Monitoring websites to track the success of a business is a culture and has since become a practice. It is usually interpreted that if the graph is good, the business is on the road to success and this somehow leads to significant aspects being neglected. Now, you must be wondering why so? This is a fact though, that simply by analyzing your website, you might just never be able to reach potential leads or evaluate the conversion rate of your potential customers or maybe even understand what is actually desired of your product to fulfill the demands of the market. Marketing analytics fills in the blank here and is the answer to all the forecasting you have been doing to date based on the evidence only. Implementing marketing analytics is what is to be learned now.
When it comes to analytics there are people who will behave as if it doesn’t matter. But it sure does. Smart people across the globe are investing in this science so as to improve campaigns and gain insights. Data from HBR (2015) shows various ways in which marketing analytics is being used by different companies.
Given the importance of marketing analytics for business growth, let me take you through it so we can see if it actually does matter to make it a part of your everyday business operations.
Prediction of customer behavior has been a significant part of major e-commerce firms like e-bay and Amazon. It gives them an edge over other businesses and allows them to predict the demands and needs that may arise in the future. According to a Silicon Valley-based predictive marketing company, AgilOne, these three principal classes of predictive models are recognized:
Algorithms for grouping customers on basis of factors like the type of products they buy or the amount of money they spend etc.
Insights like customer conversion ratio (the number of people who visited the website to the ones who got influenced by the marketing campaign and bought products from the company), the likelihood of engagement, propensity to churn, the probability to buy etc. are derived from these models. Prediction models built on customer analytics can make a significant impact on any business.
Offering recommendations about the product that the customers may like depending upon their previous purchases.
All these models collectively utilize all the data from the present as well as the past and transform it into useful insights allowing businesses to improve in lucrative terms like sales and the RoI (return on investment).
Ranking your leads based on the likelihood of the actions they might end up taking is another front marketing analytics could help you peep into. This further assists in identifying prospects with similar attributes. The leads thus generated become prospects that can be turned into permanent customers. In this scenario, it is important to consider that, to generate optimum results a large number of data sets are needed. This gives bigger firms an edge over the ones that might not own such huge data quantities, by improving their return on investment. But with the right approach and help, smaller industries may also be able to gain this insight as per their needs.
To launch a product that will suit the present demands and patterns of the market, a deep and well-predicted insight is a must. Again, marketing analytics is the answer here, the predictive algorithms allow the companies to improve the new product based on customer data piled up while taking sales and feedbacks into consideration. All these factors integrate to form a part of the bigger marketing strategy and allow the business to enhance its earnings.
We all are proof that marketing campaigns via emails or social media allow the firms to improve their customer base. Marketing analytics gives companies the power to monitor and optimize these campaigns so that sales and ROI can see growth. The integrated tools and techniques help rule out the lacuna that might hamper the campaigns and their implementation as decided. Also, it becomes possible to monitor the current outcome of any campaign, whether it works properly or needs to be altered for the future.
A company may find out that digital, print, TV and radio marketing takes up around 85% of its market spending. Now amongst these many of the activities can be directly measured but spending on digital marketing can be refined using marketing analytics tools. The company can then use the results to optimize its strategy. Using these types of approaches allows the marketers to track marketing performance on real-time marketing analytics metrics and make wiser decisions for its better implementation.
Data analytics helps the marketing teams to combine structured and unstructured data and derive real-time insights about customer behavior, purchase patterns, sales graph, market trends, and more. It helps enterprises with the following:
A study said that 42% of marketers use data analytics to make decisions about customer acquisition.
Customer acquisition is a technique of winning new customers and convincing them to buy the products by the brand. The process includes several stages and is represented in a funnel-shaped design. It consists of targeted promotions to reach prospective customers and then provide them with relevant information to spark interest.
Attracting the audience, engaging them through promotional material, convincing them to buy, and keeping them happy with customer service can be called the customer acquisition flywheel. Data analytics helps marketers by providing actionable insights to attract customers.
Customer insight is the process of understanding and interpreting the purchase behavior of customers. This helps in knowing which products are more popular and why. Businesses can suggest products to customers based on customer insight and increase sales.
Data analytics processes the unstructured data from the World Wide Web to share reports and data visuals about customers’ preferences. You can also conduct surveys and ask for feedback from followers to gather this information.
The same campaign will not impress all kinds of customers, isn’t it? Be it the promotional channels, the method of approach, or the product itself- you need to align everything to suit the customers’ taste.
For example, you promote baking products to attract professional, home, and hobby bakers. You promote dollhouses to attract kids and thereby influence the parents’ purchase decisions. Depending on your target market, you share posts on social media, air ads on the TV, and send emails to customers. Data analytics will help you decide the how, what, and when in marketing strategies.
Branding is the process of giving a specific meaning to your business and the products/ services you sell. It refers to who you are and what your ideals are. It’s a way to tell customers that this is what the business stands for. It is a combination of products/ services, business mission & vision, and social responsibility stand.
Data analytics will assist you in determining the right method to take the message to customers and inspire brand loyalty in them. Customers will stay with your business not only because of the products but also because of the brand image and all that your business represents.
