If you’re running marketing campaigns and flying blind, you’re wasting money—probably a lot of it. This guide is for people who want real answers from their data, not just pretty charts or vague “insights.” Whether you’re in charge of a whole team or wrangling campaigns solo, I’ll walk you through how to actually use Kuration analytics to track what matters, spot what’s working, and fix what isn’t.
Let’s get you out of spreadsheet hell and into a workflow where your data actually helps you make decisions.
1. Get Your Data Ducks in a Row
Before you obsess over dashboards, make sure you’re tracking the right stuff. Garbage in, garbage out—no analytics tool can fix that.
What you should track (and what’s just noise):
- Core metrics: Impressions, clicks, conversions, cost, and revenue. These are non-negotiable.
- Contextual metrics: CTR (click-through rate), CPC (cost per click), CPA (cost per acquisition), ROAS (return on ad spend).
- Ignore the fluff: “Engagement rate” and “reach” sound fancy, but if they don’t tie back to your goals, skip them.
Pro tip: Decide upfront what counts as a “conversion.” Is it a sale, a signup, a download? Make it crystal clear, or your reporting will be a mess.
How Kuration helps: Kuration lets you define your own conversion events and custom metrics, so you’re not stuck with someone else’s idea of success.
2. Connect Your Campaign Sources to Kuration
You can’t optimize what you can’t see. Getting all your ad platforms, email tools, and web analytics into one place is step one.
How to bring your data together:
- Connect your ad accounts: Kuration connects to the usual suspects—Google Ads, Facebook/Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc. Use the built-in connectors; OAuth works, but double-check permissions if you’re in a big org.
- Add other sources: Email (like MailChimp or HubSpot), web analytics (Google Analytics, Mixpanel), and even CSVs if you’ve got offline data.
- Map your campaigns: Group campaigns across platforms by name or objective. This is tedious but pays off—otherwise you’ll be comparing apples to oranges.
Don’t skip: Audit your connections every month or so. APIs break, tokens expire, and sometimes campaigns get renamed. If something looks weird, trust your gut and investigate.
3. Build Dashboards That Don’t Suck
The default dashboards in any analytics tool are a starting point, not an end. If you’re staring at 30 widgets and still can’t answer “What’s working?” you need to simplify.
What a useful dashboard actually looks like:
- Single source of truth: One view for all spend, conversions, and ROI.
- Filter by channel, campaign, or date range: You want to slice the data, not drown in it.
- Custom metrics: If you care about trial signups, don’t settle for “leads.” Build a widget that tracks exactly that.
- Alerts: Set up automated alerts for when spend spikes or conversion rates nosedive. Saves you from nasty surprises.
Ignore: Vanity metrics like “shares” or “followers gained” unless your business truly lives and dies by them.
With Kuration: Drag-and-drop dashboard building is easy, but don’t get lost making it pretty. Focus on what you’ll actually check every week.
4. Spot What’s Working (and What Isn’t)
Now you’ve got the data, but what’s it actually telling you? Time to dig in.
A simple process to find winners and losers:
- Compare campaigns: Look at cost vs. conversions. High spend, low conversions? Obvious loser. Low spend, high conversions? Obvious winner.
- Check by channel: Sometimes Facebook works for one product, Google for another. Trust the numbers, not your hunch.
- Look at trends, not just snapshots: Did performance dip after you paused a creative? Did a new headline spike conversions?
- Drill down: If something looks off, dig into the ad level. Sometimes one ad drags down a whole campaign.
Pro tip: Set a baseline. If your average CPA is $50, anything above $60 needs fixing, anything below $40 deserves more budget.
With Kuration: The platform’s comparative views make this easy—side-by-side charts, filters, and breakdowns by ad, audience, or creative.
5. Actually Optimize (Don’t Just Admire the Data)
Analytics is useless if you don’t take action. Here’s how to actually improve your results.
Real-world optimization steps:
- Pause the losers: If a campaign or ad is burning money, pause it. Don’t wait for “more data” if it’s clearly underperforming.
- Double down on winners: Shift more budget to what’s working. Simple, but most people hesitate.
- Test one thing at a time: Change a headline, landing page, or call-to-action—then measure. Don’t change five things at once or you’ll never know what worked.
- Set up experiments: Kuration has basic A/B testing features. Use them for landing pages or email sequences.
- Watch for false positives: Sometimes an ad looks like a winner because of a fluke (holiday, news cycle, etc). Check if the results hold up over several weeks.
Ignore: The urge to over-optimize tiny stuff (like obsessing over a 0.2% CTR difference). Focus on the changes that actually move the needle.
6. Automate Reporting, but Don’t Go on Autopilot
Nobody wants to spend Friday afternoons wrangling numbers into PowerPoint. Kuration’s automated reporting can save you hours, but you still need to sanity-check the results.
Reporting that saves your sanity:
- Schedule weekly or monthly reports: Go for just enough detail—executive summaries for the boss, deeper dives for your team.
- Custom exports: If someone wants data in a weird format, Kuration lets you export CSVs or PDFs.
- Annotations: Add notes to spikes or drops so you remember what caused them six months from now.
Warning: Automation is great until it’s not. If a report comes through with zeros, don’t assume everything’s fine. Always look at the raw numbers now and then.
7. Common Pitfalls (And How to Dodge Them)
Even with a good tool, it’s easy to fall into some classic traps. Here’s what to watch out for:
- Chasing too many KPIs: Focus on a handful that matter most. More metrics = more confusion.
- Ignoring context: Seasonality, promotions, and outside events can mess with your data. Annotate big changes.
- Forgetting to act: If you’re not making changes, you’re just admiring your data. Set a recurring time to review and adjust.
- Assuming attribution is perfect: Multi-touch attribution is complicated and often fuzzy. Get as close as you can, but don’t trust the numbers more than your common sense.
Keep It Simple and Keep Moving
Don’t let analytics become a procrastination tool. Start with the basics: track the right stuff, look for clear trends, and act fast on what you learn. If you’re using Kuration, you’ve got a tool that can show you what’s working—but it’s up to you to actually hit the buttons and make changes.
Iterate, don’t overthink. Review your data regularly, tweak what’s not working, and stay focused on the metrics that actually impact your bottom line. The rest is just noise.
Go make your next campaign better—one real improvement at a time.