Throughout my 15 years as a digital marketer, there’s one factor I have found to be a key indicator of success: a data-driven mindset. This means having the creativity and innovation to experiment, the patience to wait for results, and the analytical skills to interpret them. Developing these qualities will not only fortify your decision-making in the short term, but also ensures your marketing efforts are continually refined and optimized, gaining your business increased market share and meeting your longer-term growth goals.
Using a data-driven approach to marketing, I have helped companies of all sizes improve campaign performance, increase return on investment (ROI), and scale their business. An understanding of how to gather and interpret usable data can drive huge results quickly: At major European food delivery company Just Eat, for example, our analytics efforts decreased cost per acquisition (CPA) by 68% in just four months. It also fostered longer-lasting cultural change, where experimentation, efficiency, and an unrelenting customer focus were not only encouraged, but viewed as the root of business growth and innovation.
Despite its importance, data is still not embedded in many marketing practices, according to 25% of marketers surveyed by HubSpot. This guide breaks down the top metrics to track and analyze via three fundamental growth marketing strategies: campaign analysis, content optimization, and customer focus. It lays out the benefits of cultivating a data-driven mindset within your organization and how to work toward those outcomes to grow customer engagement, brand loyalty, and business revenue.
Benefits of a Data-driven Mindset in Marketing
At its core, a data-driven mindset is about using evidence-based insights to identify and focus on the most effective marketing channels and engagement strategies, enabling you to make the most of your resources, maximize the success of your marketing activities, and optimize the customer journey to build lasting relationships that drive sustainable revenue growth.
Adopting a data-driven mindset will help you achieve the following outcomes:
- More efficient spending: By analyzing performance data, you can allocate your marketing budget with greater efficiency, ensuring financial resources are directed toward the most valuable activities and increasing ROI.
- Enhanced agility: With ongoing monitoring and analysis of advertising campaigns and continual testing, you can quickly identify underperforming elements and make real-time adjustments and improvements.
- More accurate targeting: Analyzing your audience by segment can ensure your efforts are targeting the right people, increasing relevance and engagement.
- Greater personalization: With insight into your customer preferences, you can tailor your communications more effectively—emails, offers, and recommendations can be more timely and resonate more deeply with customer interests and buying behavior.
- Proactive retention: Data is valuable across all stages of the marketing funnel—you can identify at-risk customers early on and proactively engage them to prevent churn or implement targeted reengagement campaigns.
An Overview of Essential Growth Marketing Metrics
The following table reviews the top metrics for marketers to track and take action on. (I will expand on each of these metrics as they apply to three critical growth marketing strategies later in the article.)
|
Metric |
What does it measure? |
How is it measured? |
|---|---|---|
|
Bounce rate |
Percentage of users who visit a website and leave without viewing any other pages or taking any further action |
Divide the number of single-page sessions by the total number of sessions, then multiply by 100 |
|
Click-through rate (CTR) |
Percentage of users who click on an ad |
Divide the total number of clicks by the total number of impressions, then multiply by 100 |
|
Conversion rate |
Percentage of users who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter |
Divide the number of conversions by the total number of interactions generated, then multiply by 100 |
|
Cost per acquisition (CPA) |
Amount spent on gaining a new customer |
Divide the total cost of the campaign by the number of new customers |
|
Cost per click (CPC) |
Amount spent each time a user clicks on an online ad |
Divide the total cost of the campaign by the number of clicks received |
|
Cost per conversion |
Average cost to acquire a desired action, such as a sale or sign-up |
Divide the total cost of a marketing campaign by the number of conversions generated |
|
Cost per mille (CPM) |
Amount spent on 1,000 views of an online ad |
Divide the total cost of the campaign by the number of impressions (in thousands) |
|
Engagement rate |
Interactions (e.g., likes, shares, comments, or clicks) that users have with content, such as a post or an ad (typically expressed as a percentage) |
Divide the number of interactions by the number of impressions, then multiply by 100 |
|
Lifetime value (LTV) |
Revenue a customer is expected to generate over their entire relationship with a business |
Multiply the average revenue per customer over a certain period by the average customer lifespan |
|
Return on ad spend (ROAS) |
Revenue earned for every dollar spent on advertising |
Divide the revenue generated from the ad by the cost of the ad |
|
Average time on page |
Average amount of time users spend on a specific website page before navigating away |
Divide the total amount of time that all users spent on a page by the number of users who viewed that page |
Which Metrics to Track for Three Fundamental Growth Marketing Strategies
Cultivating a data-driven mindset means placing data at the forefront of all decision-making. The best way to get started is to familiarize your teams with the metrics that matter most when implementing the following three growth marketing strategies:
1. Analyzing Campaign Efficacy
Using data to gauge performance is not a new concept, but it’s also not yet a mainstay among marketing teams: A 2024 Influencer Marketing Hub report found that only 36% of marketers use key performance indicators like engagement, conversion, or acquisitions to measure performance across marketing channels. If you are completely new to growth marketing, a basic analysis of your current campaigns is a good starting point. Begin with a broader view of your overall campaign efficacy and then penetrate deeper into more specific data points that show how each area is impacting the customer journey. Here’s how to break down your evaluation:
|
Area |
What to look for |
|---|---|
|
Campaign |
Which campaigns have the highest conversion rates and ROAS? Conversely, which ones are not performing as well? |
|
Ad Group/Ad Set |
Within these campaign subdivisions, are there any that are causing problems? Look for those with a high CPC, high CPM, high CPA, low ROAS, or low conversion rate. |
|
Channel |
Which marketing channels are taking up more of your budget? Are these providing high conversion rates or ROAS? Are there areas where you spend less but perform better? |
|
Geography |
Are there any particular countries, regions, or cities that are over- or underperforming? |
|
Device |
What is the split between revenue garnered across mobile, desktop, and tablet? |
|
Timing |
Explore the days and times that your campaigns run—which produce the most or least conversions? |
Tools such as Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and Semrush can help you gather the comprehensive data you need. Using the results of this basic analysis, you’ll be able to identify the strong and weak areas of your campaigns. This data will pinpoint the opportunities for growth and improvement, where you can conduct focused testing to optimize your marketing efforts.
