The three components of a successful marketing analytics strategy

Marketing is extremely important to the overall health and success of every business. Without good marketing, there’s no way that a business can succeed in today’s markets and beat out their competitors.

To effectively manage their marketing strategies, businesses are starting to incorporate data into their marketing decision-making. This data-driven marketing approach is called marketing analytics. Many businesses are still struggling with how to implement a marketing analytics strategy.

On the one hand, having a well-defined analytics strategy can help you make data-driven decisions that improve your marketing effectiveness. On the other hand, if your analytics strategy is poorly executed or incomplete, it can lead to disaster. Often, companies find themselves hanging in the balance.

So how do you create a successful marketing analytics strategy? And how can you avoid the pitfalls that can lead to failure?

In order to make data-driven decisions that improve marketing effectiveness, you need to have a strong marketing analytics strategy in place. Such a strategy should include the following three components:

1. Collecting accurate and timely data
2. Analyzing the data to identify trends and patterns
3. Acting on the insights gleaned from the data.

Let’s dive into each of these components in more detail.

What is marketing analytics, and why does it matter?

Marketing analytics is the process of collecting, analyzing, and reporting data related to marketing performance. It can be used to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, track customer behavior, and optimize marketing strategies.

Why is marketing analytics so important? Because it can help you make data-driven decisions that improve your marketing effectiveness.

Tracking key metrics and analyzing the data can identify trends and patterns that indicate what’s working and what’s not. You can then use this information to make tweaks to your marketing strategy to achieve better results.

So, to improve your marketing effectiveness, start by developing a strong marketing analytics strategy. This will allow you to collect accurate and timely data, analyze it for insights, and take action based on those insights.

The benefits of a robust marketing analytics strategy

There are many benefits to having a robust marketing analytics strategy in place. Here are just a few:

1. Companies that have a marketing analytics strategy in place are more successful

Studies show that companies that excel at marketing analytics are twice as likely to describe themselves as successful at achieving their marketing objectives. If you want to be successful in achieving your marketing goals, a robust analytics strategy is key.

This isn’t to say that you need to have a perfect marketing analytics strategy before achieving success. But it does show that having a strategy gives you a significant advantage.

2. Marketing analytics can help you make data-driven decisions

If you want to make effective decisions, you need to base them on data. This is where marketing analytics comes in. By tracking key metrics and analyzing the data, you can identify trends and patterns that indicate what’s working and what’s not. You can then use this information to make decisions about your marketing strategy.

For example, let’s say you want to increase website traffic from organic search. You could use marketing analytics to track your website’s organic search traffic over time. This would give you insights into whether your efforts are increasing or decreasing your traffic. If you see a decline, you could then use this information to make changes to your marketing strategy.

3. Marketing analytics can help you optimize your marketing strategies

In addition to helping you make data-driven decisions, marketing analytics can also help you optimize your marketing strategies. By tracking key metrics, you can identify areas that need improvement. You can then use this information to make changes to your strategy so that you can achieve better results.

For example, let’s say you want to improve your LTV (lifetime value) from your email marketing campaigns. You could use marketing analytics to track your LTV over time.

If you see a decline, you could use this information to change your email marketing strategy. Perhaps you’re not segmenting your list properly or you’re not sending relevant content. Whatever the case may be, marketing analytics can help you identify the problem so that you can make the necessary changes.

Three key elements of a marketing analytics strategy

Now that we’ve covered the benefits of a marketing analytics strategy, let’s take a look at the three key elements of such a strategy—and what tools and techniques you need to make it successful.

1. Collecting accurate and timely data

The first element of a successful marketing analytics strategy is collecting accurate and timely data. This data can come from a variety of sources, such as website traffic data, social media data, email marketing data, and so on.

There are a number of tools and techniques you can use to collect this data, such as web analytics tools, social media monitoring tools, and email marketing platforms. Once you have this data, it’s important to store it in a central location so that it’s easy to access and analyze.

The best choice for analyzing this data as a whole, instead of getting limited, siloed insight, is through a business intelligence tool.

With a business intelligence tool, you can connect to all the different business tools that you use to manage your marketing strategy, centralize all their data in one place, and then compare and combine that data to spot trends that would otherwise be completely impossible to spot.

Unlike other data collection methods, which rely on static reports and can only provide infrequent updates, a BI tool makes an ongoing connection to the tools in your stack. This means it can provide updates whenever the underlying data updates, sometimes as fast as in near-real-time.

2. Analyzing the data to identify trends and patterns

Once you have the data, what do you do with it? The next step is to analyze the data to identify trends and patterns. This will help you understand what’s working and what’s not so that you can make changes to your strategy accordingly.

Many people think that data analysis has to be a complex operation that only data experts and math geniuses can do, but with modern, self-service business intelligence tools, the BI system does all the work.

Using a BI tool, decision makers can graph and chart their data, compare their data to other sources and see how they relate, spot trends and correlations that could imply connections, and make predictions on how things will trend in the future.

From there, BI users can create useful data visualizations that show the implications of their data analysis in a simple, visual way. They can then combine these visualizations into dashboards that allow them to track their metrics and see how they shift as their data updates.

3. Acting on the insights gleaned from the data

The data you collect is only useful if you act on its insights. Once you’ve analyzed the data and identified trends and patterns, it’s crucial to take action based on those findings.

Marketing analytics allows decision makers to see how their choices correlate to real-world results. With a BI tool, that connection is very easy to see. For example, a marketer can see whether or not their digital strategy is boosting conversion rates in real time.

When things go wrong, or new business challenges crop up, business leaders can see what’s happening, how it’s affecting key metrics, and, with the right data analysis, what the root cause is. From there, they can find a solution.

This could mean making changes to your marketing strategy, revising your sales process, or even changing your product offering. Whatever the case may be, it’s crucial to take action based on the insights gleaned from your data.

What common mistakes do marketers make?

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is failing to take action based on the data. It’s not enough to simply collect and analyze data—you need to actually use that data to improve your marketing efforts.

Another common mistake is collecting too much data without knowing what to do with it. It’s important to collect only the data that’s relevant to your business and that you’ll actually use. Otherwise, you’ll just end up with a bunch of useless data that takes up space and resources.

Finally, many marketers fail to make an overarching plan for how they should use their data. It’s important to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your data before you even start collecting it. This will help you focus your efforts and ensure that the data you collect is actually useful.

The bottom line

A successful marketing analytics strategy is crucial for any business that wants to make data-driven decisions that improve marketing effectiveness. Such a strategy should include collecting accurate and timely data, analyzing the data to identify trends and patterns, and acting on the insights gleaned from the data.

A BI tool can help with marketing analytics by providing a platform for data collection, analysis, and action. With business intelligence, you can easily collect data from a variety of sources, including social media, email marketing platforms, and website analytics tools.

You can then use your BI tool’s powerful analysis tools to identify trends and patterns and take action based on those findings. This can help you improve your marketing effectiveness and drive better results for your business.