Why You Should Use an Ecommerce Marketing Agency That Makes Data Driven Decisions

When looking for an eCommerce marketing agency to help you push your products out into the world and reel in some orders there are many things you should do to shortlist, qualify and ultimately choose the best digital marketing agency or eCommerce specialist for the job.

Obviously you need to check out their track record by seeking out and verifying testimonials, reviews and references for them. Understanding their systems and processes is also very important. Get an idea of what it is they will do for you, how they will do it and how communications and reporting will be handled.

Here’s a very important question to ask them also…

How does your eCommerce marketing agency make data driven decisions?

You see, a lot of marketers love to think they know what works best. They have experience doing things how they have done them and trust their own instincts. Avoid any digital marketing agency or freelancer who works with this philosophy.

What you think will work, what they think will work and what your friends and family think will work is irrelevant. Opinions do not matter, only data matters.

Some more important points about picking and using an eCommerce Marketing Agency !

How should an eCommerce marketing agency use data then?

Test, test and test.

Whatever you do, don’t get married to an idea or concept.

For example, you may have some ad copy or an image that you absolutely love and insist on being used in all the ads - don’t do that.

Don’t get me wrong, you can use it, but it is essential that you test it against at least one other image. I couldn’t count the number of times I have split tested ads with absolute confidence that one of the images will wipe the floor with the others, only to be humbled upon seeing the results of the test.

You see, no matter what you think or what your digital marketing agency thinks, it is ultimately up to your target audience what works and what doesn’t. And the only way to find out from them is to secretly ask them and have them unknowingly answer you. And the only way you can do this is to split test different copy or images on them.

Questions to before hiring any marketing company - bigcommerce.co.uk

What does it mean when an eCommerce marketing agency does split testing?

When it comes to creative, split testing is basically creating different versions of ads by changing images, headings, descriptions etc and showing them all randomly to the same audience.

After each ad has been shown to enough people, you can use some super complex mathematics (or a super easy to use tool!) to establish which version of the ad is the most effective by comparing how many times the ad was seen (impressions) or how many people saw it (reach) to how it affects your KPI (key performance indicator).

Your KPI would ideally be something like sales, though you may have to use a metric from further up your funnel like add to cart, checkout visits or even clicks to have enough data to achieve statistical significance without blowing your budget or hitting ad fatigue first by showing the same ads to the same people too many times.

Statistical significance of the results is an essential consideration and will be offered up as a percentage by split testing calculators. This is simply the level of confidence you can have that the ad with the highest conversion/click rate is the better ad. It is impossible to ever reach 100% confidence but the industry standard is to finalize a test once you see at least 95% confidence in a winner.

Conclusion

These are conversations you need to have with any eCommerce marketing agency or freelancer you are considering to provide you with internet marketing services. And it doesn’t end at copy, they should be split testing audiences, bidding methods and strategies too if you really want to make sure your ads are getting the best ROI possible and bringing in the big bucks.

And remember, testing never ends. Once one test finishes, another begins. This means they will always be working towards perfection and keeping your ads fresh, avoiding ad fatigue.

This is a critical conversation you need to have with them. If they want to just throw up one ad and call it a today then check out another eCommerce marketing agency that does make data driven decisions and go with them instead.

You can start by checking out our listings page of verified decent digital marketing services.