CuriousOwl

Marketing in today’s world is one of the most indispensable tools for running a business – combine it with data, and you have yourself a gold mine ready to be excavated, where the treasure is the growth of your business. To market your product or service and use data to understand your customers, it is essential to know the role of data analytics in marketing.

In simple words, marketing data analytics uses patterns and findings in the collections and computed data to optimize and structure future campaigns based on what was successful in the past.

Marketing analytics is the study of data gathered through old or existing marketing campaigns run by companies. It involves studying patterns like how a campaign has or had contributed to the customer and lead conversions, consumer behavior, regional, demographic, and creative preferences, etc.

Optimum understanding of marketing and data analytics allows brands and companies to achieve a higher return on marketing investments or ad spend by understanding what factor is successful in increasing growth and conversions. Applying data analytics in marketing also helps marketers understand consumer psychology and elements that help raise brand awareness.

Creating ads is a difficult task – writing precise copy, using creative, catchy artwork, etc. However, even more of a job is ensuring that the ads you’ve created reach the correct target audience. Analytics also ensures that customers see targeted, personalized ads that are relatable to them and meet their interests, rather than mass broadcast ads that annoy them and create a psychological barrier against the brand. 

The Importance of Marketing Analytics

In the modern marketing world, accurate marketing analytics is one of the most critical cogs in the business machine. Customers and consumers have become choosy in selecting the brand media they engage and associate with and the media they ignore. The marketer has a concise window to catch the consumer’s attention, especially online, because of the sea of ads airing. 

Suppose brands want to catch the ideal buyer’s attention. In that case, they must rely on marketing analytics to create targeted personal ads based on individual interests and not run behind reaching the larger demographic masses. It will allow marketing teams to create and air the right ad, at the right time, on the right channel and will enable them to move consumers down the sales funnel.

Over the years, as businesses expanded into new product categories and marketing groups and methods, new technologies were adopted to support them.

Consequently, marketers often started making decisions based on individual channels such as digital marketing, website views, metrics, etc. Sometimes they only focused on social media and analyzed simple web analytics. In simple words, using individual tools isn’t adequate. Marketers fail to grow a business properly without considering the entire marketing picture.

Digital marketing analytics considers every marketing effort across all channels over time, essential for sound decision-making and effective, efficient program execution. Think of it this way: if something costs more than it returns, it’s not a good long-term business strategy.  

We live in an age and time when data is easily accessible and available – you can use your phone and smart devices to access data about your exercise habits, your phone usage patterns, medical records, and whatnot. Cookies collected from websites help gather information about your customers and website viewers at work. Every electronic device one uses has mines of data.

However, only having data is of no use. It is what you do with it and how you use it that can turn the course of a business and catapult it towards growth. The power lies in data aggregation and its interpretation. A combination of this and the proper marketing knowledge create the foundation and framework of a beautiful process known as marketing analytics.

Marketing analytics help you in the following ways:

1. Numbers are more persuasive

Numbers tell a better story than just claims. For example, you could tell your senior that you believe good content brings in customers, or you could quantify your claim and tell them that 72% of marketers think that content increases customer engagement. 

Data analytics can help you understand your customers, audience, and growth better, and in return, help you explain it better to the people on top.

2. Convert data into leads and information

Today, most businesses have access to millions of gigabytes of customer data and web tools. The difference is in whether and how your company uses that data. For example, data may be lying around in your servers and computer, not being used at all. However, once you subject the data to proper and relevant analysis, you can find helpful information to help you grow your business.

3. Analytics can facilitate comparison

Knowing how your previous campaign performed and using that information to cover the loopholes and make a better-performing campaign is what marketing analytics can do. 

The quantified data can help you ascertain where you spent, what you spent on, and its result. In addition, proper marketing analytics can help you discover new key performance indicators and work on them.

4. Give insights

Marketing analytics helps businesses develop and study various insights into consumer behavior, helping them tailor their marketing initiatives. This enables them to meet the needs of individuals and customers, thereby allowing better and optimized advertising. 

Challenges of Marketing Analytics

1. Data Quantity: Marketing teams can record data through every consumer click and view in this digital age. However, this quantity of data is irrelevant and burdensome if it cannot be appropriately structured. Such vast amounts of data are like storing grains in silos. It can only be used correctly if analyzed for insights that allow for in-campaign optimizations.

2. Data Quality: There are problems in terms of the vast amount of information and data organizations must sift through. There are also cases where this data is often viewed as unreliable. There are instances where the data gathered is of poor quality, and hence of no use for the marketers and a massive waste of money.

3. Restricted Data Set: Data analysts may find that the results aren’t entirely ‘data-driven’ and lack the broad range of data required to analyze the customer’s behavior successfully. It can limit the resultant marketing campaign’s effectiveness and lead to loss of money due to sub-par optimization. 

Uses of Marketing Analytics

1. Measuring customer acquisition cost (CAC) 

Marketing analytics can help determine the average cost of acquiring new customers and ensure it is low enough to keep an existing customer.

2. Return on Marketing Investment (ROI)

Marketing analytics is necessary to ensure that the marketing measures you are taking are bringing in more money than its costing.

3. Resource allocation and prioritization

Marketing analytics is essential to decide and allocate resources, especially if you intend to start a new project. It also allows you to prioritize these resources as per need. It helps you compare alternative marketing tactics when you have limited resources, helping the company save money and grow.

