What is data analytics in marketing and how can it transform your campaigns?

Incorporating data analytics in marketing is one of the most effective ways to improve how you approach your campaign strategies.

But in order to do this, you need to consider some crucial questions – what is data analytics in marketing? How does it work? What software is best for it? And, what are the benefits it brings?

In this article, we’ll explain the answers to these questions and delve into the importance of becoming a data-driven marketer.

What is data analytics?

Data analytics is the process of examining, cleaning, modelling, and interpreting data to discover useful information, draw conclusions, and support decision-making. Data analytics can be applied to almost any form of data in your business.

In the context of marketing, this involves analysing customer data, market trends, and campaign performance metrics to gain actionable insights for improving your activities. Data analytics for marketing – or marketing analytics, as it’s known – enables you to monitor and analyse your activities to ultimately achieve better leads, conversions, and sales.

Applying data analytics in your marketing lets you understand your audience better, personalise your campaign messaging, and allocate resources more effectively for an increased return on investment (ROI).

Data analytics in marketing

When using data analytics in marketing, the focus should be on gathering and analysing actionable metrics that are relevant to your business goals. To do this, you need to integrate various data sources and systems to create a comprehensive view of your marketing performance.

Here are some key areas to apply data analytics in your marketing:

1. Customer behaviour analysis: Tracking how customers interact with your brand across different touchpoints, such as how many customers follow a link from your social media ad to your landing page.
2. Campaign performance: Measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns across various channels, such as monitoring how many customers call after interacting with a specific campaign.
3. Conversion rates: Analysing user journeys to identify the sources with the most conversions, and the activities or channels where there are conversion bottlenecks.
4. Customer segmentation: Grouping together customer audiences based on various factors for targeted marketing – such as device used, demographics, and intent to purchase.
5. Predictive analytics: Using historical data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to forecast future trends and customer behaviours. For example, using speech analytics software to predict a prospect’s intent to purchase based on a phone call conversation.

To gather this data, you can use a variety of platforms and software integrations:

• Google Analytics: For website performance and online conversion data.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems: To track sales data.
• Social media platforms: To measure engagement and reach on social platforms, such as Facebook.
• Email marketing platforms: To analyse open and click-through rates.
• Call tracking solutions: To track your phone call enquiries, interactions, customer journey, and conversions from both your online and offline marketing activities – Mediahawk is the perfect example.

By integrating your data sources, including first-party data from marketing analytics platforms, you’ll create a holistic view of your marketing campaigns enabling you to make robust data-driven decisions.

Becoming a data-driven marketer

To become a data-driven marketer, there are several key steps to take when using data analytics in marketing:

1. Set clear goals: Make sure you have specific and measurable objectives when implementing data analytics, so your approach is aligned with business goals. For instance, if your goal is to increase phone calls, focus on relevant campaign metrics such as the number of calls generated, average time to conversion, visitor to call ratio, and more.
2. Evaluate previous strategies: Analyse data from your past campaigns to identify what worked and what didn’t, so you can optimise future campaigns.
3. Implement the right software: Choose the right marketing analytics software that effectively collects and processes relevant data. You also want a platform that provides actionable insights to improve your strategies, such as call tracking from Mediahawk.
4. Leverage marketing automation: Take advantage of marketing analytics platforms that automate data collection and analysis tasks with high accuracy. This will save you and your team vast amounts of time and effort.
5. Analyse data and trends: Review your marketing data to identify patterns, trends, and insights, helping you realign your activities based on customer behaviours.
6. Personalise campaigns: Use the insights gained to create more targeted, personalised marketing campaigns and increase your conversions.
7. Continuous testing and improvement: Use the data to continuously test and improve your campaigns, channels, and overall tactics. The more accurate and comprehensive your insights are, the more effective your new strategies will be.

Implementing these steps and using advanced data analytics software will let you create a more results-driven marketing approach. In turn, this will increase your conversions, improve your ROI, and drive growth for your business.

Leveraging data analytics for better marketing outcomes

To effectively leverage data analytics in marketing, you need the right software and processes to deliver the best insights.

One example is using an AI-powered speech analytics platform to analyse phone call conversations. Speech analytics not only transcribes your call conversations and identifies relevant keywords, but also uses AI and machine learning to predict future outcomes for customer behaviours. This includes lead scoring customers based on their likelihood to purchase, predicting emerging needs and trends, and categorising successful and unsuccessful calls.

