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Best Marketing Analytics Tools to Ensure Your Company’s Growth

Best Marketing Analytics Tools to Ensure Your Company’s Growth

Are you looking for the best marketing analytics tools to track and improve your site’s performance?

Every marketer knows that the key to their success is in attracting new, high-quality leads to their business. It’s the only way to grow.

Because attracting lots of traffic is great, but it has to be traffic that will likely become customers. And attracting no traffic is… well, that just never a good thing.

That’s why I made a list of the best marketing analytics tools you can use to grow your business.

And while this list isn’t exhaustive (seeing as how there are endless tools to choose from), these are all marketing analytics tools that I’ve either used first-hand or have heard great things about from reliable sources.

But before we dive into the list, let’s talk about what marketing analytics tools are and why they’re so valuable to your company’s growth.

Section linkWhat Are Marketing Analytics Tools?

Marketing analytics tools are software that you can use to track your site’s performance, outreach, and conversion rates. They also expand to platforms off your website, such as your email service provider, social media accounts, and more.

These tools give you hard data to teach you how to better communicate with your audience. That means improving your marketing efforts, reaching more leads, and getting more customers.

In other words, marketing analytics tools are, I believe, the most efficient way to grow your business.

But let’s be honest: a lot of marketers get more excited about clever ad campaigns, writing compelling copy, and producing awesome content than they do about going over data.

The inherent desire to become a marketer usually requires a fascination with creativity that surpasses a fascination with spreadsheets. It just comes with the territory.

And yet, none of those other tools matter if you can’t tangibly track their success. Ad campaigns are great... if they work; you can’t know whether your copy is compelling unless you have the data to back it up; and even your content needs concrete KPIs if you want to continue reaching your target audience.

That’s why I created this list of the best marketing analytics tools to grow your business. In choosing these tools, I had two requirements:

  1. They had to be relatively frictionless to use
  2. They had to be something I’ve used or heard good things about from people I trust

I’ll often read lists on “best marketing tools for [enter year here]” that have 30-40 different software to choose from. I’m always skeptical about how many of those tools the author has actually tried out.

My goal was to create a list of quality marketing analytics tools that you can start using to expand your business today.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s dive in!

Section link7 Marketing Analytics Tools to Grow Your Business

Section link1. Metrics Watch

Metrics Watch is one of the best marketing report tools around. With this analytics tool, you can pull data from all of your major marketing platforms and compile them into a daily, weekly, or monthly marketing report.

The user interface (UI) is totally dummy-proof, which means the data can be read and digested in a matter of seconds. Plus, there are no 3rd-party websites, user account management issues, or PDF attachments.

All the data goes straight to your inbox to get you everything you need when you need it.

And the best part? You don’t need to signup and pay hefty fees to get started. I have so much confidence in Metrics Watch that I offer a 14-day FREE trial to get started (no credit card required).

So if you want to know how marketing reports can improve your marketing strategy and increase your revenue, then go sign up for your free Metrics Watch account today!

Section link2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a staple tool for any marketing team. It’s really not even a “suggested tool” anymore… it’s pretty much an absolute must (though if you’re looking for an alternative, we’ll give you one in just a minute).

With Google Analytics, you can track everything regarding how your audience is interacting with your site. It lets you see what content brings in the most people, where your sales are coming from, how long people stay on parts of your site, and much more.

Again, you’re likely familiar with Google Analytics. That said, you may not be getting the most out of the software. If not, I recommend checking out this post: Google Analytics 101: How to Find and Fix Your Real Problem.

Oh, and like most of Google’s tooling, it’s totally free. Not on Google Analytics yet? That’s just crazy.

Go connect your website today!

Section link3. Piwik

If you’ve been getting creeped out by how far Google’s power stretches online, then you may want an alternative to Google Analytics. That’s where Piwik comes in.

Piwik is a marketing analytics tool that does everything Google Analytics does. But with one crucial difference: Piwik gives you total control over your visitor’s data, whereas Google Analytics is remotely hosted.

That means, at the end of the day, Google Analytics owns your site data and can do with it what they will.

With Piwik, you own the data.

