Digital marketing, on the one hand, is getting more complicated and competitive than ever. On the other hand, nowadays we are presented with a plethora of digital marketing analytics tools that can help us to understand our market, the customer’s behaviors, and ultimately can help us in achieving growth.
The ability to gather, process, and interpret data is essential for any marketer. However, with all the different options available, it can be difficult to choose just a select few and use them to the most of their potentials.
Here, we will share five of the most important marketing analytics tools available, and how you can use it to achieve your marketing goals.
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is often described as the standard measuring tool of the internet, with the core function of identifying and analyzing all sorts of traffic on the internet.
This can include identifying where your site visitors are coming from (referrals, clicking on a banner ad, etc.), how they interact with your site (where they click), how much time they spend on your site, and more.
The biggest advantage of Google Analytics is its accessibility. It’s available for everyone and for most of us, the free version is enough. There is the premium Google Analytics 360, but unless you are a very big enterprise with special needs like marketing attribution, it won’t be necessary.
The main downside of Google Analytics is that it’s unable to track individual user, and it’s fairly complicated to use Google Analytics to track new conversions.
Who should use Google Analytics
Due to its accessibility and affordability, Google Analytics should be a part of every digital marketer’s arsenal, unless you have another (paid) tool that can do its job. If you only have a basic site or app without too many complex functionalities, Google Analytics is enough most of the time.
How Much Does It Cost?
The free version of Google Analytics is sufficient for most companies, while the (very) premium Google Analytics 360 starts from $150,000/year.
2. MixPanel
MixPanel, in many ways, have similar core functionalities to Google Analytics, but where one of Google Analytics’s biggest disadvantages is the ability to track individual users, Mixpanel emphasizes on user-centered tracking features including analyzing the online behaviors of users and the ability to send personalized messages for specific users/groups.
Mixpanel focuses on event-based tracking, while Google Analytics is focused on tracking pageview metrics. Mixpanel offers granular detail to monitor different user behaviors, and can provide reports in real time (which can take much longer with Google Analytics regarding individual user tracking).
Who should use Mixpanel
Businesses with more complex website, app, or business process can benefit more from MixPanel. If you have a complex marketing funnel, MixPanel can help analyze which lead generation channels are best according to lifetime value, not only focusing on channels that trigger the initial conversion.
How much does it cost?
MixPanel offers a free version for up to 25,000 user actions per month (these user actions, or data points are actions like clicking a button on your site). MixPanel charges their monthly subscription fee based on these data points, and you can check their pricing here.
3. CrazyEgg
CrazyEgg is a popular marketing analytic tool focuses on heat map data. By analyzing heat map, we can precisely analyze the visitor’s behavior on your site, the buttons they click, and where they are focusing their attention to.
Specifically, CrazyEgg tracks which parts of the web page the users are interacting with, visualized in a heat map. CrazyEgg also offer other features like measuring how deep the average user is scrolling through your page, and so can determine at what point of your content you are losing the visitor’s attention.
Another useful feature is how CrazyEgg can provide information about individual users, like where they came from to your site, their specific activities, and so on.
Who should use CrazyEgg
If one of your site’s core goals is to generate conversions, you need CrazyEgg to accurately measure the performance of your site and optimize it accordingly to generate more conversions.
How much does it cost?
CrazyEgg starts at $9 per month for the basic plan, limiting you to 10,000 visits per month and 10 active pages where you’ll get daily reports. The highest-tiered plan will cost you $99 per month which included 250,000 visits per month and 100 active pages.
4. Crowdbooster
Crowdbooster is one of the most popular (and powerful) social media analytic tools available.
It is worth noting that most—if not all— major social media platforms nowadays offer their own, quite reliable analytics tool. However, where they are lacking, this is where Crowdbooster fills in.
Among Crowdbooster’s various features, one of the most interesting ones is the ability to identify most engaged followers, where Crowdbooster will provide suggestions on how to reach more of this similar audience. This is very useful since by having more of these “advocates”, you can effectively accelerate follower growth.
Crowdbooster also offers standard social media marketing features such as automation and scheduling, but the ability to analyze growth is what sets it apart from other similar tools.
Who should use Crowdbooster
Crowdbooster is especially necessary for businesses with a focus on social media marketing. Marketers that manage multiple social media accounts (or even multiple brands) can also benefit from Crowdbooster.
How must does it cost?
Crowdbooster’s pricing begins at $9 monthly (called the bronze package) which includes the support for one Twitter account, one Facebook account, and up to 50,000 total followers. The gold plan will cost you $119 monthly and supports 30 social profiles and unlimited total followers.
5. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a very useful marketing analytics tool specializing in content marketing. The core feature of BuzzSumo is to analyze the web and social media to suggest the best possible content topic for your ideal audience.
Content marketing is very important nowadays, and one of the biggest challenges of content marketing is finding the right topic that is effective for your audience and yet manageable competition wise. BuzzSumo analyzes data from all major social media channels in real time for up to several months back, so you can check which topic in your industry gains the most engagement.
BuzzSumo also offers various other features from advanced keyword research, backlink analytics, and even influencer outreach tools.
Who should use BuzzSumo
Fairly obvious, BuzzSumo is a must-have tool for any content marketers, but is also a very versatile tool for any marketers in general. Finding out new trends and the ability to differentiate signal from noise is valuable in any marketing activities.
How much does it cost
BuzzSumo offers three different pricing tiers: $99/month, $299/month, and $999 per month.
John Novak
