What is marketing analytics? (Importance and benefits)

In today’s fast-paced digital world, staying ahead of the competition isn’t just a goal – it’s a necessity. To truly outshine your rivals, you need more than just intuition; you need the precision of marketing analytics.

By tapping into the deep insights these tools provide, you can make smarter, data-driven decisions that refine your marketing strategy and deliver results that matter.

To give you a clearer idea of why this is the case, we’ll explore what marketing analytics is and how it works, along with its importance and the key benefits it offers your business. We’ll also guide you on how to choose the right marketing analytics tool to suit your needs.

What is marketing analytics?

Marketing analytics is the practice of measuring, managing, and analysing marketing performance with key data and insights. The type of data or analytics you’ll receive will depend on the software you choose.

For example, Mediahawk’s call tracking software provides detailed analytics on customer calls, showing you the marketing sources that generate each call as well as an analysis of campaign performance.

Marketing analytics solutions are used to maximise conversions from campaigns, monitor the success of your activities, and optimise your marketing return on investment (ROI). By leveraging analytics in marketing, your businesses can understand what works, what doesn’t, and where you should focus your resources.

The right software with the right approach goes beyond just collecting data. It’s about turning that data into actionable insights to drive growth across your marketing channels.

How does it work?

Another aspect of knowing what marketing analytics is, is knowing how it works. Using marketing analytics software involves a multi-step process with several key components – data collection, data analysis, and reporting. Each step plays a crucial role in transforming raw data into meaningful insights.

1. Data collection: This is the first step in the marketing analytics process. Data is gathered from various sources, depending on the type of analytics software being used. With call tracking, for instance, this would involve gathering call data (such as recordings, transcripts, and call metrics) along with information on customer interactions across channels (such as website visits, the point of call, paid keywords being searched).
2. Data analysis: In this step, the collected data is analysed to uncover meaningful insights, patterns, and trends. This could involve using marketing attribution models to analyse a customer journey, or even Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered tools to interpret data from call conversations. The goal is to identify correlations and causations that can reveal marketing performance and inform strategies.
3. Reporting: The final step is to present the findings in a way that is easy to understand and actionable. Reporting typically involves dashboards and comprehensive reports that highlight key insights and recommendations. Mediahawk’s platform, for example, has an easily accessible dashboard that can be tailored to meet your needs as a marketer, showing key information and insights most relevant to you.

Data analytics vs. marketing analytics: What’s the difference?

While data analytics and marketing analytics may seem similar, they serve different purposes within your business.

Data analytics is a broader field that involves analysing any type of data within your operations to derive insights. It can help your business understand performance across a wide range of departments, including finance, logistics, and even stakeholders.

On the other hand, marketing analytics is a specialised branch of data analytics focused directly on marketing data. This aims to improve your marketing performance by analysing things such as customer behaviour, campaign success, and different channels driving engagement and conversions.

For marketers looking for a focused approach to attract more leads, increase sales, and get the most out of your marketing efforts with a higher ROI, then marketing analytics is vital.

Why marketing analytics is important

In today’s ever-changing marketing world, businesses encounter many challenges that can make it tough to succeed with various activities, campaigns, and channels. Here are some of the major hurdles that marketing analytics can help you tackle:

• Fragmented customer journeys: With customers interacting across multiple channels and touchpoints, it’s difficult to track and understand their entire journey. Your marketing analytics software can track every interaction – including online and offline campaigns – giving you a complete overview of the customer journey.
• Data overload: Marketers are inundated with vast amounts of data from various sources, making it challenging to filter out the noise and focus on what’s important. Your analytics platform provides clear and accessible dashboards that reveal key marketing insights on an individual and macro level, so the important data is at your fingertips.
• Attribution challenges: Determining which marketing efforts are driving results can be tricky, especially when customers interact with multiple campaigns before converting. Your marketing analytics software can measure performance in many unique ways, including giving you a visitor-to-call ratio – the number of website visits compared to the number of callers generated by each campaign. For example, see how Mediahawk’s marketing analytics software helped Worldpay achieve tangible insights into their customers and reach 100% attribution.
• Measuring ROI: Proving the ROI for marketing activities remains a top concern for marketers, as it’s often hard to attribute sales directly to specific campaigns. The software gives you a clear indication of which marketing sources are producing valuable leads as well as sales.

4 key benefits of using marketing analytics software

Implementing marketing analytics software provides your business with a wide range of advantages. Here are four key benefits to be aware of:

1. Gain full visibility of all marketing activities

One of the most significant advantages of marketing analytics software is that it provides a comprehensive view of all marketing activities.

The software tracks interactions from every activity, campaign, and channel, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks. This also includes reporting on both your online and offline campaigns, for even greater visibility on your overall marketing performance.

This way, your business will have a full overview of each area in your marketing, being able to easily identify strengths and weaknesses and adjust your strategies accordingly.

2. Enhanced customer insights and better targeting

Understanding your customers is crucial for any successful marketing strategy. Marketing analytics software doesn’t just provide data, but offers deep insights into customer behaviours for more informed decision making.

For instance, speech analytics gives you AI-powered insights on customer phone conversations, allowing you to identify useful spoken keywords and detect whether a call had a successful outcome – such as a purchase or answered the customer’s query.

These insights are what turn data into actionable strategies that can transform your marketing efforts.

3. Informed budget allocation with tracked ROI

Budget allocation is a critical aspect of any business and, with expert analytics in your marketing, you can optimise your resource allocation.

The insights and reports you get from the software reveals which of your campaigns and channels are generating the most leads and sales for your business. As a result, you can make data-driven decisions on where to allocate your marketing budget to maximise ROI and avoid wasting spend on ineffective activities.

4. Tracking campaign performance and measuring success

Marketing analytics allows you to monitor the performance of campaigns in real time. This real-time tracking means you can quickly pick up on changes in customer behaviour and any trends and opportunities, and adjust your strategies on the fly

For instance, if you identify a certain campaign has started producing low or irrelevant leads, you can immediately adjust the campaign to resolve the issue. What’s more, you can use insights from your other, more successful campaigns, to help you know exactly what adjustments to make.

How to choose the right marketing analytics tool for your needs

Selecting the right marketing analytics tool is crucial for harnessing the full potential of your marketing data. Here are some important features to consider when choosing a marketing analytics platform:

• Data integration capabilities: The tool should be able to integrate data seamlessly from various sources, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and social media platforms like Facebook.
• Customisable dashboards and reports: Look for a tool that offers customisable dashboards and reporting options. This feature lets you tailor the analytics to your specific needs and present the data in a way that is meaningful to your team.
• Real-time analytics: Real-time data tracking is essential for making timely decisions. Ensure your software offers real-time analytics to monitor campaign performance and detect trends in things like conversions and paid keywords as they happen.
• Advanced segmentation and targeting: Choose a solution that offers advanced segmentation capabilities, allowing you to break down your audience into specific groups based on various criteria. This feature is key for personalised marketing.
• AI and predictive analytics: Platforms that incorporate AI and predictive analytics can offer deeper insights and help forecast future trends. This allows you to anticipate customer behaviour and more effectively pick out actionable data from reports.

Take your business to the next level with marketing analytics

Analytics in marketing is indispensable if you’re looking to optimise your marketing strategies and achieve better results.

Request a demo for Mediahawk’s advanced marketing analytics platform, to take the first step towards unlocking the full potential of your marketing efforts and staying ahead in a competitive market.