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In the past 3 years, eCommerce businesses have experienced the impact of a number of global crises.

Right now, we’re still living through the aftermath of a global pandemic, rising inflation, and the war in Ukraine. And these global events have shaken even the most successful eCommerce brands.

Over the past 6 months, retail brands have started losing some confidence in marketing spend amid worries of a bleak future. However, knee-jerk reactions can do more damage than you think.

There are opportunities for those brands willing to invest. And to help you through these turbulent times, we have released a new guide – Global Issues: The Threats Affecting eCommerce.

You can download it free here. Or scroll down to find out more about everything included in the guide before you make up your mind.

What’s the Guide, ‘Global Issues: The Threats Affecting eCommerce’, All About?

In our latest guide, we take a closer look at the global crises impacting eCommerce brands, how brands can react and excel in these uncertain times, as well as the top 5 trends defining the eCommerce landscape in 2022.

It covers…

The Threats Affecting eCommerce

Digital advertising revenue reached $189 billion in 2021, jumping 35% – the highest increase since 2006.

But as we’re sure you’re aware, the picture is not rosy for many retail brands. Inflation, war, pandemics, and supply chain shortages have all created a difficult terrain for brands to flourish.

What Can eCommerce Brands Do?

Consumers have responded to these crises by cutting back on their spending. The less people are willing to spend, the less people will be actively clicking on your ads.

eCommerce Performance Look Book AW ’22

The future eCommerce landscape looks tough. But there are still opportunities out there if you focus on the marketing trends that are emerging. It’s these trends that will help you succeed in 2022 and beyond.

You can get a free copy of the guide here. And if you have any questions, feel free to drop us a message.

The founders of The Big Plastic Count – Greenpeace UK and Everyday Plastic – appointed purpose-driven creative agency, Enviral, to create its latest national campaign, which has lifted the lid on the country’s recycling rates and exposed that the government is talking trash about our plastic problem.

Through their launch video, The Big Plastic Count and Enviral encouraged 31 MPs and 97,948 households to take part in counting their plastic for a week in May, which equates to 1 in every 262 households in the UK. This was the biggest ever investigation into UK household plastics and the data uncovered will be crucial in convincing the government, big brands and supermarkets to take ambitious action on reducing plastic packaging.

Throughout the investigation, participants counted over 96 billion pieces of plastic and uncovered that only 12% of our plastic waste is actually recycled with 17% exported abroad, 25% sent to landfill and 46% incinerated.

Working in close partnership with the The Big Plastic Count team, Enviral developed the creative, the narrative and oversaw the shoot productions to create three hard-hitting films; a launch film, a how-to film and a shocking results film which puts pressure on the government to act.

Chris Thorne, Plastics Campaigner at Greenpeace UK said: “The plastic crisis is out of control but if the government acts we can get a grip on the problem. That’s why The Big Plastic Count is so important. Getting the narrative right on a campaign like this can be make or break. Through Envirals understanding of our needs and their collaborative approach they’ve helped us create assets we know the public will connect with and will lead to more and more people pushing the government to take ambitious action to end the plastic waste problem.

Joss Ford, Enviral Founder, comments: “We’ve been consistently beating the drum around the role of creatives in fighting the climate crisis and in connecting hearts and minds. So being able to partner with such an impactful organisation like Greenpeace UK really is a huge moment for our team and one which we hope brings real impact and holds those in power to account.”

This project embodies Greenpeace UK’s wider mission to defend the natural world from destruction, with a vision for a greener, healthier and more peaceful planet that can sustain life for future generations to come. The campaign evolved out of The Everyday Plastic Survey, pioneered by Everyday Plastic, a research-led non-profit focused on evidence-based education and campaigns. With the aim of mobilising and inspiring the UK population to help lift the lid on our recycling, it’s hoped this campaign will hold the government to account and bring real, positive change.

Enviral was awarded the contract after a competitive pitch process. With previous agency nominations including The Drum’s Best Use Of Video For Digital Advertising, Enviral is a full-service ethical brand communications agency based in Bristol that leverages the power of storytelling to effect real change for future generations.

Watch the launch video in full here.

