Now that January is almost over, we can all breathe a big sigh of relief and put 2016 behind us, right? Before you bid adieu to 2016, you should review the year’s data to inform your future strategy.
Last year’s marketing plan could contain a goldmine of valuable data that can be used to create a more effective marketing plan for 2017. To illustrate the point, here are just a few ways that your data from 2016 can shape your marketing plan this year:
Improve Your Marketing Budget
Savvy marketers know that if you want to make money, you need to spend money. Now is a good time to look back at your 2016 data to see what worked and what didn’t in regards to your marketing campaigns. After all, one of the prime benefits of tracking your campaign results is that you can stretch your marketing budget even further in the future.
You might be tempted to just look at the previous month’s data for some of your marketing inspiration, but long-term marketing strategies require you to look at the entire year to understand your ROI.
For some companies, it can take six months to a year to see the results from an SEO campaign. Regularly checking the results of your marketing campaigns is essential, but you need more than just one months’ worth of data if you want to allocate your marketing budget properly in 2017.
Beef Up Your Content Marketing Strategy
We have more data at our fingertips now than ever before, and, yet many marketers don’t understand how data can make their content better for their customers. We all know how important content marketing is to your overall marketing plan, so why not use your data to make it more impactful in 2017.
Review your 2016 data and identify certain topics that were more successful with audiences of a specific demographic. This year, create dynamic segments based on demographics and start working on content that will engage this audience. If your content performs better during certain days of the week, use this knowledge to strategically post compelling content so that it makes an even bigger impact on your audience this year.
See How You Stack Up Against the Competition
Analyzing your own data is important to your online success, but it also doesn’t hurt to know how you compare to your competition. Numbers can vary across different industries, which is why it’s beneficial to compare an eCommerce store that sells clothes to one that sells health food items.
If the thought of identifying the data and extracting meaningful insight seems overwhelming, the free Springbot eCommerce Scorecard will help you benchmark your eCommerce store’s performance against competitors in your industry and discover important metrics such as site traffic, social channels, and user engagement. These metrics will help inform your 2017 marketing plans for a successful year.
Get a Glimpse into the Future
Past data can inform future success. Your customers’ needs and preferences are continuously changing. By keeping a close watch on their behavior over time, you can make predictions that will help shape your future marketing plan.
Did a specific product do exceptionally well during the holiday season in 2016? This year, you can make sure that this product is well stocked around the same time. Additionally, you can create a customer segment of the people who purchased this product and target them with your company’s latest accessory for that product.
Don’t underestimate the power of your past data. All the data from 2016 can help you make predictions for what lies ahead in 2017. With these data-driven predictions, you can create a marketing plan for 2017 that gives you an edge in the competition.