You can’t optimize and improve your sales strategies and ROI without proper analytics. Regular tracking and audit of marketing performance helps raise its effectiveness and understand what aspects might need adjustments.

Today, we've talked with TimeDoctor Online Marketing Lead Carlo Borja and SaaS platform for beauty industries Global Marketing Manager Daria Prianichnikova, asking them to give insights into their key practices of marketing analytics.

1. What web metrics do you monitor with analytics? What tools do you use?

Carlo Borja: As the head of content marketing for Time Doctor, the metrics we are most concerned with are organic traffic and conversion.

We do a lot of search engine optimization and content production. The tools we use to measure the performance of these channels are a combination of Google Analytics, Search Console, and Ahrefs.

Daria: For us, as a classic SaaS company, website visits and registration conversions are the most critical metrics. If there is a budget constraint then Google Analytics does a pretty good job tracking these numbers, but as our marketing KPIs are also tied with sales KPIs, for us it is important to dig deeper and look into those leads using Roistat tools. It allows tracking the status of leads, for instance, if there was a purchase or the deal was not closed, as well as the country and the channel where this lead came from.

2. What content types do you use to promote your business?

Carlo Borja: One of our biggest marketing channels is our blog. We promote our mission through the articles we publish. We do not directly sell in our blogs.

Educating people on why we exist and what we are here for works better for us. It’s a win-win situation for both our business and the people we are trying to reach.

Daria: I believe content creation is a great way to give value to people and make them loyal to your product, also, it is an efficient way to promote it. While the basis of our platform content production is blog posts, we also hold free webinars on trending topics or service business management ussies involving opinion leaders or particular service business industry influencers, for instance, owners of beauty studio networks for us. Content should be thoughtfully distributed: I suggest using socials and communities which your potential customers constantly check. Personally, I recommend paying special attention to Quora or Reddit marketing - those are great sources of organic traffic if used wisely.

3. What analytical tools do you use to measure your content effectiveness?

Carlo Borja: Ahrefs is a fantastic all-around tool for search engine optimization. This tool gives us a good overview of all the metrics we care about for content effectiveness. From keywords to traffic, backlinks, and more.

Also, our Google Analytics has been set up so that we can see conversions from the articles we have been publishing.

Daria: When it comes to trivial metrics like blog post views - again, Roistat or Google Analytics is a good fit. But if the effectiveness is measured by content shares or referring links - we use Ahrefs (yes, it is commonly known as SEO tool but it is perfect to track referring to your content links) and Mention - a great tool to follow where you or your special content were mentioned.

4. What communication channels (Email, SMS, Web Push, Mob Push, other) do you use to keep the conversation with your customers?

Carlo Borja: Emails have worked well for us in continuing to interact with the customers. We have a combination of both automated and personal messages to reach them.

Daria: As we are a B2B business, we are more focused on email communication as a marketing communication channel. It is more suitable for product update news or upselling strategy. Through an email campaign, it is easier to give a customer some space to learn more about your product or just to check the resources you give.

5. How do you track the effectiveness of the corresponding campaigns? What metrics are measured?

Carlo Borja: Since email is the main way we continue our conversations, we rely on the usual open rates, clicks, subscribers in our newsletters, and updates.

For personal messages, there really is no way to concretely measure their effectiveness. It’s more of a subjective way to let the audience know that we care for them.

Daria: At our service, we track open rate and link clicks in email - thus, we decide which email campaign was successful and which was not. It can indicate an interest in a certain feature. My advice is to test different creatives when it comes to emails - sometimes the right banner can drive customers’ attention and make them click that link. Better visualize your product - always works the best.

6. How do you manage your social media placement?

Carlo Borja: We have put a social media manager in place to make sure our social presence is active and coherent across all channels.

We publish content and updates, we interact with followers and we also engage with partners.

Daria: Understanding your audience is key to success. Our product is aimed for a wide range of service-based businesses: it suits small business owners like personal trainers or teachers as well as enterprise customers like a beauty salon network. Everyone needs online booking and appointment management. So, we chose all possible socials to reach different customer types but content posted there slightly differs. For Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, it is more friendly and the language is simple, but when it comes to LinkedIn - the tone of voice is more techy and professional.

7. What analytical tools do you use to measure its effectiveness?

Carlo Borja: The respective platforms (e.g Twitter, Facebook) have their own analytics in the first place.

Other than that, we use tools like Hootsuite, Buffer and Missinglettr. And, Google Analytics of course.

Daria: I believe native analytics inside each social network are made perfectly for analyzing the effectiveness of the content strategy. Facebook’s new analytics are especially great to see the exact numbers.

8. Is your business involved in in-person interactions? If yes, how do you measure its effectiveness?

Carlo Borja: Yes, we have a dedicated sales team that does in-person interactions.

The effectiveness is measured by the deals that our sales representatives are able to close.

9. What analytical tools do you use to measure your sales and finance performance?

Carlo Borja: We are using platforms like Chartmogul and Intercom to track customers and sales.

10. What analytical tools do you use to measure your ads expenditure?

Carlo Borja: We use Google’s own ads platform as well as Facebook.

Daria: We use the classic tool kit: Google Ads and also we look into Roistat data to measure ads payback - how many conversions we got and how much money we earned if there was a payment.

11. What other analytical tools should a business use to effectively track its marketing strategy?

Carlo Borja: It depends on the marketing goals of the business.

In our case, since we focus on content marketing and SEO here are some good recommendations:

• Ahrefs
• SEMRush
• Moz Pro.

Daria: Aa a marketer, I bet almost everyone is extremely interested in organic traffic - in our case, we work on our SEO strategy a lot. I use SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant to check if my texts are optimized for SEO.

Also, if you are searching for more content ideas - Buzzsumo helps to find your competitors’ most shared content (you can do the same with Ahrefs Content explorer tool though).

We thank Carlo and Daria for sharing their experience. By learning from experts, you’ll be able to better track the progress of your marketing, manage decision making, and follow the progress toward achieving your business goals.