According to HubSpot, marketers that blog consistently are 13 times more likely to see a positive return on investment. Business blogs are a fantastic way to make your marketing spend go a long way, but the generation of content is an ongoing commitment.

Idea rich, time poor

Many small business owners and marketers for larger organisations have lots of ideas they would like to implement but little time to implement them. They have multiple balls in the air at any one time, including clients, prospects, and media outlets, so keeping the business blog up to date can be hard. Some may feel like it’s enough to post every now and then when they have time, while others want to do more but simply can’t justify prioritising it over existing and potential clients’ needs. I know how that feels. I have my own blogging business, so my blog is an important part of my portfolio, but when I have multiple client deadlines to hit, of course I am going to prioritise their needs over my own. However, that’s not to say that neglecting your business blog is a good move.

Drive traffic and build trust

Consistency in business blogging is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website and promote your brand. It also builds trust with your target audience as they continually see that you are supplying useful information to them. If blogs appear on an ad hoc basis, they don’t receive the same recognition from Google, but they also don’t create the same perception among web visitors. People buy from people they trust and a business blog is a bit like providing a window into your business, for prospects to peer through to get an idea of what it’s like inside. If there are reams of useful information that have clearly been updated regularly and recently, it paints a picture of a company that is up to date, on trend, and in touch with the market and its customers. If there is a blog with the most recent post dating back to last year, you probably wouldn’t come away with the same impression.

Hold onto the visitors you get

Additionally, a consistent business blog is a good way to keep visitors on your site because you can direct them from one article to the next, to the next, and before they know it, they have spent half an hour delving into your knowledge and expertise. This only works with a well populated blog though. If you only have a handful of posts spread over the course of a few years, visitors will soon realise that much of the information they’re reading is outdated and go elsewhere to find what they need.

Keeping visitors on your site for longer allows them to build a better picture of who you are and what you stand for. Think about the difference between meeting someone in person for 30 seconds, and spending time with them for 30 minutes. While first impressions do count, the longer you can engage with your audience, the more chance you have of selling your expertise and building trust in your brand.

Budget for blogs

Regular blogging is also better financially too. If you outsource the copywriting of your business blog as many companies do, it may feel easier to commission a blog every now and then, but it’s far better value for money if you commit to a regular program. As well as ensuring you have a consistent blog on your site, if you establish an ongoing commitment with someone, you know there is a third party who will drive the schedule on your behalf, chase for any information they need, and make it happen with minimum hassle. All for a set monthly fee that you can budget for without worrying about variable fees from one month to the next.

So, when it comes to the question of ad hoc vs regular blogging, it really is best to keep it consistent.

With 81% of people in the UK today saying that creating a well and healthy world is the biggest challenge of the 21^st century and 52% of people in the UK saying that they have felt more unwell since the beginning of the pandemic, the immense scale of the task ahead is very clear.

To further explore this growing challenge, last week (April 28^th), McCann Bristol and McCann Synergy hosted the second Talks on Toast event of the year, Truth About Wellness.

Hosted by Kathryn Ellis, Managing Partner, Strategy at McCann Bristol alongside Rodney Collins, Director at McCann Worldgroup Truth Central and Chloe Foy, Behavioural Strategist and ACC Coach at McCann Synergy, the event uncovered research based on 10 years of trended global data about the shape, role and meaning of wellness in consumer lives across 26 global markets – uncovering insights around mental, physical, emotional, financial wellness and much more.

Focusing on wellness both today and tomorrow, the research timeline demonstrated huge shifts in consumer behaviour from before the pandemic through to now. A large emphasis was placed on how far wellness has come in the last decade and the importance that is now placed on this for both customers and workforces.

With 74% of people saying they’re definition of wellness has evolved in the past year, what does it mean to be ‘well’ in today’s world? The insights uncovered suggest wellness remains multi-dimensional, however the definition of wellness we are familiar with needs to expand. Rodney talked through the eight dimensions of wellness including; emotional, financial, spiritual and social, with the focus drawing more now on how a sense of lack in one area can negatively impact another.

Rodney commented: “We’re really noticing that in the past 10 years what has shifted is that each of these dimensions appeared to exist in a silo, there was no mention about how ones mental health could impact ones physical health, how the bacteria in our stomachs affect how happy we are, how loneliness increases our chances of developing heart problems, or how the hitting costs of urban ride sharing is increasing environmental pollutants, which in turn are driving higher rates of Asthma. So the wellness conversation today has really become expansive, interconnected and networked.”

