What You Should Know About Digital Marketing Analytics In 2022
6min read
Digital marketing analytics has come a long way in the last few decades.
A dynamic field at the forefront of technological developments, it has seen explosive growth alongside the digital world in which it gets to play. Static dashboards are being abandoned in favor of interactive, informative dashboards. What used to be spreadsheets are now augmented reports that are updated in real-time with live data. And self-service analytics has hit the ground running, empowering anyone to utilize complex solutions without requiring complex training.
Once only reserved for the brave and bold to explore, digital analytics has now become a mainstream practice that companies of all sizes rely on for marketing information.
Therefore, we have put together a brief collection of trends and tools that we think capture the most pertinent perspectives around digital analytics.
But, before we carry on with this trend analysis, let's take a moment to get familiar with the fundamentals of digital analytics.
What is Digital Analytics?
While often confused with web analytics, digital analytics can illuminate so much more than just how many hits your website receives.
It can tell you the flow of their interactions across every digital channel where your brand is present. It can reveal where your prospects hang out and how they move through the sales funnel. It can also identify the factors that encourage them to stay and those that drive them away.
Digital marketing data analytics is essentially a way for you to gauge the effectiveness of your company's digital story.
What is the Purpose of Digital Marketing Analytics?
By amalgamating multiple digital marketing metrics, businesses can arrive at intelligent conclusions about their online audience. These valuable conclusions will allow you to peek inside the minds of your customers and their reactions to your marketing strategies.
Just like how learning organizations employ continuous learning in order to keep on improving and transforming workplace’s performance, the ability to access real-time digital analytics allows you to learn and change your course to keep up with the demands of evolving consumers.
Knowing how many people are engaging with your content, what's getting people talking, or which channels are contributing the most to your traffic — you can understand:
- what's working, what isn't
- you can track the most effective strategies and fine-tune them until they perfect
- where to concentrate your efforts
- how to make your digital marketing strategies more productive
Your digital analytics tools hold up the mirror for you so you can see where you are with customers today, allowing you to make informed decisions for tomorrow.
Now, let's explore some of the hottest trends and tools that can help your business reach its full potential in 2022.
Digital Analytics Trends To Watch Out For In 2022
Whether in transition or transformation, here's what top names in digital analytics see coming next.
1. Growing less reliant on browser-centric interactions
It's no longer simply the website. From mobile apps to AR/VR systems, today, the content formats that digital analytics software can support are seemingly endless.
Digital analytics consulting solutions that don't just focus on browsing activity are becoming the new norm, and Google Analytics' latest upgrade is leading the charge.
Google Analytics 4 measures conversions as the number of people who trigger an event, a major shift from the old method of measuring conversions exclusively by site-specific metrics. This change reflects a trend toward incorporating data sources that are not browser-centric in digital analytics strategy.
2. Embracing the spirit of ethical data tracking
Consumers are becoming more aware of the invasive nature of digital analytics tracking. And authorities are responding to the increasing clamor for better privacy solutions by holding businesses accountable for their unethical behavior. Increasing media attention has been given to surveillance technologies with recent controversies concerning internet privacy, which has, in turn, led to new regulations.
Fortunately, data tracking solutions can be used with transparency in mind. One way to accomplish that is through an effective cookie management system. Another element that will make this process painless is the adoption of technology that will allow you to determine when and to what extent you will track users based on the choices set by individual website visitors.
The crusade for stringent data tracking will be a major trend as privacy-conscious shoppers demand complete transparency.
3. Getting smarter about your data-driven marketing decisions through automation
It's not a matter of finding the right balance between human vs. machine. Instead, it's about finding the right balance of human-machine collaboration.
This is why marketers will continue to seek automated tools to assist in recounting relevant events from customer data and identifying actionable insights. They are turning to platforms that can narrate the story of their business through data and identify useful takeaways from previous interactions. This enables them to bring personalization to a level that wasn't previously possible.
Analytics Tools For Digital Marketing You Need In 2022
Digital marketing analytics have become more sophisticated and complex in the past decade. As a result, the sheer number of tools available for marketers has also grown exponentially, defining an ever-evolving realm of possibilities. To help you decide which tools to use, here are a few of the tools that will continue to dominate the digital analytics landscape in 2022.
Google Analytics 4
Source: Google Help Center
Google Analytics 4 is an exciting change from the previous versions, improving how marketers collect data. The new platform enables a wealth of functionality to enhance your analytics strategy and really do justice to the brand message you're building. Some of its key features include:
- User data can be controlled at a more granular level
- Platform-agnostic analysis
- Dynamic event measurement
- Improved AI-powered insights and predictions
But with the lack of standard reports that its predecessors offer, it's up to you to create customized reports or snippets to help you get the same insights as before. Your digital analytics team will have to undergo a significant learning curve as a result.
Heap
Source: Heap.io
Heap is another software that's shaking things up in the marketing analytics space. This digital marketing analytics tool lets you run retroactive analytics and offers businesses a glimpse into how people interact with their products and services.
With Heap, you can track every user action on your site or app. It has a clean, simple interface that is easy to use yet packs enough power to help you get the most out of all of your customer data.
Digital Analytics 2022: Step Up Your Game
What are you doing to further your digital analytics strategy? It doesn't matter if you're a seasoned pro or just learning the game, there's always a way to pump up what you're doing and roll out new programs that will help reignite your enthusiasm for marketing data.
About the Author
Ahmad Benny is a London-born lover of technology, e-commerce, and digital marketing in general. He loves learning, researching, and curating value nuggets to save you time, money and help you achieve your goals.