People in the digital marketing field spend massive amounts of time, energy and funds on optimising digital marketing campaigns. The main business goals for such optimisation are higher traffic, better engagement and additional conversions. However, in addition to these major business goals, most digital marketing managers are also interested in:

• The thoughts of customers regarding their brand.
• The digital marketing channels customers use to converse about the brand.
• The people whom consumers influence by their brand-related conversations.
• What would motivate customers to make a second/third purchase within a cycle?
• Are the company’s marketing messages resonating?
• Why did a certain group of customers leave the company for a competitor?

The time has now come to give more importance to such learning objectives, bringing them to the same level of the main business goals. This is because the feedback a company can get through their interactions with customers, and the tracking of customer behaviour and responses, is powerful enough to improve almost every other aspect of business. However, this is only if digital marketing professionals take the required steps to succeed. Some of the things you can do are:

• Frame the questions you want answered before you launch a digital marketing programme. Also keep the right tracking and listening tools in place, to measure customer responses.
• Distinguish between learning and testing. While testing is more about how well your campaign is performing, learning is about collecting useful insights that will enable you to make better business choices.
• Invest money, time and resources for collecting these digital marketing insights. Marketing research is not free, and you may need to buy new tools or train staff to get the information you need.
• Distinguish between noise and true insights. Sometimes, a single customer may give you a more valuable insight, than the loud noises made by a group of highly vocal customers.
• Confer with employees from other departments, especially those who have no contact with customers, to find out if they have a question or suggestion that could prove to be valuable for your business.
• Check for inputs from partners, distributors and other external sources. They generally have vast industry and category experience, and can provide you with rich sources of data.
• Build a feedback and review cycle to ensure that all collected data is available for use within a specified time frame, and provides timely benefits.

Qudos Digital is a leading digital marketing agency, and can be contacted on 0845 388 5583 or info@qudosdigital.co.uk.