If marketing is the beating heart of your business, then analytics is the stethoscope that allows you to hear its rhythm. You must consistently observe the inner workings of your marketing in order to fully optimize your tactics for your unique brand and audience. Thanks to technology and tools that make analytics more trackable and accessible, more marketers than ever are uncovering insights to power their marketing. 84 percent of B2B marketers say their organization invests in analytics and an even higher percentage says it’s very important to their marketing. If you’re still in the 16 percent that has yet to follow suit, here are five reasons you need to start.
1. To Personalize
Audiences crave personalized, targeted experiences that are only made possible when you employ analytics. Even as a B2B brand, it’s important to personalize your marketing for the decision maker behind your target businesses. Analytics allow you understand those individuals enough to reach them where they are, when they’re most responsive, and on the platforms they use to connect. This understanding can span from knowing what form of communication they prefer to key details like how they respond to the calls to action within that communication. By using these findings to adapt to your audience, you can move them closer to the sale by delivering marketing content they want.
2. To Prioritize Leads
Busy B2B companies know that not every single lead is a good fit for your business. Guiding a lead through the buyer funnel takes valuable time and resources. That’s why you likely have multiple personas that explicitly define which audience members are highest up on your sales team’s priority list—they’re your ideal customer, the ones who lead to a higher return on investment (ROI). Analytics allow you to use behavior to reveal this ideal customer among a sea of leads. Tracking website visitors, for instance, tells you information as specific as what company is viewing your pages, what they’re most interested in on your site, and how long they stay. After tracking analytics, you can validate and score your leads, then direct your resources toward the leads that are most likely to make their way through the buyer funnel.
3. To Prioritize Tactics
Each audience responds differently to different marketing tactics. Analytics reveal which tactics are most likely to appeal to your audience. Collecting information on the tactics that strongly resonate with your audience will allow you to drive future strategies in the direction of more efficient marketing. An example of this is collecting data on lead generation. Is your sales team drawing more leads from email marketing, PPC campaigns, or print marketing? Once analytics give you the answer to that question, you can strategically delegate your resources by prioritizing the ones with the most promising data.
4. To Validate
We’ve all heard the infamous question before. The one your CEO asks—“What’s the value in marketing?” Marketers who track analytics can answer this question with gusto because they have empirical proof that marketing brings valuable benefits and ROI to the business. This proof becomes increasingly important during budget discussions. When you use data (i.e., leads per campaign, purchase amount per conversion) to illustrate real results of specific strategies, the C-suite will be more likely to allocate the budget you need to maintain and even expand your efforts.
5. To Enhance
Analytics don’t need to simply inform your internal strategies. They also have a place in your external marketing materials. One of the best ways to prove to your audience that your brand is effective at what you do, is to show them through analytics. Collect data on a successful client and outline the results in a case study or compile your best statistics into an infographic. Audiences won’t always connect with marketing speak, but positive data can be the hook they need to choose your business over others to fulfill their needs. When you share positive results in a manner audiences can easily understand, they’re more likely to trust your business, making it all the easier to guide them down the buyer funnel.
With the clear, valuable benefits of using analytics in your marketing, it’s no surprise that more B2B marketers than not are turning to them to drive ROI. Are you convinced you need to join them? Chat with your marketing partner about getting a program implemented or get started on your own with a solution like Google Analytics. There’s even a chance your current marketing automation program offers simple analytics. In no time you’ll start reaping the benefits of using analytics in your marketing.
