When marketing a business or doing public relations for a non-profit, the one thing that matters most when the rubber meets the road is the answer to the question: Are your key messages actually getting across…and actually compelling people to act?
Granted, maybe that’s two things, but those are the most essential points of effective business communications. You need to know, to the maximum degree possible, that your marketing is effective, and why.
Today, because marketing and public relations 1) are becoming more interconnected, and 2) are becoming increasingly omni-channel, the fifth major trend Loudoun Clear Marketing is seeing this year is the universal usage of metrics and measurables to determine marketing and public/media relations efficacy.
Whether your target market is Leesburg, Virginia, the USA or the Internet, it pays to be able to know people are getting the message and being converted into your customers (or, for non-profits, contributors.)
The result is today there exists an embarrassment of analytical riches, a sea of numbers simply not calculable a decade or so ago. We PR, social media and marketing professionals have fingertip access to rich troves of measurables, analytics, and deep-dive data tools useful for pinpointing your market and then determining what messages to deliver and how.
A few of the more common, popular and useful analytic stacks employed by marketers to improve message reach and increase customer traffic:
Google Analytics – the essential platform for website traffic analysis. Google provides data on unique visitors, visit duration, page popularity, screen views, bounce rate and conversion percentage. Moreover, there’s a bevy of audience data (e.g., age, gender and geographic breakdown), and how they came to your site in the first place (e.g., organic web search, paid AdWords search or direct email outreach).
Cision Communications Cloud – sometimes used in conjunction with Google Analytics, the Cision Communications Cloud measures the effectiveness of traditional public relations outreach and earned media coverage, including insights on your marketing campaigns’ returns-on-investment.
Facebook Insights – typically utilized in a social media marketing context (i.e., what to post and when), Facebook remains (with its two billion users and ownership of Instagram) nonetheless, an excellent source of both hyper-local and mega-broad marketing data, in terms of an audience’s ranges of age, population density, and income levels.
Memo – a startup company offering a service measuring the impact of online articles and web-based content that mentions specific brands. (Similar services are offered by Storyful and Dataminr, among others.)
In a piece published in the Wall Street Journal’s CMO Today section, the chief digital officer of a multinational communications firm says that integrating data from multiple sources is necessary to give clients the best marketing guidance, and he’s right.
Analytics algorithms are constantly being refined, novel methodologies are being invented, and new platforms are being introduced to the industry. In 2019 and beyond, the strongest marketing firms with the most effective tailored strategies – like Loudoun Clear Marketing – make use of today’s full array of analytic tools in order to identify your organization’s target market and communicate meaningful, engaging messages directly to them, evoking the response you want.
About Loudoun Clear Marketing: LCM was founded in Leesburg, Virginia, by Sharon L. Wright, who brings more than 30 years of local, national and international experience in the fields of Marketing, Communications and Public Relations. She has established a team of high-performing professionals to serve the PR outreach and strategic marketing needs of clients throughout Loudoun County, DC and nationally, bringing customization, community connections and technological know-how to every project.
LCM is heavily involved with a variety of non-profit organizations serving Loudoun, and works closely with for-profit companies to enhance their brand within the NoVA region. More about Loudoun Clear Marketing is at LoudounClearMarketing.com. Your Story. Brought to Life. Loud & Clear.
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