Love Data and Marketing? Here’s Why You Should Switch to Marketing Analytics
- What is Marketing Analytics?
- How Does Marketing Analytics Help a Business?
- Why is Marketing Analytics a Must-have Skill?
- How Brands Use Marketing Data Analytics to Drive Business
- Career as a Marketing Analyst: Skills, Certification, and Career Growth
- Marketing Analytics Certification and Courses
Did you know? A prospective buyer needs to see a marketing message at least seven times in 18 months to penetrate his consciousness and encourage him to buy, according to Dr Jeffrey Lant’s Rule of Seven. Think about it: how many times have you seen a particular ad while scrolling through your feed or while watching the news? And when did you make the decision to click on it to shop? It perhaps happened very organically, but it is this sort of insight that marketing analytics focuses on, to discern patterns in consumer behavior to inform their next campaign approach. Pretty neat, huh?
Consumers in 2022 live in an omni-channel, nay an omni-digital world. The PWC- Global Consumer Insights Pulse Survey – June 2021 shows that 44% of consumers shopped via mobile phones or smartphones, and 42% shopped online via smart home assistants like Alexa. Consumers interact with brands across various digital touch points – social media, push notifications, email, and more – all connected via a single number or email address. Therefore, brands have enormous amounts of consumer data that offer insights such as buying patterns, product preferences, usage, and more. Marketers access these important insights with an organised effort and tools to help. It is this skill set that can drive business decisions. It also explains why companies seek talented analysts the world over.
What is Marketing Analytics?
The world of marketing analytics uses maths, predictive modeling and machine learning to reveal insights from consumer data. This reveals a greater understanding of the consumer’s mind and user behaviour, which in turn helps any business optimise how a product or service is positioned to improve sales.
How Does Marketing Analytics Help a Business?
- It answers vital questions about marketing spends and campaign performance
- Insights derived from big data enable business leaders to make efficient decisions
- It helps businesses plan for the future. With predictive insights, brands can create effective product and marketing strategies, tweak these strategies based on results and improve ROI
- Companies and marketers no longer need to guess consumer behavior patterns — the data shows it all. So, brands can now interact with customers, create excellent customer experiences and build meaningful relationships
Why is Marketing Analytics a Must-have Skill?
The Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2021 revealed that 11% of the entire budget is being allocated for marketing analytics across industries. The Gartner State of Marketing Budgets also indicates that CMOs are shifting offline budgets into digital spend, with digital commerce ranking #1 and marketing analytics ranking #4 in marketing spends.
The current marketing trends clearly show that the top strategic business priority for the next two years is growth, with more enterprises choosing digital business as a means to grow. Every digital touchpoint will offer raw consumer data, and these analytics – website or social media – cannot function in silos. Deriving the correlations across marketing channels, creating customer journeys, executing result-driven campaigns will drive success in a rapidly evolving economy. Thereby making it even more relevant and analysts vital to overall success. More on that later.
How Brands Use Marketing Data Analytics to Drive Business
1. WestJet Elevates Digital Marketing and Improves Customer Experience
The Canadian airline WestJet offers travelers a premium experience with lower fares. The company uses Adobe’s suite and its marketing analytics to understand its audiences, discover newer ones, and offer personalized experiences. As a result, the senior analysts at WestJet measured the performance of every campaign from email and display to search engine and social media for its online bookings and ads. The creative marketing team at WestJet also utilizes these insights to tailor online experiences to give customers ads based on their locations and deliver personalized messages.With increased bookings, they are also able to pass on their savings to customers in the form of discounts, etc.
2. Sephora’s Data-Driven Approach
The world’s leading beauty retailer, Sephora drives 2.3 million visits monthly to its site. It is known for creating customer-centered experiences, both online and offline. Sephora committed to AI and machine learning for its digital marketing early on. From personalized email offers and “you might also like” product carousels, to newly-released product recommendations under the “new for you” section, Sephora has done it all. The brand customizes the user experience and homepage for each shopper based on a mix of past purchases and browsing activity. These efforts have resulted in 80% of surveyed Beauty Insiders admitting complete loyalty to Sephora.
With more enterprises integrating their inventory and shifting to omni-channel strategies, a marketing analytics role in the data science or marketing division is a must-have.
Career as a Marketing Analyst: Skills, Certification, and Career Growth
According to a recent survey, only 1.9% of companies believe they have the right people to leverage marketing analytics fully. There is a clear gap in talent, skill set and technical expertise that most companies are looking for.
Key Skills Required for a Career in Marketing Analytics:
- Analysts need to be data-driven. They need to be proficient with marketing data analytics tools and marketing automation software. This includes Excel, Google Analytics, Salesforce, Marketo, Pardot, Tableau, SAP, Visual IQ, SEMRush, Hubspot, the social media stack of popular networks
- They need to develop an understanding of AI, machine learning, and marketing stacks
- Data visualization and immersive storytelling are crucial in marketing analytics. Analysts need to present big data, consumer trends, marketing demographics, and more through graphs
- Market analysts need to be strong communicators with good creative thinking skills and problem-solving capabilities
Career Options in Marketing Analytics
LinkedIn job search indicates around 76,000 jobs in the United States alone for marketing analysts in 2022. A report by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) determines that over the next three years, an additional 2.7 million new jobs will be created in data science and analytics. Additionally, every industry be it entertainment, travel, fashion or manufacturing need analysts – the scope is that vast. A few popular career options for marketing analysts are:
- Marketing analysts
- Data analysts
- Digital marketing analysts
- Social media analysts
- Business analysts
- Marketing data analysts
According to Glassdoor, the average salary for a Marketing Analyst is $73,954. PayScale confirms that an entry-level marketing analyst with less than 1 year’s experience can potentially earn a base salary of $51,209. While a mid-career analyst can earn an average compensation of $68,230, an experienced one can earn up to $76,794. One can grow to become a Vice President – Marketing, over the years.
Marketing Analytics Certification and Courses
Marketing analytics can be a creatively-fulfilling role with analysts exploring consumer insights and crafting rewarding marketing campaigns. Additionally, multiple industries are looking for analysts and a variety of career paths are open. A good course will only add a competitive advantage to your career trajectory. A career in this field requires a Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree in business administration, specializing in marketing or business analytics. Data science courses and specialized marketing analytics certifications are also highly recognized.
Emeritus also offers marketing professionals comprehensive learning through the Kellogg Applied Marketing Analytics Certification program. This tactical certification equips professionals with an understanding of predictive models and enables them to analyze performance in real-time. Professionals learn how to make effective business decisions using data and analytics, and work hands-on with marketing analytics tools. Speak to us today to find out how you can advance your career in marketing analytics!
By Janice Godinho