You should know that unlike Google Analytics, Piwik is a paid product. To get a quote on pricing, you’ll need to fill out an application and request a demo.

That said, if you’re looking for a marketing analytics tool that’s different from (but functions the same way as) Google Analytics, then Piwik can be a good solution.

Get a quote on Piwiks today!

Section link4. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is the other half of the Google coin that marketers don’t make enough use out of. At least, not in my opinion.

While many marketers know about (and have played around with) Google Search Console, a surprising amount of them can’t succinctly explain what it does. So I’ll do it for them:

Whereas Google Analytics gets you data on how your audience engages with your site, Google Search Console can tell you how your site and content perform on the search engine.

This is particularly useful for helping with your site’s technical SEO. And as a result of using Google Search Console, you can more easily accomplish two things:

  • Improve user experience (UX) on your site by optimizing performance
  • Target customers organically by improving sitewide SEO and tracking your contents’ rankings

For more information about the difference between the two software, check out this post: How to Finish First With 2 of Google’s Top Tools.

Get started with Google Search Console today!

Section link5. SEMrush

SEMrush is one of the world’s most popular SEO tools. It has a ton of features that help you write more Google-friendly content, target better keywords, and rank higher.

Now, to be honest, it’s hard to legitimately rank one SEO tool over another. Talk to one marketer, and they’ll say that Moz is the way to go. Speak with another, and they’ll swear by Ahrefs.

Frankly, most paid SEO software has advantages and drawbacks. And most marketers have a strong preference for one over the others (usually based on what their mentors taught them). These SEO software include analytics on things like:

  • Backlinks
  • Keyword tracking
  • Domain authority

And much more.

But what I really like about SEMrush is that it has tons of data to improve your overall content marketing strategy. One of these resources is the content optimization tool.

You can input your article, write in the keyword you’re looking for, and get a quantitative score along with helpful suggestions for optimization:

This is a cool form of marketing analytics that I haven’t personally seen on other platforms–at least not in a way that’s been so user-friendly to marketing teams.

(Again, this isn’t a comprehensive list of marketing analytics tools… just the ones I know work well and that I’ve seen actual success with).

Get started with SEMrush today!

Section link6. Hotjar

Hotjar is a really cool marketing analytics tool that gives you a different type of data: how are people actually experiencing your website?

This isn’t from the perspective of speed, bounce rates, or even conversion rates. Instead, Hotjar will show you how your audience is actually navigating through your website. It does so in four ways:

  • Heatmaps
  • Recordings
  • Incoming feedback
  • Surveys

This tool gives you powerful analytics that let you see and understand how users are engaging with your website. With the data you receive, you can drastically improve user experience (UX) on a level that traditional marketing tools don’t allow.

Check out Hotjar here!

Section link7. Optimizely

Optimizely is an excellent tool for A/B testing sites on your page. Now, to be honest, it takes a bit of legwork to set up, and you need the discipline to test, track, and tweak all your site’s pages. But if you can find that discipline, it will be well worth it.

While they have tools for most major company roles, it’s their marketing tool that we’re concerned with here. Their easy-to-use interface allows you to make small changes to your site’s pages and track which has higher conversion rates.

This tool is comparable to Google Optimize (which is free) but has a more friendly visual editor and tends to be easier for non-data-minded people to use.

But, as you can imagine, that ease of use comes at a steep cost.

Pricing varies for this product (because they have many different plans for your specific needs), so you’ll need to request a quote. That said, you could easily be looking at plans costing over $30,000/year.

That means this marketing analytics tool is best for:

  • Medium to larger sized businesses with big budgets
  • Small businesses who are obsessed with Optimization and willing to risk seeing positive returns

To be fair, though, most tools in the price range are expensive for a reason: they work.

And that’s it! These are 7 of the best marketing analytics tools I’ve personally used or have first-hand knowledge of.

I hope you found this article helpful and, if you did, I encourage you to check out the following posts:

These posts will give you a headstart in understanding how data-driven decision making can bring you more profit and grow your business.

Ready to improve your marketing reports to make better use of your data? You should try out Metrics Watch. No PDFs. No user account management. Just the data you need sent directly to your inbox. It’s that easy.

Sign up for your FREE Metrics Watch trial today!

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