How Marketing Analytics Can Help Boost your Business Objectives
As COVID-19 continues to cause havoc in economies and societies, businesses have shifted their focus to save their businesses and the livelihoods they support. What were once considered “luxury” or nice-to-have tools are now becoming must-haves in a time where companies must manage the changing economic tides in the wake of community lockdowns, consumer fear, and ongoing uncertainty.
These uncertainties have been forcing businesses to maximize resources and cut costs. Unfortunately, for many businesses, marketing is often the first to take budget cuts as CEOs are reluctant to invest in marketing campaigns which may not meet their ROI goals.
As businesses continue to look for lifelines that could save them from being among the casualties of COVID-19, some of the best men and women in business are able to take their businesses from survival to thriving despite the pandemic. The secret of these CEOs and decision-makers is to invest in marketing—specifically in marketing analytics.
As MarTech Advisor defines it, Marketing analytics is the “practice of measuring and analyzing data and metrics to understand the impact of marketing activities, maximize ROI and identify the areas of improvement.” In a nutshell, it is a tool that brings data from different marketing channels and consolidates the information in an easy-to-read format.
The goal of marketing analytics is to help your business focus on these five important points that will help keep you competitive and continue making sales:
- Get a more detailed understanding of who your target audience is
- Benchmark your competitors’ efforts and tactics to yours
- Measure the performance of your current marketing campaigns
- Monitor current trends and predict future trends
- Use data to help top managers make strategic decisions and plans.
Marketing analytics is not to be confused with business analytics though some of their data and purposes may overlap. Business analytics focuses on optimizing business processes, using data as leverage to gain competitive advantage by implementing key business tasks.
While they may be different, marketing analytics actually has a two-pronged approach that also aids business analytics, which makes marketing analytics all the more valuable. Marketing analytics can be used to aid both marketing and the business as a whole by analyzing them in different perspectives, depending on the outcome that needs to be achieved:
| Marketing Outcomes | Business Outcomes |
| Uses marketing analytics to guide and improve the performance of marketing campaigns, investments and decisions | Uses business analytics to measure overall business value to prove the ROI of marketing and secure finding for key initiatives. |
It should also be noted that marketing research is only part and parcel of the process of marketing analytics. Marketing research is data compiled on the ground as first-hand evidence. Relative to analytics, which is a summary of data drawn from a number of sources, market research feeds information to analytics so they can give more information with regard to the bigger picture.
Marketing analytics gives companies insight into how current marketing efforts are doing and the untapped markets they could potentially reach. Moreover, it could support sales teams by giving them insight into potential revenue sources.
One company that has successfully used marketing analytics to boost sales and increase ROI on marketing investments is Spotify. The online music streaming giant has been using data analytics to uncover listener habits that helped gain them millions of loyal followers, even pulling them away from big companies like iTunes. Their “Wrapped” campaign has been so successful that it has become a yearly campaign since 2016, publishing unusual content for the general audience to see.
Under Armour is another company that has used marketing analytics to create new products that will appear to consumers and increase sales. They source their data from the “Connected Fitness Community”, which has over 200 million consumers. some of whom also purchased health-tracking wearable devices and used the MyFitnessPal app, which gives them additional information. The data from all these sources helps the company craft a message, determine when and how often to message the consumer, and which products to highlight in their message. These personalized messages help Under Armour create engagement within the community and driving action.
The worth of marketing analytics is growing exponentially as other companies realize the secret of successful businesses. Even before the pandemic, Mordor Intelligence valued the market at US$2.13 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow to US$6.92 billion by 2025. These numbers are bolstered by the increasing need to gain ROI from marketing budgets as well as the growing popularity and usage of cloud technology and big data.
Investment in marketing analytics is seen in companies of all sizes to take their marketing capabilities to even higher levels. Google, Adobe, Salesforce, and Oracle are some of the tech giants who are working to lessen the complexity of data collection, cleansing, and usage across their organizations. And if marketing analytics works for them, imagine the wonders that it will do for other companies.
