One of the most important requirements of a business is to measure its marketing effectiveness. It is seen as a challenge by most marketers. However, when it comes to analytics, most marketers think about web analytics. While web analytics is immensely helpful in providing powerful insights with regard to website parameters such as page views, time taken for page loads and time spent on the page/site. This does not provide solutions to the marketing needs nor does it measure any marketing parameters.
The solution lies in marketing analytics. Business metrics such as traffic, leads and sales, from both, online and offline activities are measured by marketing analytics. This helps in determining the impact of each marketing activity separately, thus helping find out the most effective strategy. Also, marketing analytics measures the impact of all online activities such as email and social media campaigns and not just website activities. This gives great insight on activities that contribute towards conversions more directly and how are the different online and offline activities linked to consumer behaviour.
Through marketing analytics, marketers can determine how each of their marketing activities is linked to their business goals i.e. how effective is each activity in helping achieve the business goals. Thus, businesses can measure the actual ROI of their marketing activities. Also, with the help of the information gathered, marketers can locate the kinks in their marketing strategy and marketing channels and find solutions to fix the same. This can, therefore, help in creating a better overall marketing strategy.
Why are marketers not using marketing analytics?
Despite the fact that marketing analytics provides a better measurement of marketing effectiveness, most marketers seem to deploy web analytics or email marketing analytics. The major problem is the absence of a cohesive solution that helps in drawing insight from all different marketing activities and thus, aiding in arriving at comprehensive solutions.
Why must marketers use marketing analytics?
While marketers stick to web analytics because of the ease of use, marketing analytics can help them achieve a lot more:
- Integration of different marketing channels: With the help marketing analytics, marketers can find out the relation between different marketing activities. This can help them integrate different marketing activities and channels for better results.
- Generates people-centric data: The key focus of marketing analytics is the consumer and not the activity or channel. Thus, through marketing analytics, it is possible to get more insight into consumer behaviour and consumer buying cycle.
- Data links to sales: This is one of the greatest benefits of marketing analytics. All the data link the marketing activities with the sales they generate. For this, however, the CRM must be linked with marketing analytics.
Marketers need marketing analytics for better marketing strategies in future. They also need more experts in marketing analytics. Get yourself a certificate in marketing analytics from an institute that incorporates customer valuation into the syllabus.