The discussion continued by identifying the erosion of this siloed approach, delving into the evolution of the wellness conversation and addressing five key additional shifts brands and businesses should foster and strive for to ensure a positive wellness evolution in the workspace.

Talks on Toast is a quarterly event hosted by McCann Bristol, delivering insight and global research at a local level based on key global topics.

Here’s a great story courtesy of MailChimp.

“In 1978, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corp named Gary Thuerk used this new method of direct communication to send out the first commercial email to let people know about a new product. His email list only had 400 addresses, but the emails he sent resulted in about $13 million in sales.”

This was only 7 years after the first email ever was sent in 1971, and being the first person to do anything in marketing is a pretty incredible feat. Nowadays, more than half the world’s population has an email account – and most of them are more than happy for the brands they love to take up space in their inbox.

Email marketing is an all-encompassing term for sending promotional and commercial emails to a list of subscribers who have given you permission to do so. This includes newsletters, updates on special offers and events, welcome emails, abandoned cart emails, order confirmations, delivery updates and lots more.

You Can’t Argue With Facts: Email Marketing in Numbers

Email marketing often takes a back seat to the ever-present social media marketing, but it’s still a major player in the mix. I am a big fan of email marketing, and by the end of this post, I hope you will be too!

There were 4 billion emails users in 2020, with about a 3% increase each year. In comparison, there were 3.6 billion social media users in 2020, and these days we regularly see large numbers of people shifting to new platforms or giving up social media completely.

73% of millennials say email is their favourite way to receive communication from businesses.

44% of users check their emails to find deals from brands they like, compared to just 4% who would go to Facebook for a bargain.

Still not sold? How about this: email marketing has a return on investment (ROI) of 3800%. You’d be hard-pressed to find a figure like that anywhere else.

Turnhouse’s Top Tips for Great Email Marketing

1. Segment and Personalise

Segmentation is the process of separating your contacts based on a number of different factors. Personalisation is using those factors to engage people in a way that will resonate with them.

Here’s a very basic example. You sell candles, and you offer shipping across the UK. Your purchase process contains an opt-in form for your newsletter, so most of your past customers are on your mailing list, and you’ve segmented them geographically. Now you’re planning an event in Bristol, and you want to get the word out. It’s probably not worth sending that email to your customers in Edinburgh. I’m sure your candles are good, but they’re probably not ‘travel 400 miles to get one’ good. Especially if you can buy them online and get them shipped out. So we can send a personalised email along the lines of “Bristol customers, come to our event and make your candle dreams come true!”.

According to SendinBlue, there are four main types of segmentation.

• Demographic – concrete information about who contacts are (e.g. age)

• Psychographic – subjective characteristics of contacts’ personalities (e.g. values)

• Behavioural – contacts’ past interactions with your business (e.g. abandoned cart)

• Geographic – where contacts are located (e.g. timezone)

As you can see, these are pretty broad and the possibilities are vast. Revisit your email marketing goals to figure out what would be most beneficial for your business.

2. A/B Testing

Should I add that emoji to the subject line? How about another paragraph of copy – would that lead to more clicks? They say the little things can make a big difference. Luckily, A/B Testing helps you figure out which little things actually work.

A/B testing is a clever little tool that allows you to send two slightly different campaigns to your audience. Then you can look at the data and find out which performed better, and use this knowledge to make better decisions in the future.

As business owners, we feel like we have to have all the answers. But sometimes A/B testing can prove our hypotheses wrong. Don’t be disheartened – instead, think of it as an opportunity to learn more about your customers.

Here are a few things you can A/B test:

• Subject line – (long or short, emojis or no emojis)

• Content – (more or less copy, more or fewer images)

• CTAs – (how many, where are they placed)

• Schedule – (day of the week, time of day)

3. Clear Out Your List

Chances are, you’re paying for your email marketing provider per contact on your list, so make sure those people are worth it! If you haven’t used your list in a while, start with a retargeting campaign to draw people back in with an enticing offer. After a while, clear out any contacts that haven’t interacted with your emails at all. Make this a regular habit to ensure your list is always up to date.