Retaining customers is considered more important by businesses, and why not? More than 80% of the profits come from 20% of the retained customers. It also takes less investment to retain customers than attract new ones.
Data analytics in marketing help businesses formulate strategies to retain existing customers and ensure that they are loyal to the business. This is done by enhancing customer experience and providing them with quality products and customer service.
The market analysis mainly relies on market research. The quality and authenticity of data collected during market research will determine the results of market analysis. However, the below-listed components are an integral part of market analysis.
You would have heard of SWOT analysis, right? You must analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for your brand before making any major decisions. The market opportunities and threats include your competitors, who can push your business into oblivion if you don’t pay enough attention.
How does the target audience view your brand? What do they think of your business, and how does this affect their purchase decision? If they don’t think your brand is worthy, it’ll impact the sales, isn’t it? It is important for you to know how customers perceive your business.
Knowing customers is not helpful if you don’t have a firm understanding of your products. Which product feature is a favorite of the customers? Which feature do they complain about often? How can you improve the product and re-launch in the market?
How will you describe your target audience? What are their tastes, likes, and dislikes? Does your target audience belong to gen X? Are they from gen Y or gen Z? Do they belong to one region, community, or culture? The more you know about the target audience, the easier it’ll be to plan the marketing strategy.
Market trends are usually analyzed through PEST (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological) analysis. These factors help evaluate the market conditions and determine the demand and supply ratio for the products in the near future.
Market projections are a combination of market trends, customer perception, and description. These help frame comprehensive strategies to identify the crucial focus areas to increase sales and grow the business.
Based on a report by Think with Google, businesses are 1.7x times likely to agree and adopt ML models to improve targeted ads and personalized campaigns. 52.7% of businesses used marketing analytics in 2020, which is likely to increase in the next few years.
Web analytics is one way of collecting and analyzing website data. This is done to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the website and find ways to improve user engagement. Google Analytics is one of the most largely used tools for web analytics. It is a free tool and fairly easy to use.
Web analytics gives you a detailed view of the following aspects of the website-
You need to keep track of your competitors’ marketing campaigns, their product releases, market share, and other details. This will help in understanding their approach to capturing the target market. You should analyze their traditional and digital marketing strategies, their websites, and overall market presence to determine ways to make more sales and expand into new markets.
Digital marketing analytics is not limited to the company website. It is a holistic approach to measuring and analyzing how your business is performing on digital platforms. It includes the below factors-
The following is a list of top marketing analytics tools that need to be incorporated into your business operations today:
The following are the three kinds of marketing analytics that are used independently and together to get actionable insights for better decision-making.
Descriptive analytics tells us about what has already happened. It analyzes historical data using data mining and data aggregation to trace patterns and trends that were previously not identified.
Data visualizations such as line graphs, bar graphs, and pie charts represent the insights of descriptive analytics. It is used in everyday reporting and to understand the trends we see on social media. Google Analytics is an example of descriptive market analytics.
That said, descriptive analytics has its limitations. It doesn’t provide the complete picture and cannot be used to guess or predict future events. This data should be combined with predictive analytics to have a better understanding of how past trends can influence future opportunities and risks.
Predictive analytics doesn’t tell us what has happened. It shows what can happen in the future. Predictive analytics uses machine learning algorithms and the insights derived from descriptive analytics.
In short, predictive analytics is the process of using existing data to understand what can happen in the future. The precision of this report depends on the data fed to the algorithms. It helps identify and solve problems that might arise. Predictive analytics helps foresee future opportunities so that enterprises can make the most of the situation and go ahead of the competitors.
Deep learning techniques are majorly used for diagnostic analysis and predictive analytics. It is used to make decisions about fraudulent transactions, fake insurance claims, demand for a particular product, etc.
Prescriptive analytics assists you in knowing what to do with the insights provided by descriptive and predictive market analytics. It is a complex process where you work with internal and external factors that influence the final result.
Prescriptive analytics focuses on understanding what will happen if X event occurs and how you can ensure that the ultimate result/ outcome is the one you want. It uses mathematics and computer analytics to arrive at the solution.
It’s crucial to perform prescriptive analytics with extra care as it is easy to misinterpret and end up with an inaccurate report. Hiring experts and using the latest AI technology can help counter this problem.
Marketing is an integral part of a business and marketing analytics offers profound insights into customer preferences and trends. Despite these advantages, a majority of organizations fail to realize its importance.
In a survey conducted by senior marketing executives in Harvard Business Review, it was found that more than 80 percent of the business owners were not satisfied with their ability to measure the marketing ROI. In such scenarios, it becomes important that marketing analytics be incorporated into the business module and brought into practice every day. The decision-makers might make it a habit to let their data do the talking, and to understand what your data speaks, you definitely must bank on efficient data science partners.
DataToBiz could be one such eminent partner you have been looking to meet, who holds the potential to transform the way you look at your strategies and the way you move forward with your product. They have expertise in various domains of data science along with marketing analytics techniques implementation. They can not only help you refine the data but also assist you in creating an impactful marketing strategy that will generate more ROI. Know more about DataToBiz services.
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