Wasted data: what marketing analytics could show you

By Quentin Aisbett is the founder of digital agency OnQ Marketing and analytics reporting software Pocket Insights.

In today’s business world, big-data driven insights have become imperative for success.

With 2.5 quintillion bytes of data being generated each day – and the amount of data subject to analysis expected to rise to 2.5 zettabytes within five years – the sheer volume of available data has given rise to massive investments in analytical data analysis, especially in the financial sector.

While the finance and business audience are devoting much attention to data-driven analytics, all too often another data subset is overlooked that has the potential to provide a wealth of business insights.

Enabling businesses to identify which ad campaigns resonate with their demographics and empowering them to better connect with their customers, marketing analytics not only provides intelligence in advertising, but opens new opportunities for profit and growth that would otherwise go overlooked.

Here are some specifics on what tools can help you mine this mountain of data, and how marketing analytics can sharpen your business intelligence.

Tools

In order to gain any meaningful insight from your marketing data, you’ll first need to select from a myriad of analytics tools.

Although many high-volume data users may need to rely on more advanced analytics software platforms (especially those in the technology sector), most organizations can benefit from basic analytics tools offered at little to no cost. Here are a few of both to help get you started.

Basic

Google Analytics
Google offers one of the most popular and powerful analytics tools available for both insight-based and media-based companies.

User behavior can be monitored on a real-time basis, with sources of web traffic being identified and dwell time available per page so that site owners may see how long visitors access each component of a page.

More in-depth analysis could require a subscription, but for the most part, the free software has ample power to meet the average business’s needs.

Google My Business
For client-facing businesses, the GMB listing is an important interaction from Google’s search results. The insights from this platform helps to identify which search terms were used, whether the client clicked to call or visit the website, and the location of users when requested for directions.

Facebook Insights
This presents a great way of identifying where your customers are located, how they are finding you and if they are following your page or not.

You’ll also be able to see what kind of content generates the most interaction from those following you, and what time of day corresponds to the greatest amount of traffic. Posts from your competitors as well as their stats and engagement can also be seen, enabling you to gain insight on how the competition is faring.

Advanced

For those in need of more advanced analytics options, these are some of the most popular.

SEMRush
One of the premier marketing software platforms, SEMRush collects and processes huge amounts of data to boost a business’s online visibility. More specifically, SEMRush provides analytics tools for search, social media and marketing research data in 140 countries.

Tableau
This particular software is more technical than most, and is the most beneficial to those possessing a background in business intelligence. In addition to compiling data from multiple sources such as SQL, Google, and Salesforce to form a more comprehensive data picture, Tableau offers multiple data visualization techniques and in-depth analysis tools to not only provide insight into the data, but to convey it clearly.

IBM Watson Analytics
The makers of Watson have also integrated a marketing analytics suite into the consciousness of this AI system, enabling marketers to design and manage creative campaigns through email, social media and web page outlets. The system is also compatible with both Mac and Windows operating systems, allowing for an intuitive, flexible campaign design.

The Why

Once you adopt the right tools to mine your marketing data, here are some advantages you can expect to gain. The list is not comprehensive, but these are a few of the biggest advantages marketing analytics can bring to the table.

Understand your audience
Self-evident as it may be, it should still be said: the greatest benefit that marketing analytics can offer is insight into your organizations customer base. Knowing which ad generated the most clicks or the longest visibility time does more than inform a marketing committee’s decisions on the next slogan or advertisement; it reveals what matters to your customer.

If a website has low visibility ratings or shows signs of a disengaged fan base, the issue may not necessarily be an inferior product line, but a message that isn’t resonating with its demographic. In a digital age that mandates relationship-building to sell products, optimizing your SEO performance or analyzing frequently used keywords isn’t about creating the edgiest ad scheme, it’s about identifying with your audience to drive revenue.

Find Leads
While internal data like visibility ratings and clicks per link help to identify what’s relevant to the customer, marketing data that informs the owner as to which users visited their site also carries the potential to reveal prospective leads to be pursued. With this insight available, sales teams may be able to pursue future business transactions or clientele bases that they were previously unaware of.

Identify trends
As with the identification of prospective sales leads, marketing analytics can also reveal patterns in emerging or falling trends both within and outside the company.

If a specific keyword or product is searched for at an increasing rate, for instance, a business may be informed of the need to ramp up promotion for that specific product and to shift attention away from other goods that appear from search data to be fading out.

Identify cross-sells and up-sells
Correlations between products can also be found through marketing analytics. Customers searching for a specific product may often express an interest in a product relating to the original one, so analysis into a keyword for one good may offer insight into another.

Armed with an understanding of how your customer base engages with a set of products rather than on an individual level, your sales team will be better equipped to promote more relevant sales combinations and bundles.

Insights into advertising helps ROI
Why waste revenue on a marketing campaign that doesn’t work? With knowledge of your advertising performance, you’ll be better able to communicate a message to your audience that’s worth the resources you’ve invested, and can get the results you’re looking for.

It’s worth mentioning that the role of predictive analytics is continually shaping data-driven insights in every sphere, and marketing analytics is no exception. As increased investment is devoted towards understanding how current data patterns point to future behaviors, the marketing industry can be expected to show more interest in knowing how customers will engage with their message before it is ever produced.

With or without a clearer picture of future customer interaction, the benefits gained by the oftentimes simple implementation of marketing analytics outweigh the cost by a large enough margin that any company seeking to optimize its business processes through data-driven insights must add this data subset to its mining repertoire.

If you’re going to gain all the business insights you can – and the competitive advantages that come with them – marketing analytics is a must.