4. Optimise for Mobile

Over 70% of people prefer to read emails on their mobile, so don’t forget to check the mobile version before hitting send. The good news is that 1 in 5 commercial emails are not optimised for mobile, so getting this right could help you stand out from the competition.

Here are a few things to consider before scheduling that campaign.

• Mobile devices will show just 25-30 characters of a subject line, so keep it short or make sure your key points are included at the beginning.

• Some email apps don’t show images by default, so think of any images as a bonus, rather than the main event.

• Make your CTAs clear enough to show up on a small screen, and big enough to easily accommodate a tap from a fingertip.

• Test before sending! Always send a test email and view it on as many devices as possible before you hit send.

5. GDPR

GDPR legislation can feel super intimidating, but don’t be afraid. Essentially, its purpose is to give people more control over their data, and it certainly doesn’t spell the end of email marketing. If anything, it means those people who choose to give you their data are going to be even more engaged with your business, leading to a more valuable list.

A few things to consider here:

• Make sure everyone on your list has given clear consent to be contacted by you, and keep evidence of this consent.

• Only ask for the data you really need (this is important both for GDPR compliance and to maximise sign-ups, as a long form will put a lot of people off).

• Use a reputable email marketing platform (MailChimp is great for beginners), and a lot of the complicated stuff will be taken care of for you.

Of course, by entrusting your email campaigns to Turnhouse, we can put all this into practice for you. Find out more about email marketing and the services we offer.

With Facebook announcing the rebrand of Meta in 2021 and the push towards the metaverse many have looked to the social media platform with a fresh pair of eyes whilst newer platforms like Snapchat and TikTok have been taking the limelight.

Facebook is maturing as a business and whilst some view it as an older form of social media it still has a very large user base that spans across different platforms and message services including Messenger, Instagram, Whatsapp and more.

SEO on Facebook follows similar patterns to the best practises outlined in our article on Instagram SEO and many of the same basic principles may apply as we look at ‘Metaverse SEO’ in the future. Here we share our guide to getting found on Facebook both in terms of the search feature of the site and the timeline.

As a side note, we will continue to refer to the platform as Facebook for the purposes of this article, however, we appreciate we may need to update in the future to keep up with the SEO best practice of keeping content up to date!

1. Ensure your business page is optimised with as much information as possible

The Business page of your Facebook profile is essential for marketing purposes and getting the correct information on there will help you optimise the page and your profile from an SEO perspective.

Having a profile with all of the correct information around business specialisms, opening times and contact information will help your customers find you and provide the best possible user experience.

Additionally, having relevant keywords and concepts in your profile descriptions will increase the overall effectiveness of your Facebook SEO efforts.

2. Link through to your Facebook business page and build backlinks

Adding backlinks to your Facebook profile from your website and other areas will help increase the visibility of the page on other platforms and search engines. This will increase the chances of your page being viewed and potential customers getting in touch.

3. Include custom tabs within your page

If you have other information you would like to share on your Facebook page then make sure you include custom tabs within your page architecture. This is a powerful tool to leverage when it comes to Facebook SEO and can be used to add sections on content, job listings and much more.

4. Share your on-site content on Facebook and optimise for SEO

If you want to increase the awareness of your onsite blog content then adding links to the pieces from Facebook will help you to increase coverage. This can drive social visits to your site and increase the overall reach of your website and Facebook profile.

5. Use keywords on your business page to optimise your Facebook SEO

As previously mentioned using keywords on your business profile page will increase the chances of searchers finding your business when they are using the relevant keywords that you are targeting. Make sure that you are not too spammy and the keywords are relevant and organic.

6. Optimise your Vanity Facebook URL

One of the quick wins that you can get on your Facebook SEO is optimising your vanity URL. This will give you better brand control over your page and make it appear a whole lot more polished. To optimise this go to your page settings and change your username.

Provide good content and tailor your sales pitch

The jab, jab right hook methodology popularised by Gary Vaynerchuck is a good principle to follow when it comes to your Facebook content strategy and indeed all of your marketing communications. If your users feel they are getting something of value then this will increase the chances of them buying your product or service further down the line. Great content will also improve your Facebook SEO, so it will definitely be worth pursuing.

