In today’s competitive business environment, most advertising agencies are using data analytics to hone their clients’ campaign strategies and to improve their job of targeting, tracking, and engaging customers.

With mobile commerce growing at an annual rate of 42 percent, and with one-third of online shoppers making at least one purchase via smartphone over the last 12 months (and 20 percent via tablet), marketers that ignore mobile analytics are doing themselves a major disservice. The same goes for social, where tracking, measuring, and engaging consumers via sites like Facebook and Twitter is absolutely crucial.

As an agency that was in on the ground floor of both the mobile and social advertising movements, and that has been employing analytics to create accountable advertising for decades, we can clearly see that everything digital is moving in a mobile direction. In fact, with some campaigns, we’re seeing as much as 70 percent of orders coming through digital platforms – and the majority of those are being made via mobile devices, even for large, international brands.

To get a better idea of how mobile and social campaigns are performing, consider using one or all three of these ways to leverage analytics:

1) To track consumer activity via their mobile devices. While mobile devices may appear to be “untethered” and therefore more difficult to track and measure, the reality is that it’s quite easy to get a grasp on “m-commerce” activity. Not only can you track the direct sales that are coming in – and what devices are being used (phones, tablets, etc.) – but you can also tie that information back to specific consumers.

This will help you create more accountable and profitable advertising in the future, and it will allow you to harness those 70+ percent of orders that will soon be coming in via mobile devices (if they aren’t already). One of the simplest tools available to you is Google Mobile App Analytics, which allows you to track and measure activity taking place on your app, establish and measure goals, determine conversion rates, keep track of campaign consistency, and apply the resultant data for actionable insights.

Having this information in hand, and then analyzing it for key points and patterns, will help you develop even more effective mobile campaigns in the future.

2) To parlay social activity into key campaign goals. What started out as a fun way for friends to keep in touch and share photos with one another has transformed into a powerful advertising and sales tools for organizations of all sizes.

Today, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are being folded into the campaigns of even the largest, most well known brands. And while tracking the performance of such efforts was elusive until recently, today’s companies are keeping closer tabs on their social activity and using the information garnered to hone their campaigns.

“In 2015, there are now companies whose sole job is to sift through social data and find emerging clues and patterns. Facebook has a billion users, Twitter has hundreds of millions, and LinkedIn is the de facto professional networking site,” writes Jonathan Hassell in CIO.

Remember that social allows you to track more than just “who is Tweeting about you” or “who is posting information about your firm on Facebook.” It also helps you measure brand awareness, hone campaign goals, and determine the best possible approach for a specific marketer (brand awareness vs. direct sales vs. consumer engagement, and so forth).

3) To “listen” to your customers in new and innovative ways. There was a time when companies had to rely on “live” focus groups, written surveys, and customer feedback forms to find out exactly what their target customer groups were thinking. Today, most of that information is available online and a lot of it is at the marketer’s fingertips (as in, the company doesn’t have to ask for it).

“If your customers are talking about you, you want to hear what they’re saying. If you’re spending good money to talk at them, why not devote some percentage to listening to what they have to say?” writes Mikal E. Belicove in Entrepreneur. “Research shows that the conversations your customers have among themselves drive about 13 percent of business decisions and can amplify your advertising by 15 percent.”

Becoming that “fly on the wall” is fairly simple. If you’re running an engagement campaign, for example, look at whether customers are tweeting and/or re-tweeting information about their experiences with the product. If it’s a direct sales campaign, then pay close attention to how those social interactions parlay into mobile and/or online sales.

In the end, the only way to determine the effectiveness of a campaign’s mobile or social efforts is by taking a hard look at the data and then using that information to take action. While this step was easy to ignore just 5-10 years ago, agencies that don’t take the time to effectively measure their mobile and social efforts are doing their clients a disservice and overlooking a large chunk of potential business.

This guest article was written by Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, CEO of Hawthorne Direct.

OK so the entire world of marketing has been wetting its pants over social media and content marketing the last few years but what about that old fashion – yet, incredibly important — thing called a website? Have you dusted it for cobwebs lately?

