Data Analytics

Exploring Data Analytics for Marketing and Why It’s Critical

Written byKarin Kelley
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Updated onJune 20, 2024

A simple Google search results in a deluge of advertisements from different companies selling the product or service you’re looking for. That’s the work of data analytics for marketing.

Data analytics has transformed marketing, enabling businesses to better understand their customers, target their audience more effectively, and ultimately drive better results.

In this guide to data analytics for marketing, we’ll explore the basics of data analytics and how it applies to marketing. We’ll discuss key concepts, tools, and techniques that you need to know to leverage data effectively in your marketing efforts. Whether new to marketing or looking to enhance your skills, this guide will provide the foundation to understand and apply data analytics in your marketing strategies.

If you’re interested in learning about marketing analytics in a more in-depth manner, our industry-recognized data analytics bootcamp is ideal. We’ll talk about it at the end of the guide.

Where Does Marketing Data Come From?

Marketing data comes from various online and offline sources and provides valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends. Here are some key sources of marketing data:

Website analytics: Tools like Google Analytics track website visitors’ behavior, such as the pages they visit, how long they stay on each page, and where they come from (referral sources).
Social media analytics: Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn provide analytics on audience demographics, engagement metrics (likes, shares, comments), and the performance of your posts or ads.
Email marketing platforms: Email marketing services track open rates, click-through rates, and subscriber actions to help you understand how your email campaigns perform.
CRM systems: CRM systems store customer data, including contact information, purchase history, interactions with your brand, and any notes or feedback from customer service interactions.
Sales data: Sales data provides insights into customer buying behavior, popular products or services, and sales trends.
Surveys and feedback forms: Surveys and feedback forms collect direct input from customers, helping you understand their needs, preferences, and satisfaction levels.
Market research: This involves gathering data from various sources to understand market trends, customer preferences, and competitive landscapes.
Third-party data: You can also obtain data from third-party sources, such as demographic data providers, to enhance your understanding of your target audience.

Also Read: What is Text Analysis?

What is Data Analytics in Marketing?

Data analysis in marketing refers to collecting, processing, and analyzing data obtained from multiple digital resources and arriving at inferences that can aid objective decision-making.

This practice encourages a data-driven approach toward marketing to eliminate sources of bias, prejudice, or unintentional missing out on certain potential customers. Thus, data analysis enhances the efficiency and efficacy of marketing objectives and strategies.

How is Marketing Data Analyzed?

Analysis of marketing data is more than a list of tools. It requires specific steps to arrive at the most accurate and credible insights. Here’s how you analyze marketing data effectively.

Determine why you wish to analyze the data and what you intend to achieve. Select the appropriate metrics that align with your objectives.
Choose the section of the audience that you wish to target. The audience must be enough to provide sufficient data to calculate the metrics.
Determine the raw data required to arrive at the metrics and select an appropriate tool to collect it. Numerous tools are available, such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, Sprout Social, Semrush, and MailChimp.
You can analyze the data using in-house tools or online platforms. Choose the right techniques and visualization methods to understand the metrics’ variation across the target audience clearly. You can also use features that recommend actions based on the results.
Use the results to adjust the marketing strategy and place measures to assess the effect of the modified strategy.

Why is Data Analytics for Marketing Important?

Marketing analysis is crucial as it helps reach people beyond the traditional limits and enables greater sales conversion and brand exposure. Here are the chief reasons why marketing analytics continues to thrive.

Marketing analytics helps to gain objective evidence of a product’s popularity and who prefers it so you can reach more people in this target audience.
You can gather data about user feedback and preferences regarding marketing and product strategies and modify your approach to streamline the user experience.
Marketing analysis enables a data-driven calculation of the return on investment in marketing efforts and pinpoints the gaps or areas of over-expenditure.
You can use historical and current data to plan and implement future marketing strategies.
Marketing analysis helps provide information on how well your social media interactions are doing and how much they contribute to your sales.
You can analyze the type of marketing strategy that works best and focus your efforts and money on it.
Marketing analysis can help with A/B testing, where you provide two options for products and services or prices and asses the preferences based on demographics to choose the best option.

Also Read: What is Cohort Analysis? Types, Benefits, Steps, and More

Models of Marketing Analytics

Marketing analytics utilizes different models depending on the type of data to be analyzed and the metrics to be calculated. Let us look at some of the popular models you can use.

