Marketing analytics comprises the processes and technologies that enable marketers to evaluate the success of their marketing initiatives. This is accomplished by measuring performance (e.g., blogging versus social media versus channel communications). Marketing analytics uses important business metrics, such as ROI, marketing attribution and overall marketing effectiveness. In other words, it tells you how your marketing programs are really performing.
Marketing analytics gathers data from across all marketing channels and consolidates it into a common marketing view. From this common view, you can extract analytical results that can provide invaluable assistance in driving your marketing efforts forward.
Why marketing analytics is important?
Over the years, as businesses expanded into new marketing categories, new technologies were adopted to support them. Because each new technology was typically deployed in isolation, the result was a hodgepodge of disconnected data environments.
Consequently, marketers often make decisions based on data from individual channels (website metrics, for example), not taking into account the entire marketing picture. Social media data alone is not enough. Web analytics data alone is not enough. And tools that look at just a snapshot in time for a single channel are woefully inadequate. Marketing analytics, by contrast, considers all marketing efforts across all channels over a span of time – which is essential for sound decision making and effective, efficient program execution.
Three steps to marketing analytics success
To reap the greatest rewards from marketing analytics, follow these three steps:
(1)Use a balanced assortment of analytic techniques.
(2)Assess your analytic capabilities, and fill in the gaps.
(3)Act on what you learn.
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