Introduction
In today's data-driven world, leveraging data and analytics is crucial for B2B organisations looking to optimise their digital marketing transformation. By utilising data and analytics tools, businesses can gain insights into customer behaviour, campaign performance, and market trends, making data-driven decisions to boost growth and stay ahead of the competition.
This article will explore how B2B organisations can effectively leverage data and analytics in their digital marketing transformation journey, but with a twist; This is about applying your own Open Graph tags to specifically identify individual content items you know to be important to your growth.
Table of Contents:
- Digital Selling & Data Analytics for SaaS & PaaS Marketing
- Measuring Campaign Performance
- Changing Your 'Primary' Key Indicators
- Optimising Content Strategy
- Enhancing Personalisation and Targeting
- Utilising Predictive Analytics
- Do Not Use Marketing Automation
- Continuously Improving and Adapting
- Conclusion
1. Digital Selling & Data Analytics for SaaS & PaaS Marketing
Data-driven marketing starts with a deep understanding of your customers and target market. By analysing customer data, you can uncover valuable insights about their preferences, pain points, and buying patterns. This information can help you create more targeted marketing campaigns and personalised content that resonates with your audience.
Some tools that can assist you in gathering and analysing customer data include:
- Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager: Track user behaviour on your website, such as page views, time spent on site, and conversion rates.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems: Manage customer interactions and store data about their preferences, purchase history, and communication history.
- Market research tools: Conduct surveys, interviews, and focus groups to gather additional data on your target market.
2. Measuring Campaign Performance
To optimize your digital marketing efforts, it's essential to measure the performance of your campaigns. Data and analytics tools can help you track key performance indicators (KPIs) and identify which strategies are delivering the best results.
Some KPIs to track include:
- Click-through rates (CTRs)
- Conversion rates
- Cost per lead (CPL)
- Return on investment (ROI)
Leverage SEO & SEM tools to monitor your search engine rankings and optimize your website for better organic visibility. Utilise tools like Google Analytics to track user behaviour and measure the performance of your marketing campaigns.
3. Changing Your 'Primary' Key Indicators
It is a given that your marketing team will use Google in their everyday work. Whilst there is Google Analytics, there is also Google Tag Manager, Google Data Studio and Google Search Console.
Combined, Google offer a unique suite of tools to analyse traffic and data. However, what data are you planning to look at and will it mean anything to your team?
One of the most important tasks we recommend businesses to undertake is to include additional Open Graph metadata to identify and tag your content in a variety of different categories, using the terms: Primary, Secondary, General, Products, Services and How to Buy.
To recap, combining content classification and content types, you arrive at the following structure for all your content, which is part of our Social 444 strategy: -
Primary Content - Educates
- Thought Leadership
- Business Case
- Whitepapers
- Professional Publications
Secondary Content - Reaffirms
- Social Proof
- Case Studies
- Infographics
- Podcast/Video/Live
General - Communicates
- Blogs, New Hires
- CSR, Awards, PR
- Guest Activities
Product Content
- What your product offering is
- How it works
- How to install it
- Best Practices
- Training
- FAQs
How to Buy
- Explaining how you organise project management
- How professional services get involved
- How to complete your order forms etc.
Once the Open Graph metadata labels are set up set up within your website content management system (CMS) you can then configure Google Tag Manager to trigger whenever one of the applicable articles are browsed. As you can see from the image below, all our content is approriately tagged.
Additional Tag Manager triggers can be applied such as scroll depth, watching videos and for how long. This is all part of the essential approach to understand exactly what your browsers are doing on your website.
When it comes to reporting, Google Analytics (GA4) will annotate your analytics reports with ‘primary’, secondary’ etc., to inform you of the effectiveness of your content within the respective categories.
If you are not receiving any traffic to say ‘primary’ or ‘product’ content, you are immediately in a position to review your promotion adverts, coding, labelling or the content itself. If it’s no good, simply edit and change it.
In addition to the Open Graph tags for Content, we also recommend you use UTM Codes to identify specific advert types which are being clicked when posting the adverts on Social Media. When combined, your Google Analytics report will tell you which adverts are working and relating which content types are being viewed.
In today's world of privacy challenges, it is important to know what content is being read and what adverts are working - and not the identity of the person browsing.
4. Optimising Your Content Strategy
Data and analytics can play a significant role in guiding your content strategy. By analysing the performance of your content, you can identify topics that resonate with your audience and formats that generate the highest engagement.
Use copywriting services to create high-quality, engaging content that is optimised for search engines and tailored to your target audience's needs. We recommend all your content is reviewed internally by your salespeople before being published
Incorporate visual elements such as images, videos, and infographics to boost engagement. For images and visuals, it is important to evaluate these platforms - Mid Journey , Adobe Firefly and Microsoft Designer.
5. Enhancing Personalisation and Targeting
Leveraging data and analytics allows you to segment your audience based on their preferences, behaviours, and demographics. This segmentation enables you to deliver personalised marketing messages that are more likely to resonate with your audience.
Take advantage of tools like Social 444 to create targeted social media advertising campaigns. Utilise adverts to reach your audience through various digital channels, such as email, display ads, and paid search.
6. Utilising Predictive Analytics for Better Decision-Making
Predictive analytics uses historical data, algorithms, and machine learning techniques to make data-driven predictions about future events. By incorporating predictive analytics into your digital marketing transformation, you can identify trends, anticipate customer needs, and optimise your marketing strategies for better results.
For example, you can use predictive analytics to forecast customer churn, identify potential upsell opportunities, and optimise your marketing budget allocation.
7. Do Not Use Marketing Automation
It was believed that Marketing automation tools could help you streamline your marketing processes, save time, and improve efficiency by automating repetitive tasks, supposedly enabling you to focus on data-driven decision-making and strategic planning.
However, research shows since 2014 97% of business buyers hated filling out forms. In 2024 Demandbase have stated it is now 100%.
It is essential your business reconsiders implementing marketing automation platforms for the future! Paying for pay-per-click to link to a landing page and then expecting a business to fil out a form signals to the browser they will be getting a barrage of phone calls from BDRs. Whilst this is effective for consumer brands it fails for B2Bs.
8. Continuously Improving and Adapting
Data and analytics are crucial in driving continuous improvement in your digital marketing transformation journey. Regularly analyse your data, track KPIs, and adjust your strategies accordingly. Stay informed about industry trends and best practices and be prepared to adapt your marketing efforts to keep up with the evolving digital landscape.
9. Conclusion
Leveraging data and analytics is an essential component of a successful B2B digital marketing transformation. By doing the following:
- understanding your customers
- measuring campaign performance
- optimising content strategy
- enhancing personalisation and targeting
- utilising predictive analytics
- embracing marketing automation
- and continuously improving
you can make data-driven decisions that will drive business growth and keep you ahead of the competition.
The author and founder of salesXchange, Nigel Maine is a B2B marketing and sales expert with a proven track record in scaling up growth for Technology, SaaS, and Professional Services organisations. With 30 years hands-on experience and unique approach, Nigel has developed an effective strategy that dramatically increases exposure and profitability for B2B organizations.