Get in touch with the expert SEO team at Varn to find out more about using SEO on your website and social channels, we can help if you want more guidance on getting found in a Google search.

In Part 1 of our guide to measuring marketing’s effectiveness, we examined the key metrics required to demonstrate overall business impact. We then explored ways to measure brand awareness. In part two, we’ll focus on further key measures for brand impact, and move on to measuring how the marketing has performed in terms of business generation.

If you haven’t yet read Part 1, we’d recommend doing so as we’ll be jumping right back in where we left off…

Once again, our aim is to prioritise the essential information needed for a board report. The data needed by the marketing team to optimise these results will be the subject of a separate article.

Report section 2: brand building (continued)

Recall and perception

Budgets permitting, you can delve a little deeper than the top-level awareness metrics we mentioned in Part 1. By asking the right questions, you’ll gain a better understanding of how your target market perceives you against the competition. You’ll also discover how persuasively your offer and marketing messages are resonating.

Recruiting respondents can be achieved either by leveraging your advertising and PR relationships with publishers, or through social media platforms, using a service like Liveminds.‍

Another vital source of feedback about brand impact is your sales team. Regularly check in with them for on-the-ground intel on whether the brand is affecting their ability to open doors and how they’re welcomed and perceived when they meet.

Trust, recommendation and satisfaction

Your Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) is an industry standard benchmark used to gauge how satisfied customers are with the brand. Survey respondents are asked how likely they are to recommend you to their friends and colleagues on a score from 1 to 10. While this is a useful top-level metric for the board, running the survey also provides the opportunity to dig deeper. Ask questions about what customers are satisfied or unsatisfied with, and why.

Depending on the quality of your CRM data, you can also gain insight into any patterns emerging from different customer segments.

There are potential problems with an over-reliance on the NPS® measure, however, as it can suffer from bias if your sample size is too small.

It’s wise to supplement your snapshot score by monitoring review sites, social signals and feedback from your customer service team to get a full picture of how well your customers trust you and are satisfied with your products and services.

Report section 3: business generation

Revenue growth

This should show the revenue generated from customers who entered the prospecting funnel through marketing activity and were converted by sales. The report should present figures for the period since the last report, and highlight the trend over previous reporting periods. Ideally, it will split this into revenue from tracked direct-response campaign activity against brand response (originating from website leads and inbound calls).

Other growth metrics

To supplement the top-line revenue figures, include the number of customers acquired and the average order value. You may also want to breakdown the results into segments of strategic importance such as industry and regional growth.

Quality metrics‍

To demonstrate the quality of leads generated, measure the conversion rates from lead to sales qualification and customer. Again, present these for the reporting period as well as showing the trend over previous periods.

Performance metrics

This is where you demonstrate what the marketing spend on direct response/ABM marketing was for the period, and what was delivered in return. This should include:

–      Total spend on media, production, agency fees etc.

–      Return on advertising spend (ROAS), calculated by dividing the revenue generated by the total spend.

–      Return on investment (ROI). This is more difficult to calculate, as it shows the amount of potential PROFIT generated from the budget as opposed to the REVENUE generated in the ROAS calculation. You’ll need to work with your finance team to gain a picture of the average profit margin for each of your products and services, matching these against the records of what has been ordered in your CRM. If you’re purely a service business, the potential profit may not match the actual profit due to overruns.

Less clutter, more clarity

As previously mentioned, there is a wealth of data you could present to the board. Our purpose here has been to suggest the core metrics that will strategically demonstrate how effective your marketing activity is.

You may choose to add other information to provide further detail, but always remember that the key to effective reporting is clarity. Don’t overwhelm your executives with data. Stick to what matters to them and avoid the temptation to try and look clever by throwing everything but the kitchen sink at it.

Need guidance putting your report together or making sense of your data? We’re here to help. Get in touch with us at [email protected].

Data. We’re drowning in it. There are so many metrics to prove marketing’s effectiveness, and it’s tempting to throw all of them into a thick report to show the science behind what we do.

But if you want to move away from showing how successful you are at measuring to how effective you are at marketing, here’s a short guide to picking the right metrics for the right job and the right audience.

