Role of Data Analytics in Marketing Strategy

Using Analytics to Make Marketing Decisions
8 min read

If you don’t know the problem, how would you fix it? It doesn’t matter what we are talking about, we must know the problem to find out its solution.

Imagine you went to the doctor to get your foot checked because you think you have fractured it, but instead he tells you that you have a cough that’s why you feel pain in your foot and can’t walk properly, does that sound possible to you? No, it is totally dumb to even think about it. Because the doctors usually diagnose the problem by the questions they ask and by checking the patient. But if the problem is something big, they simply go for some tests before starting the treatment. You see, treatment can’t be started when you’re aware of the actual problem; and this is where data analytics comes on board.

Marketing Data Analytics is the method of determining, analyzing, and managing the efficacy of your marketing campaign in order to enhance its efficiency and maximize your return on investment (ROI). Marketers may use data analytics to become more competitive and save money on advertising. They also allow you to treat your marketing strategy like a doctor, taking the time to fully comprehend the situation before coming up with a significant decision.

Providing Competitor Analysis

Source: pestleanalysis

It’s a good idea to get a sense of how your competitors are doing to get an insight into the way they work before displaying your tactics to the world. This will assist you in laying out a strategy that incorporates both traditional and cutting-edge marketing tactics that give you the edge you need in a crowded market. That way, you will know what can interest the audience and what can disinterest them.

To do this, you must examine your rivals in order to comprehend their patterns and how well they work in front of their intended audience. Then you may come up with some innovative and efficient ideas of your own to target the audience in a similar way.

Tracking And Monitoring Social Media 

Through the use of data analytics, you can have a better idea of which social media platform is more effective in targeting your audience. For instance, what platform you will use that will give you the most reach to the largest audience. Around 42% of the earth’s population continually rely on social media on the Internet. Facebook now has around 2 billion active users per year, cementing its position as the world’s biggest and most famous actively searched social platform. It gives a wide insight into people’s life which tells us what they are more interested in.

It’s important to understand how Facebook works. For instance, when you watch a video, let’s say a cooking video, the next time you open the video section of Facebook you will see there will be mostly cooking videos popping up. Just like that, if you will use Facebook to advertise your market it will also pop up to the audience interested in it. Data analytics will give you an estimate of where people you can target are located, and can track and monitor the audience on social media platforms.

Personalizing Customer Interaction

Companies now have more knowledge about their clients than they ever have before. Companies can now gain more comprehensive insights into customer behavior and interests, in addition to surface-level data about their gender, age, and geographic area. Customers are constantly demonstrating that they are not only willing to share their data with companies in order to obtain targeted marketing, but that they actively encourage it. According to a new study, 52 percent of consumers are highly or somewhat likely to shift brands if a business fails to personalize its interactions with them.

Nowadays, brands are customizing their marketing campaigns in a variety of ways, and earning incredible ROI in the meantime. All the known brands have used data from past customer experiences or regional analysis to provide personalized messaging to their consumers. They keep them updated about all the new products or services that interest them. This way, the customers stay satisfied and the companies equally benefit. When this kind of communication is done right, consumers feel like they are respected as an individual, not just a statistic on a list.

Analyzing Which Channels Are Working

Higher access is among the key advantages of data-driven marketing. Before the growth of online marketing, it was challenging for marketing departments to decide which of their initiatives, if any, significantly contributed towards a sale. They were never really sure if their advertising was effective or if an increase in sales was just a random occurrence.

But now retailers can monitor consumers from their initial interest to what purchase they made by using data analytics. Marketers have a much better idea of what’s effective and what isn’t thanks to information gleaned from website cookies and click-through rate (CTR), enabling them to better target spending in the correct channels.

Understanding Customers

You can gather the best data from your clients and customers, and it doesn’t matter how frequently you communicate with them. Many brands are supplementing their own first-party data with third-party data in order to recognize them as the multi-faceted entities that they really are. Of course, this raises its own set of issues, like if the third-party data is even valid and reliable or not.

Since 30% of web customers use a Virtual Private Network (VPN), it makes obtaining accurate data much more difficult. Brands may use cross-device ID monitoring to gain access to more reliable third-party data, giving them a more accurate picture of their customers.

Cost per Acquisition

Online businesses have a variety of ways to monitor cost per acquisition (CPA), an important metric in developing a marketing strategy. They can acquire connection codes for social or affiliate marketing through UTM parameters. Additionally, data from AdWords PPC campaigns can be exported for research and analytical purposes. Internal campaigns can benefit from the use of promotional codes and the development of custom links which allows for more targeted tracking. They can also track CPA by posing a question on lead forms and asking consumers how they learned about a campaign, which can help fill in attribution gaps. Sometimes just asking or offering a survey can bring more accurate insights.

Stages of Analysis

Source: Callminer

To get the best out of marketing data analysis, it’s essential to look at three separate levels of the market. You need to investigate facts about the past, present, and future. This will give you a more accurate representation of patterns and help get the maximum ROI for your efforts.

Reports About Past Strategies

You can find out which campaigns performed better than all the others by running historical data through data analytics tools. If you can figure out which plan helped the industry make more money, you can leverage their strategies into your own campaigns. You’ll also learn which aspects of the projects under performed. This way, you won’t make the same mistake twice.

Analysis Of The Present-day Market

Modern marketing data analysis helps you to have a greater picture of the existing market landscape. It assists you in determining which strategies are relevant and efficient. It also provides answers to questions such as how your clients are reacting to your current marketing strategy. It tells you what changes you should make to improve your efficiency.

Predicting The Future

Marketing data analysis and data forecasting will assist you in making accurate predictions about the future. It examines existing market dynamics and growth and bases its predictions upon existing data. As a result, a company can devise marketing strategies that are sustainable and are future proofed. You can also have an impact on the current market to ensure that the future is safe. Customer satisfaction and return on investment (ROI) are two factors that can be influenced right now to improve overall outcomes.

Pros And Cons Of Using Data Analytics In Marketing

Pros

Firms that invest in big-data projects, according to polled US executives, benefit from better decision-making, communication, and knowledge sharing, along with higher customer loyalty and retention. This is especially significant because 72 percent of executives surveyed said there was more competitiveness for consumers. Marketing data analytics provides a competitive advantage over rivals that have not invested in big-data strategies.

Cons

One of the most difficult aspects of using marketing data analytics is incorporating sophisticated data access interfaces. In reality, only 26% of retailers polled think their requirements are regularly set up to work together effortlessly. The willingness of a consumer to successfully use analytics data is the second major challenge. Just 28% of the marketers surveyed said they were willing to do so. The third major problem is data validation and verification. For 59 percent of the companies surveyed, obsolete, inconsistent, and meaningless data is a major concern.

With all that being explained, we now have a broad picture in mind of the way data analysis works in marketing. It actually gives insight into our audience’s interest which helps the marketers to target those who are really interested in what they sell.  By having the clients’ profile and interacting with them personally the marketers not only gain their trust but they pave the way towards making them their regular customers. Data analysis basically saves us from investing in the uninterested audience as this way we only get to target the interested audience.

References

https://bigdata-madesimple.com/5-ways-to-integrate-data-analytics-into-your-marketing-strategy/

https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-cost-per-acquisition-cpa-what-is-benchmark-retailers/

https://www.accaglobal.com/hk/en/student/exam-support-resources/professional-exams-study-resources/p5/technical-articles/data-analytics.html

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