At Just Eat, the results of a campaign analysis highlighted that time of day was a particularly important factor in the efficacy of our advertising; increasing our investment in paid media around mealtimes was hugely effective.
2. Experimenting to Optimize Content
This is an opportunity to delve into the performance of individual elements within your marketing content. A description, keyword, or landing page that worked well previously may not always produce the most optimal results, but by testing and making small changes, you can fine-tune your campaigns and keep them fresh and timely.
Ad Headlines and Descriptions
Headlines grab attention and entice users to click on ads, while descriptions provide additional context that persuades users to take action. Testing different headline and description variations can help identify which messaging is most appealing to your target audience. Monitor metrics such as CTR, conversion rate, and cost per conversion.
Landing Pages
Landing pages play a crucial role in converting ad clicks into leads or sales, so layouts, messaging, and call-to-action (CTA) buttons can significantly impact conversion rates. Test key components like headlines, images, form length, and CTA placement. Measure conversion rate, bounce rate, and time on the page.
Keywords
Keywords are fundamental in reaching your target audience and driving relevant traffic to your site. Conduct keyword research to identify a few variations, then create multiple ad groups targeting different keyword sets. Monitor metrics like CTR, conversion rate, and cost per conversion.
Audience Targeting
Are your campaigns targeting the right potential customers? Testing different audience segments based on demographics, interests, or behaviors can help identify high-value groups. Remember, different messaging and offers may work for different segments, so test content elements by audience too. Evaluate metrics such as CTR, engagement rate, and conversion rate.
At Just Eat, we experimented with programmatic display advertising to target different audiences, which led to a 25% increase in conversions. By continually testing and refining your marketing content, you can ensure campaigns remain effective and engaging and produce a stronger ROI. Embracing experimentation more broadly also ensures that your marketing efforts are agile and responsive to changing trends and user preferences.
3. Understanding Your Customers
Your purchase data already contains a wealth of useful insights that you can utilize to gain a deeper understanding of your customer base: who they are, what they buy, when they buy, and how often. This data will enable greater personalization, relevancy, and proactivity within your campaigns. These are the sales data points you should pay the most attention to:
Purchase Frequency
This will help you pinpoint your most engaged customer segments, allowing smarter allocation of marketing resources. It could also aid the development of programs that reward loyal customers for repeat purchases via exclusive perks or discounts designed to increase purchase rate for particular segments.
Time Since Last Order
This can help reduce churn, enabling you to identify potential opportunities for automated marketing actions, such as sending an email or promotional offer, to keep customers active.
Average Order Value
Knowing the amount spent by customers per transaction can help you make more informed decisions about what you should spend on customer acquisition. Additionally, you can see which products are most popular and feature these more prominently in your marketing campaigns.
Lifetime Value (LTV)
Calculating the LTV of customers allows you to determine how much you can afford to spend on maintaining customer relationships. A higher LTV indicates a more valuable segment that might justify a more significant investment in engagement and customer retention strategies.
On another project, with News UK, we used subscriber data to segment users and communicate with them more effectively. For example, we increased the frequency of communication to subscribers for whom the open rate was lower, which ultimately increased engagement and lowered churn by 9%. By gaining insight into the buying patterns and preferences of your customers, you can tailor your marketing efforts, use your budget more effectively, and increase engagement and conversion rates across all segments.
Focus on Building Long-term Customer Relationships
Adopting a data-driven mindset is crucial for any business looking to enhance its marketing campaigns, encouraging you to regularly evaluate the effectiveness of your activities, home in on the exact causes of any dips in performance, and make tangible improvements. By motivating your marketing team to lead with evidence-based insights, you can optimize marketing spend, improve performance, and create a stronger connection with your audience.
While you may see results quickly, getting the most out of your growth marketing strategies and their associated metrics may require you to shift focus from a short-term to a long-term strategy. When digital marketers prioritize building relationships over individual transactions, they’re increasing acquisition and retention rates through a more engaging and personalized customer journey. Leveraging data in this way will allow you to take a more customer-centric approach.
High-quality data is crucial, so invest in systems and software that easily organize and make sense of your data. Becoming truly data-driven is also about developing a culture of collaboration: You will need to work closely with your customer service, sales, and product teams to pursue meaningful action from the insights you gain.
Remember, the key lies in continuous testing, learning, and adapting. These three pillars of agility will ensure your marketing strategies evolve with the pace of business. Fostering a data-driven mindset across your organization will promote innovation, efficiency, and, ultimately, growth.
