What is marketing analytics? A simple guide

Marketing analytics is a way for marketers to pull back the curtain to see which of their efforts are bringing in more conversions, better loyalty, stronger awareness and more. This in turn boosts the ROI of marketing initiatives, and also benefits the consumer through more accurate ads.

Use this article as a resource to learn about marketing analytics, including what they are, why they’re important and how to best utilize them, so that you can be fully aware of what’s going on behind the scenes of your marketing efforts.

What is marketing analytics?

Marketing analytics is a data-driven focus that gives insight into the potential ROI of marketing campaigns. This includes things such as content, videos, social media initiatives and more. Marketing analytics is ultimately a way to effectively establish new ways to better marketing campaigns and find new creative strategies.

What marketing analytics can do for you

If you’re unsure why analytics are so important for marketers today, consider the way consumers interact with brands and the different content they consume. They are bombarded not only with advertisements, but also with choices.

Marketing analytics allow for more accurate advertisements, which in turn reduces consumer choice to fewer brands (the ones doing things right). The following are some important ways marketing analytics help teams out.

Boost reporting efficacy

Marketing teams aren’t always the most number-savvy, and this becomes a problem when they’re responsible for reporting on quantifiable goals. The standard approach is acceptable for the most part, delivering basic measurements like lead information, but this lacks a comprehensive knowledge of how marketing is influencing important metrics. Marketing analytics, then, should be built in a way that provides the right data to the people they’re reporting to. The key is to take these insights and use them to further progress, rather than just to deliver them and be done with them.

Create holistic data insight

All too often, data is a hassle and a time-consumer on a large scale for marketing teams trying to contain it for endless reporting.

The key is to connect data as a whole, which allows us to further understand this important research and information.

Clarify long term campaign success

Here’s where data can be tricky and underutilized. A lot of performance metrics fail to latch on to potential plans that positively affect outcomes. The problem most of the time is a lack of insight into numerous campaigns. The key with analytics is to look into how different projects are affecting sales throughout the customer journey, which helps us clarify long term campaign success.

Make customer journey transparent to marketers

Marketing analytics provide the closest thing to predicting the future as possible for marketers. This in turn allows teams to handle tasks throughout different customer journeys. Analytics allows revealing insight into where prospects are and when or if they’ll move from one stage to the next.

Optimizing your marketing analytics

Initial preparation

Instead of diving in head first, it’s best to get a general feel of the important things you’re planning on using marketing analytics for. The following are some things you’ll want to plan and account for beforehand:

• Evaluate current limitations

Consider the current state of your company. In what ways does it function at the present, and how will that change in the future? Determine if there are serious limitations at the current time. The more you’re able to hone in on these limitations, the better you’ll be able to maximize your efforts.

• Set goals

The reason we set goals is so that our data reporting has meaningful value and isn’t some nebulous outcome, running around like a chicken without its head.

Get a concrete set of goals down, including target ROI, so that you’ll build programs with measurable results.

• Determine a a data measurement focus

Remember that you’ll be able to gather insights by measuring a wide range of data from different marketing campaign sections. That’s why it’s important to focus on something specific, particularly something you’re trying to improve upon, such as conversions, leads, etc.

Recalibrate focus

It’s a lot easier to launch a successful business adaptation if everyone involved is on the same page. In order for this to happen, it’s important to spend some time on getting a few things into place:

• Martech that complements your analytics efforts
• Teams that are committed to analytics
• Strategies that coincide with analytics tasks

Once these are in focus, it will be a lot easier to bring relevant data into the right business areas so that everyone within the organization has a chance to take action on the results.

When implemented comprehensively, analytics allow marketers to make massive improvements to important projects and ultimately reach their goals. Finally, remember that because big data marketing is on the rise, it makes sense to commit to the power of analytics.