The first cut is easy – decide if the report is for the board or your marketing team. If it’s for the board, the report is strategic and will therefore have three areas of focus:

1.    The overall impact of marketing on the business

2.    How marketing has built the brand

3.    How marketing has generated business

These metrics are important for the marketing team too.

They form the benchmarks for how effective their activity is, periodically. But the marketing team will also generate more frequent tactical reports detailing the effectiveness of all the possible levers they can pull across the customer journey.

These can include reach, frequency, impressions, clicks, cost per click, downloads, opens, likes and shares. They’ll also include conversion rates for landing pages, websites and nurturing campaigns.These are the areas the team will seek to optimise day-to-day in order to impact the strategic KPIs. This level of detail isn’t relevant for the board.

In this article, we’re going to focus on the strategic report for the board, leaving the tactical stuff for another time.

Before we start, we assume that you have the necessary tracking in place to know the source of your prospects, with the ability to follow that tracking through to your CRM and measure what kind of customers they become.

If not, we have a future article planned to help you out, so stay tuned for that.

Once you’ve got your tracking in place, attributing customers to marketing is relatively simple to achieve for your direct response activity, but harder to quantify for brand building.

We’ll offer some simple solutions to this problem for you later on.

Report section 1: marketing’s business impact

Growth‍

For most B2B businesses who have long sales journeys, this will include booked revenue and pipeline value that is attributable to marketing within the period of the report. It will include revenue from new customers and existing customers where CRM activity has generated the business. It may also show growth in the number of customers and be broken down by segments of strategic focus such as industry and geography. To show growth trends you may choose to show figures for the current quarter as well as year-to-date and year-on-year data.

Profitability

This section of the report mirrors the revenue growth format, but shows the profit generated from the sales attributable to marketing. This is an important metric, showing the quality of customers vs. the volume shown in the revenue growth.

Average lifetime value

This requires a little more heavy lifting in your CRM data, but it’s worth it, as any increases in the rolling average will give a top-line view of how successful you are at generating repeat business.

Market share growth‍

This is relatively easy to calculate. First, find the annual spend in the category and location in which you operate – most sectors have analyst reports which will give you this figure. Then, express your annual revenue as a percentage of that number. If you’re midway down a crowded market, you might choose to show a share of market relative to your top ten competitors, taking the revenue figures from their annual reports.

Loyalty

Another easy metric to provide from your CRM is loyalty. First, select the customers who have bought something from you in the last 12 months (this time frame could be longer, depending on the length of your sales cycles).

These are active customers as opposed to dormant ones who may or may not be loyal to you.

From this pool you’ll select those who have been with you for over a year – any who have been with you for less time are considered new and won’t have a long enough trading history to demonstrate true loyalty.

From this pool you can show the average, longest and shortest length of relationship. Ideally, all three of these will increase year on year.

Report section 2: brand building

Let’s face it, unless you’re a major B2B corporation, most of us won’t have the budget to commission any form of brand research. There are, however, some simple and effective ways to measure your brand’s impact and growth which we’ll share here.

Awareness

One of the simplest ways to track growth in your brand awareness over time is to measure the direct traffic to your website. This figure shows the volume of visitors to your website who typed the address directly into their browser (if they did this, they were looking specifically for you and are therefore aware of your brand name).‍

To supplement this view, you could use GoogleAds’ Keyword Planner and GoogleTrends to measure the volume of searches for your brand name. This works if you have a distinctive brand name but would be less useful for generic brand names like Shell or Seat.

Finally, you could use social listening tools to track the volumes of brand mentions outside of @mentions and the official, owned channels.

Correlating these three measures against your brand building activity will provide a good picture of its effect on brand awareness.

BUT – and this is an important but – expectations around this data must be carefully managed through an understanding of the time scales involved in brand building.

If, say, you’ve launched a brand campaign across a number of channels, you will have planned for it to play out over at least five to six months. If the board is looking for results to show in the first few months, they’ll be disappointed, as any noticeable growth will only start to show towards the end of the five-to-six-month period. It’s important they understand that brand building is a long-term, consistent investment in growth, but over time there turns have a deeper, longer-lasting impact than the short-term direct response activity.