Another important application of data analytics in marketing is the use of audience signals in Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. A platform like Mediahawk feeds relevant audience signals into GA4 based on the first-party data collected from your phone calls and campaign tracking. This allows you to fine-tune your campaigns based on what converts.

Other data analytics features that improve your marketing outcomes include:

1. Customer journey mapping tools: To visualise the customer journey and optimise the customer experience across each touchpoint.
2. Attribution modelling software: To understand which marketing channels and campaigns are driving the most conversions so you can optimise your activities.
3. Sales matching software: To identify how your campaigns and channels contribute most towards your revenue so you can improve your marketing decision-making and avoid wasting your marketing budget on ineffective activities.

Combining these data analytics platforms and processes will give you a comprehensive understanding of your audience and marketing performance, leading to improvements across your marketing strategy.

Benefits of data analytics in marketing

There are a number of advantages to using data analytics in marketing, which will significantly improve the way you create, track, and adjust your campaigns.

Gain enhanced customer insights

Data analytics provides a deeper understanding of your customers’ preferences, behaviours, and needs. You’ll know exactly which channels and campaigns your customers are interacting with and responding to in real-time. This lets you create more targeted and relevant marketing messages to improve engagement and increase conversion rates.

Improve campaign effectiveness

Analyse campaign performance data to reveal what strategies work and which don’t. You’ll also uncover the hidden value of campaigns with metrics such as the visitor to call ratio – a comparison of website visits and phone calls from a campaign. This enables you to optimise your marketing strategies and allocate resources to the most effective channels and tactics.

Develop competitive advantages

Data analytics reveals market trends and gives you an indication of competitor strategies. This allows you to stay ahead of the curve by identifying new opportunities to increase leads and conversions, helping your business stand out in the marketplace.

Build stronger connections

Personalised marketing based on data insights lets you create more meaningful interactions with your audience. This leads to improved customer satisfaction, increased loyalty, and ultimately, higher customer lifetime value.

Optimise resource allocation

Data analytics reveals which marketing channels and campaigns are delivering the best ROI. You can then allocate your marketing budget more efficiently, adjusting it based on real-time insights, for a consistently better ROI.

Make data-driven decisions

With data analytics, you’ll move away from gut feelings and guesswork to make decisions based on solid evidence. This reduces the risk of costly mistakes and increases the likelihood of success in your marketing efforts.

Improve product development

Data analytics in marketing will inform your product development, helping you align any new products or services with customer needs and preferences. As these patterns and trends evolve, you’ll be able to predict these changes and adapt accordingly.

Challenges of data analytics

Data analytics in marketing offers numerous benefits, but it also comes with its own set of challenges and things you need to consider:

1. Data quality and integration: Ensuring that data from various marketing sources is accurate, consistent, and properly integrated for the most streamlined process.
2. Privacy concerns: With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and increasing concerns around consumer privacy, you must be careful about how you collect, store, and use customer data.
3. Skill gap: Your marketing team needs to have the specialised skills for understanding and implementing data analytics, which may not be present in traditional marketing teams.
4. Technology changes: The rapid evolution of analytics software means your marketing team must continually update their skills to be proficient with the latest technology.
5. Attribution complexity: It’s important to ensure you accurately attribute conversions to specific marketing activities across multiple touchpoints.
6. Data overload: With the abundance of data available, you need to have a clear focus on the most relevant metrics to derive actionable insights.

To overcome these challenges, you need to invest in proper training, stay updated with the latest data protection laws and standards, and, most importantly, incorporate the right marketing analytics platform.

Transform marketing campaigns with data analytics

Data analytics in marketing will transform your campaigns by providing deep insights into customer behaviour, campaign performance, and market trends. The importance and benefits of implementing data analytics in your marketing efforts are clear, with deeper customer insights, improved campaign effectiveness, greater competitive advantages, stronger customer connections, and more. While some challenges exist, the potential rewards far outweigh the difficulties.

If you want to become a data-driven marketer, why not integrate Mediahawk’s marketing analytics platform into your business?

This data analytics solution provides accurate call tracking, 100% attribution, AI-powered Speech Analytics, and multi-channel campaign tracking. Mediahawk will unlock the full potential of your marketing data for you to make informed decisions, optimise your strategies, and achieve better growth for your business.

Don’t let valuable insights slip through your fingers. Request a demo with Mediahawk today and discover how data analytics can boost your marketing performance, drive better results, and increase ROI.