And after all that time and money you spend on social media and content marketing, it’s still the website — or the most part — where all the action you care about — sign ups, sales, etc. — occurs. So if your website is still a piece of annoying Flashturbation or, worse, not supporting your omnichannel efforts, you might as well go unearth that Geocities version of your website from back in the day.

Here’s a few tenets of a well oiled website. Maybe you know all this stuff. Maybe you’ve forgotten. And, hey, we all get busy and can use a good, swift reminder from time to time.

Content Refresh

If you have people who return to your website more than once and they notice nothing has changed – in what feels like a decade (or, let’s be honest, even a week), then you are going to lose them very quickly. Whether you like it or not, refreshing content with new and interesting ideas creates a reason for customers to come back to the site.

Maybe you have been too busy to update but potential customers don’t see it that way. Instead, they may begin to think your business is on its way out. However, if they see new content, then they tend to equate the frequent blogs posts, articles, and pages to a vibrant and successful business.

The best way to continually update content is to have a blog as part of your website, but you can also add an articles library and, as you grow, add new pages about your expanding product line or service portfolio. If you are too busy to do the content yourself, consider using a freelance content writer from ELance, iFreelancer or Guru.

Multiple Points of Entry

Having relevant content that’s of interest to various segments of your audience is, of course, very important. But you also need appropriately segmented places for them to visit within your site.

Multiple points of enrtry — ie. landing pages — provide a way for you to provide segment-specific information about a new product or service. Oh and you can more easliy track metrics related to each marketing campaign that you may run to understand whether or not certain audience segments are actually visiting these pages and how they are responding to your content and offers. In addition, landing pages keep a website from becoming cluttered.

Design Makeover

Like your content, the actual design of your website can become dated. You don’t want your audience to be able to carbon date the look of your page to the 2000s or the aforementioned Geocities era. Instead, as your brand evolves or, as you change your overall corporate identity, make sure your website design reflects that the shifting style and positioning of the brand.

If you don’t have the budget to hire a designer or ad agency, you can head over to places likeWix where you can find hundredsof website design templates that will give you a starting point. Good ‘ol WordPress also has a lot of templates to completely change the look and functionality of your website allowing you to easily add new pages or enhance its user-friendliness.

When your customers and potential customers experience a design makeover, they are more likely to envision you as a company that’s moving forward rather than getting tired and falling asleep.

Higher Reliability and Speed

People, it’s 2015! We have big pipes! There’s no excuse for your slow ass site that takes fully 30 seconds for a page to load. Design can greatly affect page load times but so can hosting. And, seriously, when was the last time you actually spent a minute or two checking into you web host’s tech specs? Yea, that shit is boring but it’s the back bone of your website and that boring shit matters.

So yes, it could be the hosting company that is slowing you down, so you might want to consider researching what web hosting companies which can offer faster connections and less downtime. For example, Pair.com is one. Another isHostwinds. They offer numerous hosting plans that scale up as you grow your business so you don’t have to worry about outgrowing them.

Responsiveness

While more people are starting their searches from their smartphones and tablets, not as many companies are adding responsive website design to sense when a visitor is using something other than their laptop or desktop. Not employing technology that senses your new mobile customers can lead to a disastrous experience that accomplishes nothing except for losing a potential customer.

Insuring your site employs responsive design means your website will fit the screen on which it’s being viewed. It can also mean that you offer a choice between a mobile website version and a regular one so the user can select their preference.

Coding Compliance

While this is on the technical side of things, coding compliance is pretty important. Since the standards regularly change, you’ll need to make sure your technical talent is aware of what’s required. Not only will this help your website achieve higher rankings to turn that digital sales funnel toward your business, but it will also keep you in the good graces of those that track website compliance.

Graphics Optimization

Search engine optimization goes beyond just selecting the right keywords and phrases that get the attention of search engines everywhere. You also need to optimize graphics – including photos and videos on your website. Use relevant and descriptive words in the title tag and alt gag in your image code as an additional way to throw that net out wider over the Internet and draw more of your target audience to your website. Since you will be regularly updating your website’s content, don’t forget to optimize every new graphic you add.

And so there it is. Maybe you’re on top of all of this. Maybe you’re not. Maybe you have a boss who thinks Flash is still all that. Hopefully, this information will help you better manage your website and, ideally, build more business.