That’s it for the first part of this article. Next, we’ll dig deeper into further brand metrics and the essential strategic measures for your direct response and lead generation reports, so stay tuned.

If you need help with anything we’ve touched on in this article, why not reach out to us at [email protected]?

Google Data Studio is a brilliant tool that helps you visualise your data with customisable dashboards and reports. We first added to our repertoire of tools back in 2016 when Google introduced it as part of the Google Analytics 360 suite, and it’s been a firm favourite ever since.

It’s one of our most useful day-to-day tools, not only for supporting our own accounts management, but also for our client reporting. So without further ado, here’s 7 reasons why you should dive into Data Studio if you’re running paid media ads.

1. Custom visualisation

Spend a lot of time checking dull spreadsheets? It’s time for an upgrade! One of the key benefits of Data Studio is that it’s a highly visual analysis tool, enabling your data to easily be displayed via different charts, graphs, and tables at the click of a button.

For each element, you can choose which trends to highlight, how much information to include (e.g. ad image previews or just ad names) and which parts to make interactive in order to have the most visual impact.

Data Studio dashboards are fully customisable in every respect, meaning you can add company logos, colour schemes, and brand fonts to make your reporting a little more fun! If you’re a visual learner, the numbers are likely to make a lot more sense now too.

2. Combined data

Most of our ambitious advertisers run campaigns across many different platforms at any one time, with each one likely having its own associated budgets, benchmarks and targets.

Data Studio has an incredible 500+ (and counting!) data source connectors so it’s the perfect place for all of your data from different places to be easily combined. You can pull in your latest engagement results from Facebook and Instagram, your average Google Analytics goal completion rate, and your company forecast spreadsheet to analyse your top-level performance at a glance throughout the month, or simply display everything you’ve got running alongside each other. Whatever you want!

3. Calculated fields

Data Studio can be used for simple reporting tasks, but it also has powerful analysis capabilities. This is where calculated fields come in: you can manipulate the data to directly suit your needs.

Calculated fields can extend and transform your data by allowing you to apply calculations to create new metrics and dimensions. With calculated fields, you can answer questions that existing dimensions cannot answer. For example, whether you’re outpacing your monthly budget, or the average time on site for groups of custom geographic regions – super handy stuff.

4. Sharable and interactive

It’s highly likely you and your team members will have different requirements for your data. You may want to simply check on how much that new Pinterest campaign is spending this month to date, whereas your colleague may want an in-depth overview of performance over the last quarter compared to the previous year.

This is no problem at all. Data Studio is easily shareable via a URL that can be opened on any browser, operating system or device. Once email access has been granted, it can also be set up to allow different users to easily flick between the views and date ranges they need to see – either at the entire report level or individual graph/table/chart level.

5. No limitations

If attribution isn’t a consideration, Google Analytics dashboards can provide a useful starting point for data visualisation, but one of the key setbacks is that there are limits on the amount of widgets and properties you can use. So you can only have 12 graph/table/charts per dashboard and no more than 20 dashboards per property.

That may sound like a lot, but in practice this would be 2.5 each for your main source/medium paths, assuming you are only running on three advertising platforms; (all traffic), Google/organic, Bing/organic, direct/none, ‘email provider’/email, Google/cpc, Facebook/cpc, Bing/cpc.

Unlike Google Analytics, Google Data Studio has no limitations at all! So if you’ve got a lot of different data points that you need to keep track of, then Data Studio becomes your best bet.

6. Scheduled exports and embed features

If Data Studio seems like just one more thing you need to remember to check each day, week, or month, then scheduled exports might help reduce the load.

Data Studio can send a PDF report automatically on a regular basis via email, to up to 50 recipients, along with a customisable email message and link to the live dashboard. These dashboards can also handily be embedded into websites via iframe, as well as being fully integrated with work management platforms, such as Monday.com, to ensure your data is always close to hand when you need it.

7. And finally… it’s free!

Google Data Studio packs in a ton of useful functionality – especially for a free tool! So if you’re drowning in data and unable to see the wood for the trees, we’d highly recommend getting started with some dashboards today.

Need help getting set up on Data Studio? Contact us today and we can get your business running with reports and dashboards in no time.