Descriptive models: They use data from previous campaigns and analyze them to formulate future marketing decisions. Statistical analysis techniques are implemented to extract values such as standard deviation, mean, correlations, and distributions. These models help identify trends and patterns and understand current events.
Prescriptive models: Prescriptive models are used when you wish to understand how to proceed with the results that you have got. They process data using complex algorithms and produce recommendations based on the results. You can choose these models when the data is too extensive, and the metrics may need to be simplified to comprehend.
Predictive models: Predictive models are true to their name, meaning they help predict the future based on previous and current data. You can use these models to know how a particular sales trend will proceed in the next five years or how the audience for a specific event may increase in the upcoming year. Typically, the models identify the trends and then extrapolate the data for a specified period to arrive at values that can help plan future actions.

How Businesses Use Data Analytics for Marketing

There has been a boom in the usage of marketing analytics to drive business decisions. Businesses want to know exactly whom to approach, what to sell, how, and when. Marketing analytics has risen to the occasion and provided businesses with a critical tool to facilitate and optimize their processes. Here are some reasons businesses have begun adopting marketing analytics more than ever.

Customer Behavior

Businesses, especially those established years ago, have a good idea of whom they want to sell their services and products to. However, marketing analytics helps them quantify and visualize this data in a manageable fashion. Businesses can narrow the target audience, identify gaps, and expand their reach accordingly. They can also detect the timelines during a year when the customers prefer certain products or customizations, such as during festivals. This helps them adjust their marketing and production strategies accordingly.

Social Media Interactions

Social media has become the first point of contact between potential customers and businesses. However, posting blindly on social media accounts without suitable formatting and customizing is useless. Businesses use marketing analytics to note their customers’ interactions, comments, mentions, feedback, and sentiment analysis when interacting with the business account. Further, businesses can design and run targeted campaigns to promote their products among suitable crowds.

New Opportunities

Marketing analytics helps to gauge customer preferences and identify opportunities for developing new products or designs by integrating customer feedback. For example, LinkedIn developed and introduced the feature of scheduling posts after noting and working on the multiple posts published by their customers on the social website.

Innovative Strategies and Revenue Streams

Competitor analysis done using marketing analytics helps gauge the positives and negatives of the competitor businesses. This information can be used to identify the inefficiencies and develop new strategies to tackle the gaps. Such actions can lead to new revenue streams not initially detected due to a need for more information about customer needs.

Increased Personalization

Personalization has become important for a brand to thrive, especially among the GenZ and GenAlpha crowd. They want the marketing to identify exactly what they want to provide, only the relevant details. As a result, marketing analytics uses tracking, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to target the audience, adjust the marketing strategy per the demographics, and showcase the most relevant products to the viewers.

Prediction and Planning

Marketing analysis helps predict possible sales figures for a certain period. This helps with planning the production of certain products and services. For example, suppose it is predicted that the sales of red and blue balloons will increase by a certain percentage around July 4th in the next year. In that case, the production of the balloons can be planned accordingly to ensure sufficient stock.

Also Read: SQL for Data Analysis: Unlocking Insights from Data

What Skills Do You Need for Marketing Analytics?

Marketing analytics is a dynamic field that requires knowledge of multiple skills to facilitate an informed decision that aligns with the company’s strategic goals.

Here are the essential skills you must possess to excel in this field:

Conversant with statistical analysis and data visualization
Expertise in one or more data analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Mail Chimp, Omnibug, Adobe Cloud Debugger, Semrush, Adobe Launch, and Google Optimise
Knowledge about metrics such as sales revenue, website traffic, conversion rates, cost-per-clicks, customer retention rates, and social engagement
Proficient in tools such as advanced Excel, Tableau, and Power BI
Familiarity with marketing analytics for media, website, and email omnichannel marketing
Experience in campaign development and optimization
Conversant with attribution modeling, A/B testing, website performance optimization, traffic analysis, and conversion management
Excellent communication and business report writing skills

Learn Data Analytics for a Successful Career in Marketing

Marketing analytics comprises a deep understanding of what a business sells and to whom it sells. As a data analyst for marketing, you must have a solid grasp of the industry and the ability to gather, analyze, and apply data to achieve business goals. Completing a carefully curated data analytics program equips you with these skills.

This course covers crucial aspects like building data pipelines, data mining, statistical data analysis, data acquisition and manipulation, and Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) workflows. You will learn to use tools like Power BI, SQL, and Tableau for data analytics and visualization. Enroll today to prepare yourself with the guidance of industry experts and get hands-on training.