Reporting and Analytics
Making the Most of Every Insight
As a data-driven organization, it’s essential to harness actionable insights to ask better questions and make more informed decisions as we evolve. It’s important to measure the success of our communications efforts.
To reveal new opportunities to improve communications, analytics will help determine content performance.
Despite its importance, an effort’s return on investment (ROI) isn’t always easy to determine. There’s not always a clear link between a communications push and the profit it generates.
Similarly, the process to win hearts and minds is often a long, winding road that isn’t as clear cut as a single transaction. Successful communications efforts are about more than money alone.
There’s also incredible value in simply engaging with our audience(s), whether to inform them about what we do or to simply share ideas that benefit their everyday lives.
What is the practice of analytics?
Simply put, analytics is a process of gathering and interpreting data to help inform more effective decisions.
Fueled by digital innovations like AI and advanced computing, analytics enables organizations to harness their unique data to find ways to work more efficiently, effectively and profitably.
Why does analytics matter?
If you can measure something, you can improve it. Analytics helps Bayer establish more effective and meaningful communications strategies to benefit our businesses, our partners and everyday consumers.
The greatest benefit is the ability to understand Bayer’s strengths and weaknesses.
Analytics enables us to measure which types of content generates more performance to our unique audience. This information then enables us to focus our efforts to what works well while gleaning new insights from content that underperforms.
Through analytics, Bayer is better able to harness the insights we need to continually—and perpetually—improve our communications plan. By constantly learning, we save time, stress and investment while creating better digital experiences for everyone.
Turning Data into Decisions
Data analytics encourages Bayer to examine and prioritize objectives for more strategic decision-making.
By understanding your goals early on, it’s easier to determine what kinds of data you’ll need to gather, as well as what key metrics or performance indicators (KPIs) will help you evaluate success.
It’s best to start with the basics. From your observations, what did well based on these metrics? What didn’t?
Once you’ve compiled your initial observations, it is sometimes necessary to revisit the data to explore how or why you got this result. This is your opportunity to learn what differentiates the top and bottom performers. From there, you can derive new insight into what worked.
This knowledge informs planning and decision-making moving forward. It can be as simple as doing more of what works well in lieu of what underperforms. These insights can be implemented granularly by making strategic adjustments to copy, imagery, post or media type, etc.
Through insights generated, this approach helps teams flourish by identifying new opportunities, leveraging emerging trends and optimizing their operations. Long term, this can accumulate into considerable returns to drive awareness and increase engagement.