Analytics and reporting are the hot new trends in marketing right now, mainly because senior leaders now want insights to be surfaced at a higher level.
Why is data analysis important? Simple really, the more we know, the easier it is to make decisions. For businesses to be effective, data needs to be organised, visible and easy to understand by the end user. This is where marketing operations and analytics come in with their dashboards, reports and insights.
According to Salesforce, 88% of marketers now use marketing analytics to grow digital customer engagement. A study from Villanova University says 21% of businesses say marketing analytics is the single most effective way to obtain a competitive edge.
The power of marketing analytics
Marketing analytics benefits both marketers and consumers. An analyst can help businesses gain an integrated view of their data, but they can also optimise their campaigns for a better return on investment, create better segmentation of customers, and drive efficiencies. In other words, analysts can help employees really understand what’s happening in their departments and with their customers.
For example, I used to work at a pricing data company that needed assistance with its lead process. The sales team picked out the best leads and let the rest fall by the wayside. Once I knew why the bad leads were bad, I was able to adapt the trigger points to stop them from coming up in the first place. Within one year of launch, and combined with enhanced sales training, the company’s revenues doubled.
As you’re creating better process, it’s important to think about so-called ‘dirty dashboards,’ where there are a lot of old, open leads clogging the system. This throws off the reporting. So, as you’re creating a better process, remember that the answer isn’t deleting things, it’s quarantining and categorising. You can always learn from data even if it’s a bad lead.
All this leads to less noise and targeted insights. It also helps employees know exactly what their tasks are, because a clean and simple dashboard is easy to operate.
When companies don’t understand and track their customer journey, they can’t optimise and will often deliver the wrong message at the wrong time. At Hunterlodge we encourage the use of dashboards, reporting and analytics to ensure everyone has that top-line view. Visibility pushes accountability and awareness and encourages buy-in from sales teams and senior leadership. We can also train your team to use their tech to its full potential, adding more value.
What’s coming down the road?
Moving forward we’re going to see a major focus on the middle user in marketing technology, especially on the agency side—middle users can be senior business leaders, or they could be regular platform users.
We will also see an increase in the use of tool specialisation. For example, big platforms like Marketo and Pardot already have integrated tools that can create things like deliberate variants of webpages for a specific audience or specialist eCommerce tools that handle multi-currency conversions.
A report from Forrester Consulting found that sophisticated marketers who deploy five or more tools in a complete marketing analytics stack are 39% more likely to see improvement in the overall performance of their marketing programs.
As a builder and creator in marketing technology, we’re going through an interesting time. With a more complex and accomplished middle user in mind, we can really start to push the boundaries.
We are technology agnostic and specialise in aligning systems so they work effectively for you. If you want some help, advice or some consultancy, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with kim.mclellan@hunterlodge.co.uk
