In the current information age, more data is at our fingertips today than ever before, and not just in terms of the general knowledge you can find on Wikipedia or via a search engine.
From a business perspective, data is a collection of facts from which information can be gathered, and that information-gathering process is known as data analytics. Marketing professionals can then use the information gleaned through the data analytics process to understand which marketing strategies are most effective and make the best use of budget allocations.
How marketing professionals use data analytics
As the examples show, marketing analytics is about more than just tracking the progress of your marketing campaigns to calculate return on investment (ROI). It also means analyzing and applying the information your data delivers, for example, by using a tool like Google Analytics. This provides all sorts of data regarding the behavior of visitors to your website or e-commerce store. The goal is to apply the information it delivers to new and existing marketing campaigns.
A simple example of this principle in action is using Google Analytics to understand the most popular pages on your website. You can also find out users’ locations and the type of devices they are using.
Deeper analysis gives more complex insights. For example, data from PPC campaigns can help inform the sort of copy that will be most effective for a new email marketing campaign. Data from Google Analytics can also provide a clue to a change in website layout that will increase conversion rates.
Feature marketing – from casino games to mobility aids
One of the most valuable uses of marketing analytics is to guide feature marketing, a practice when a campaign focuses on specific product or service features. These might be existing features, or they could be new ones that the analysis has inspired. For example, an iGaming provider might find players more interested in getting better value from existing games than trying new ones. In this case, a marketing campaign around a generous online casino bonus for all classic games might ultimately deliver better results than one promoting an innovative gaming experience.
Another example might be a mobility aids provider who finds customers interested in more than basic functionality and wants to be able to offer customizable products.
Three examples of marketing analytics models in action
Check out any MBA text, and it will tell you that there are three models for marketing analytics. The following three examples show each of these models in action.
- The IKEA furniture retailer is famous for the time and energy it devotes to understanding customer behavior. One of the more valuable insights it has drawn from marketing analytics is that most people turn right on entering a store, influencing how the retailer displays its stock. This is an example of descriptive analytics, using historical data to predict future behavior.
- Between 2014 and 2019, AirBnB grew by 43,000 percent. A representative from the data science team put it down to predictive analysis and a process of humanizing data. AirBnB succeeds or fails based on matching guests and hosts, and it does this not just by seeing what has worked in the past but by predicting new matches that will work. The business uses predictive modeling to create market-specific forecasts, and they have a devoted team that optimizes the existing predictive models.
- If you’ve ever visited Amazon, you will notice that it constantly suggests products that might interest you. These suggestions are based not only on your previous purchases but also on your searches and what other people who have done similar searches have bought. They also use other clues; for example, if you have shared your age, gender, and location, the program will factor these in. This prescriptive analytics uses every piece of data to create a more efficient campaign that influences customer behavior – in this case, selling you something you didn’t even know you wanted or needed.
Staying one step ahead
Ultimately, marketing analytics provide the information a business needs to understand, predict, and even guide customer desires, needs, and priorities. By crafting its marketing strategies accordingly, it can be proactive in customer interactions, learning from the past but being guided by the present and the future. In this way, marketing analytics provide the key to staying one step ahead of the rest in today’s competitive markets.
