Whether you’re creating marketing reports or merely analyzing your business and how you use and spend on online strategies, the chances are you’ve come across the need to blend your data, i.e., mix up specific metrics to give you a core idea of what’s actually going on.
For example, all your followers across all the social media platforms you use.
To achieve this, a process known as ‘data blending’ is required, but what is it, and how does it work? Well, that’s precisely what I’m here to talk to you about today.
What Do We Mean By ‘Data Blending’?
In short, data blending in the process in which you take a ton of data from different sources and combine it into one statistic or figure.
Imagine having to create visuals for all metrics from different platforms. That would just be a waste of time and resources, yet so many businesses still do it!
Crazy, right?
While a simple explanation, this blending process is easier said than done. The metrics blended need to be the same metrics across the board and represent the same thing. This is easy with metrics like follower counts, but not so easy with stats like engagement ratings.
In business, it’s so easy to get tunnel vision. You may be looking at your Facebook Ads campaign and thinking it’s a disaster. All your money has been wasted, and you’re not getting a return like you think you would. Everything’s going down the pan.
However, when you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, you may notice you’re getting a massive return through Instagram, and while Facebook Ads may not be working for you, things aren’t as bad as they seem, and everything is going to be okay.
At least, this is what you can tell your shareholders. This is why it’s important to use data blending to gauge the overall health of your marketing efforts and get an idea of what the bigger picture of your business looks like.
Combined Campaign Performance
If you’re running a marketing campaign across multiple social networks, it can be very handy to combine your data figures so you can easily track your performance and how well everything is going, especially for someone like a PPC manager. Here are some ways you can do it.
1. How Many Ads Shown Across All Channels?
Take a look at your ad metrics, precisely how many impressions your ads received, and the total reach your ads had across the different platforms. This is a super easy metric to build with a data management tool such as ClicData.
2. How Much Budget Spent Across All Channels?
“Another really handy metric to track is seeing how much money you spent on each platform. Of course, you may have set a budget, but it’s important to note that some platforms do it differently. Just because you set a $2,000 budget on Instagram, that doesn’t mean that’s how much has been spent,” shares Lisa Marie, a tech writer at State Of Writing and Boom Essays.
By adding together your figures from various platforms and putting them into a visual chart over time, you’ll be able to see what your total expenditure was, and how you can adjust your spending to be better on your next campaign.
3. How Many Campaign Clicks Across All Channels?
How many clicks have you generated on Instagram, Facebook, and Google, among other social networks? Whether you’re using Google Ads or Facebook Ads, data blending allows you to see your combined performance ratings across your campaign.
4. Showcase Your Combined Funnel
Of course, there’s no point in running ads if you’re unable to make conversions and ultimately make money. Being able to combine the statistics of all your sales funnels is an incredibly helpful process to go through.
You can combine all metrics, including the number of impressions, down to clicks, and finally down to conversions. This allows you to gauge all your statistics across the board to accurately judge the success rates of your campaign, allowing you to see what you can improve on and what you can do better next time.
Combined Social Media Performance
While there are a ton of benefits that data blending can bring into your campaign and advertising strategies, that’s not the only way you need to apply data blending techniques. You can also data blend on social media, allowing you to see where you’re at, what you can do better, and plan where you’re going.
5. Your Total Follower Counts
“Of course, the easiest figure to data blend would be adding up your follower counts on all platforms. While this is somewhat of a vanity figure to many marketers, it can give you a rough idea on the health of your page, and whether you’re growing or declining,” explains Paul Turner, a data expert at Assignment Writer and Paper Fellows.
6. Individual Post Creation Rates and Performance Metrics
A more significant figure, on the other hand, would be to add up how many posts you’re creating per platform, and then checking what kind of return on investment you’re getting back on this number of posts.
For example, if you created 15 posts one month and 30 posts the next, but you had more engagement on the 15 post’s month, this would indicate not only that your consistency of posting needs to change, but also that the quality of your posts may be differing dramatically.
7. Creating Engagement Funnels Across Multiple Social Platforms
Not only do you want to see your overall performance on a per post basis, but you’ll also want to think about how your social media posts are leading people into your sales funnels. Think about the impressions you have compared to your reach across all platforms.
What kind of figures are you working with, and how is this converting into sales or actions?
You can also break these figures down to see which social media platform is the most effective for you in a clean and easy way.
Executive summary
As we said above, data blending isn’t hard work, and it’s a great way to see the overall health and effectiveness of your marketing and content creation efforts on social media and in multiple places throughout your business.
Being able to gauge the overall health of your campaigns without printing off a ton of graphics and visuals for each platform can save you a ton of time, energy, headaches, and can open the door for a much better understanding of your business.
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About the author
Beatrix Potter is a writer at Essay Writing Services and Academized. She writes about data blending. She also is a manager at Custom Essay service.
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