of your competitors:
Identify your main competitors
Analyze their digital presence and strategies, their content and marketing strategies
Compare your offerings and success
Identify gaps and opportunities you can exploit
Market Trends Research
To stay ahead of the curve, you need to do digital market research of trends in your niche and in general on the Internet. Answer these questions to better understand the latest trends:
● What are the latest industry trends?
● Did consumer behaviors shift?
● Were there any technological advancements?
● Did some marketing channels gain or lose effectiveness?
● Did the global economy significantly change?
● Were there any changes in regulations relevant to your industry?
You can find answers to these and more in reputable sources like Bloomberg, Forrester, Gartner, Forbes, etc. You should also monitor Google Trends to understand what the media are talking about, as well as social media to understand the general sentiment of the public.
Content Analysis
Another thing you have to do is digital marketing research of your content. Create a comprehensive inventory of all your content. This isn't just about listing blog posts; it includes everything from whitepapers to webinars, infographics to Instagram stories.
Categorize this content by topic, target audience, and stage in the customer journey to reveal patterns and gaps you might have overlooked.
Next, assess each piece of content for quality, relevance, and performance. Is that two-year-old blog post still accurate? Does your product video resonate with your current target audience? Tools like Google Analytics can provide hard data on performance, while SEO tools like SEMrush can evaluate your content's search engine friendliness.
Content gaps represent untapped opportunities to connect with your audience and stand out from the competition. Map your content to the customer journey. Do you have plenty of awareness-stage content but little for the decision stage? That's a gap waiting to be filled.
SEO Research
Start your research on digital marketing by brainstorming a list of topics relevant to your business. Google's Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs can be used to expand this list and get data on search volume and competition. But don't just chase high-volume keywords; consider the searcher's intent. A lower-volume keyword with high purchase intent can be far more valuable than a high-volume informational keyword.
Long-tail keywords are your secret weapon. These longer, more specific phrases might have lower search volumes, but they often have higher conversion rates because they catch users further along in the buying journey.
For businesses with a physical presence, local SEO is your ticket to showing up when nearby customers are searching. Claim and optimize your Google My Business listing. Ensure your information is accurate and complete, and encourage customers to leave reviews.
Local keywords are your friends. Include location-based terms in your content and metadata where relevant. Build local citations on directories and review sites. Consistency is key – make sure your name, address, and phone number are identical across all listings.
Tools for Digital Marketing Research
Having the right tools can make or break your marketing research. Most tools aren’t single-minded either, offering you different benefits besides data. Here are the most popular ones and their offerings.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the cornerstone of website analysis. It provides in-depth insights into your website traffic, user behavior, and conversion data. Key features include:
● Audience demographics and interests
● Acquisition channels analysis
● Behavior flow visualization
● Conversion tracking
Google Trends
Google Trends is a free tool that can provide valuable insights into search trends:
● Compare search term popularity over time
● Analyze geographical interest in topics
● Discover related topics and queries
SEMrush
SEMrush is an all-in-one marketing toolkit that's particularly strong for SEO and competitor analysis. It offers:
● Keyword research and tracking
● Site audit tools
● Backlink analysis
● Competitor research
● Content optimization suggestions
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is another powerful SEO tool that excels in backlink analysis and content research. Its features include:
● Comprehensive backlink checker
● Content explorer for topic research
● Keyword explorer
● Rank tracker
● Site audit functionality
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is invaluable for content research and social media analysis. It allows you to:
● Find the most shared content for any topic or domain
● Identify key influencers in your niche
● Monitor brand mentions
● Analyze competitors' content performance
Hootsuite
For social media management and analysis, Hootsuite is a top choice. It offers:
● Social media scheduling and posting
● Performance analytics across platforms
● Social listening capabilities
● Team collaboration features
Mailchimp
While primarily known as an email marketing platform, Mailchimp also provides robust analytics for your email campaigns:
● Email performance metrics (open rates, click rates, etc.)
● Audience segmentation tools
● A/B testing capabilities
● ROI tracking
Hotjar
Hotjar is excellent for understanding user behavior on your website. Its features include:
● Heatmaps showing where users click and scroll
● Session recordings
● Conversion funnel analysis
● User feedback polls and surveys
Conclusion
Thorough research is vital for achieving consistently good marketing results. With data in hand and a plan in mind, you can focus on important tasks instead of trying to do everything at once.
Don’t rush your research either, as you might misjudge trends based on surface-level information. Try to get to the core of every issue to confirm or refute your suspicions, and only then commit this information to your marketing plan.
