Marketing Analytics: A Must Have in 2014

Listen up, marketing gurus! There is a good chance your team may be missing one important component: an analytics expert. A recent study from The Online Marketing Institute revealed 37% of executives overseeing online marketing campaigns are unhappy or dissatisfied with the level of digital analytics skills from their teams.

This frustration is likely driven by a desire to not only deploy effective campaigns, but also track, manage, and understand the performance of an initiative. Data analytics provide decision-makers with insight into strengths and weaknesses of campaigns, and help support future spending decisions based on ROI results.

As companies place more emphasis on data collection, analysis, and implementation, it is key for marketing professionals to understand the importance of analytics and learn how to incorporate new skills into their daily practices. Looking forward into 2014, OMI’s executive survey determined the most desirable skills and expertise for marketing professionals needed to fill the talent gap include:

• Analytics
• Mobile Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Social Media
• Marketing Automation
• SEO
• Digital Advertising

Many decision-makers feel their current teams are in need of an update on the latest trends and necessary skills to stand out from competition. The results revealed 76% of executives highly value analytics skills, but only 39% believe their teams are stronger in this area than the competition.

Why the Gap?

The focus on analytics is not a mind-blowing realization in the marketing world. There has been greater importance placed on data reports, trends, and hard performance statistics for some time, as marketers work to determine the ROI of all aspects of a campaign from start to finish. As analytics become more advanced and campaigns continue to expand across multiple channels, however, the skills and experience may struggle to keep up.

But have no fear! Marketing technology providers have acknowledged the trend and are working to make their solutions more user-friendly for the novice marketer as well as the seasoned professional looking to acquire new skills. With 34% of executives struggling to find workers with analytics experience, and 30% citing a lack of capable talent in the recruitment pools, it is necessary for businesses to select marketing technologies that generate the most advanced analytics while working seamlessly with existing technology.

Tie Calls Into Other Analytics

Call tracking technology is a valuable asset for marketing teams looking to beef up the accuracy of their analytics and ROI reports. When a campaign is launched, it is very easy to follow online activity and leads from such components as emails, social media, and website activity. Without call tracking solutions, however, marketing teams leave gaping holes in their marketing ROI reports which ignores important sources of phone leads (and the opportunities and revenue they generate) and places a less accurate monetary value on each channel’s performance.

And don’t think that phone leads are on the outs or fail to contribute significantly to revenue growth. Studies show inbound sales calls convert to revenue 10 times more than web leads. And with the rise of mobile technologies, phone calls are playing a huge role in customer engagement, interaction and brand awareness. With 77% of online shoppers preferring to speak to brand reps before completing a purchase, phone leads continue to make up a major piece of the ROI puzzle.

Therefore, call tracking technology is not only important for understanding overall marketing ROI, but should also be integrating into other marketing automation solutions for direct comparisons and more accurate reports.

Managing the most common marketing automation, CRM, and web analytics technologies to follow digital activity – such as Marketo, Salesforce and Google Analytics – have become second nature for most marketing professionals. Thus, call tracking technology that can be integrated quickly and easily with these solutions is a must-have. Because marketers are already comfortable with these marketing automation technologies, adding the call tracking solution is as easy as learning a new functionality within Google Analytics or Salesforce.

Now that we’ve made call tracking analytics so easy for you, there should be no excuse for incomplete reports or unclear marketing spend results in 2014. Rather, go enjoy the full picture of marketing ROI for swifter, more effective decision-making moving forward.

For a more in-depth look at how call tracking works with other solutions, check out the “Ifbyphone Universal Analytics Integration” webinar.