How do Organizations use Marketing Analytics: Tools and Platforms

Three platforms help in marketing analytics by combining and sorting the gathered data to analyze the market and boost growth. One of the main platforms is CDP, which stands for Customer Data Platform. Other software includes DMP – Data Management Platform and CRM – Customer Relationship Manager.

1. Customer Data Platform: A CDP is software that collects and combines data from multiple tools and sources to create a centralized customer and audience database. This will contain data on various key points and interactions with the product or service that a company offers. Such a database can then be segmented in numerous ways using unique technologies, resulting in better, personalized, and more targeted campaigns.

As a result, it helps them better understand their audience and customers, eventually helping them create highly profitable, niche-based, and targeted ads. For example, the company could easily create ads based on everyone who has visited a specific page on their website and individualize it.

2. Data management platforms: A data management platform, or DMP, is a platform that accumulates and manages large data sets of customers and website visitors. DMPs get their data by either purchasing it from data sellers or by simply having many users on their network or website through which they can aggregate and anonymize the collected data. That is essentially how Facebook works. Facebook has billions of users whom they collect data from to sell to advertisers.

3. Customer Relationship Manager: When it comes to CDP vs. CRM, CDPs collect data on customer behavior with your product or service. On the other hand, CRMs organize and manage customer-facing interactions with your team. CRM manages a company’s relationships and interactions with existing and potential customers. Using various AI strategies and tools improves business relationships and helps stay connected. It retains old customers and attains new customers.

CDPs, CRMs, and DMPs are all examples of essential marketing analytics tools. 

By analyzing marketing data and using CDP marketing as a tool, the analyst can detect what was working in the past, what’s functioning now and helping their campaign, what hasn’t been successful, and how the customers or audience feel about their experiences with the product, service, and website. As a result, a business can get a proper idea of the effect that their marketing efforts are having on the company and their sales through the tools of data and marketing analytics in both B2B and B2C fields.

Using the power of data and combining it with acute analytics can enable a marketer to make critical strategic decisions and develop advertising and marketing campaigns that can successfully mark their target audience and make the best out of their marketing efforts. Additionally, it can catapult the business towards a growth path – both financially and in terms of increasing customer bases.

Difference between Marketing Analytics and Business Analytics

Marketing analytics primarily relies on how the market responds to campaigns, i.e., the feedback marketers receive. It keeps track of customers’ activities with your product or website and monitors their interests and browsing behavior. Analyzing the performance of the running or previous campaigns helps marketers rework, edit, and optimize the existing and upcoming campaigns.

Through data integrating and segregating platforms, proper marketing analytics can empower marketers and data analysts to make decisions backed by statistical proof and data. This reduces the future scope of error and allows the marketer to choose the future course of action for improving business growth.

Marketing analytics, additionally, analyzes and monitors online performance. It also handles offline marketing efforts. It combines all marketing areas, both online and offline, including lead generation – and uses them to structure and study their impact on revenue growth.

On the other hand, business analytics is focused more on the larger picture. It provides insights and observations that allow the management to make informed business decisions. Business analytics further optimizes the business processes through the collected data and thereby plays a significant role in the company’s decision-making process.

Business analytics prepares the whole, whereas marketing analytics is a part of the whole. Business analytics involves dealing with real and eminent business problems that frequently arise in the business scenario. It usually involves using advanced methods such as statistical research, optimization, scenario simulation, and forecasting. In simple words, while marketing analytics focuses on marketing issues, business analytics focuses on the most significant problems and helps in the management’s decision-making processes.

World-renowned big data marketing and business analytics companies

• SAP

Founded in 1972 by former IBM employees, SAP offers analytical services aimed at marketing, human resources, finance, and operations. It is one of the biggest analytics companies in the world.

• Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the biggest marketing analytics companies and a marquee CRM platform provider. They use advanced AI to analyze the market and incorporate a vast gamut of data, making it a popular business analytics choice.

• Fractal Analytics

Fractal Analytics has offices spread throughout the globe in all major metropolitan cities worldwide. They provide AI-based business analysis and have notable subsidiaries to focus on marketing analytics. 

Oracle, Manthan, Qlik, and Tableau are a few more renowned marketing and business analytics providers.

Becoming a Marketing Analyst: Skills Required

Marketing analysts study the market of industries and use their skills to help companies improve their marketing campaigns and strengthen their positions in such markets. Their primary role is to research, integrate, study, observe, and analyze various data and market factors to help companies create, optimize, and improve their products or services.

A marketing analyst usually has a degree in either statistics, math, or computer science and must have specific job-required skills such as :

• Knowledge of statistical analysis software (e.g., SAS, SPSS)
•  Database query languages like SQL
• Understanding of business intelligence and reporting software (e.g., Segment, Tableau)
• Knowledge of data mining, integration, and visualization

Their main roles involve:

• Gathering data from various primary and secondary sources.
• Analyzing the collected data and converting it into easily understandable reports.
• Presenting the finding to stakeholders to use such information to grow their businesses.

To Conclude…

In essence, digital marketing is the wave of the future, and combining it with data and marketing analytics can propel a business to new heights. With the turn of the new year, businesses need to integrate platforms, such as CDPs, DMPs, and CRMs, to create an all-around system for proper marketing. It is important to understand the role numbers and data play in analytics – not only can it streamline your efforts and help you create better-targeted campaigns, but also allow you to focus on past shortcomings and grow your business.