The marketing landscape has changed dramatically over the last decade. New digital technologies and the proliferation of data have increased the need for businesses to better understand their customers and strategize their marketing activities to maximize RoI. Digital Marketing Analytics Technology is advancing rapidly today, becoming accessible to businesses and giving immense power to their hands. Marketers cannot ignore its strength. It also presents opportunities for software developers and technology vendors in the field. Understanding the market empowers you to make the right decision to guide your business in the right direction. This blog highlights how you can stay ahead with the key market trends and changing dynamics.
The rise of digital technology, a proliferation of data, along with SaaS applications and social media are completely changing the way marketing operates today. The emergence of effective digital marketing analytics platforms is reshaping marketing strategies in an unprecedented manner. Understanding digital marketing analytics (DMA) and utilizing various platforms to best fit your goals is becoming inevitable. Keeping that in mind, Quadrant Knowledge Solutions interacted with Rony Vexelman (VP of Marketing at Optimove) to get his expert perspective on the matter. This blog is a summary of this conversation along with the research conducted by QKS analysts. The motive is to highlight why businesses are thinking about DMA, key market trends and opportunities along with the potential risks in the market.
What is Digital Marketing Analytics?
Quadrant Knowledge Solutions defines Digital Marketing Analytics as “a self-contained, end-to-end analytics platform that assists organizations in improving user experiences across multiple digital channels by analyzing the performance of marketing initiatives. The platform collects data from various channels businesses use to connect and engage with customers, performs analysis, and provides visualization of gathered customer data to assist marketers in translating behavioral data into actionable insights through campaign optimization.”
In simple terms, Digital Marketing Analytics solutions help you evaluate, track, analyze, and optimize your marketing operations and campaigns. The technology helps businesses leverage data to uncover actionable insights on how to improve marketing efforts and returns. As expressed by Ganesh Sakhare (Analyst at QKS), “DMA enables marketers to drill down into the customer journey by analyzing web user behavior, which provides insight into their needs and expectations from a brand’s product. A digital marketing analyst assists a marketing team in monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing digital marketing campaigns. They collect data using various analytics and business intelligence tools, then analyze it to develop insights and recommendations for the team to share through reports and presentations.”
Emphasizing the importance of DMA platforms, Rony Vexelman says, “In a constantly changing world, you need to keep moving forward with the changes in the market. So, what you are looking for is a platform that allows you to know that your marketing is making a difference. It should help the company to measure the impact of what the marketing team has been doing vs a perceivable control that gives insights of what the investments are bringing in.”
Market Driving Trends and Challenges:
Recent years have brought major changes in all sectors in terms of changes in privacy regulations, generative AI, and automation. These factors have also been the driving trends in the world of marketing. Here is what Rony has to say about the changes in privacy regulations.
“The changes in consumer privacy and regulation are happening definitely for the better from the consumers’ perspective. However, it is a bit frustrating from a marketer’s perspective. Having to be able to measure things in a more responsible manner is going to be key. This is an important trend that we are seeing and will continue to see in the next years.”
Similarly, we are facing a future where generative AI and AI-powered technologies are making dashboards accessible and are democratizing their abilities to average users. Along with it, the need for automation is also increasing to help humans handle large data. They are giving accurate actionable insights on the performance of marketing efforts, how the campaigns should be modified based on responses from the target segment, and whether the market segment is correctly targeted or not. These quick actionable insights guiding marketers on where they should focus are becoming a key need in the marketing analytics landscape currently. All these trends advocate the need to invest in Digital Marketing Analytics technology for businesses.
But this is not enough to understand the market fully. We also need to look into some of the risk factors influencing the DMA market. Here is how Rony Vexelman described the risks and challenges in the DMA market.
“AI is not going to take over human jobs, but I do believe that the skills required to do marketing will change. there is a challenge and risk for companies that do not look into it and adapt. You must develop the ability to adapt and maximize the tools that you have.”
Moreover, over-reliance on tools is another risk factor. “AI and other marketing tools cannot be relied on for everything. There has to be the right combination of machine and human. A machine can give insights, but humans have to be there to interpret them. Humans need to guide them to deliver results as per the business goals and expectations. So, companies that think to wing it and simply invest in fancy tools without strategizing for using them to align with the goals and expectations can find it challenging.”
Lastly, another challenge is the change itself. In the words of Rony, “Change is scary. People are traditionalists by nature. We want to keep doing the same things we have done to survive. As technology advances, you must get over old mindsets to get what you wish for. So, resistance to this change is one of the main challenges faced by the companies, especially when the market demands to evolve as the technology changes.”
For the End Users and Technology Vendors:
Hence, adapting the evolving technology in the form of Digital Marketing Technology is inevitable for your marketing efforts. However, the question remains for the end-users of this platform as to how to choose the right platform. Here are some of the things we suggest looking for in DMA solutions:
- Unified User Content: As Rony suggests, you want a platform that can unify and look into the customer data and all the other crucial data points to allow you to look into and query it (coded or non-coded) as per your need.
- Analytics on Marketing efforts: In the words of Rony, “you should look for the platform that allows you to know if your marketing efforts are making any difference. It should help the company measure the impact of what the marketing team has been doing vis-à-vis a perceivable control giving insights on what the investments are bringing in.”
- Predictive Analytics: You want to have insights to understand the possibilities of conversion, account prioritization, and engagement.
Ganesh explains that DMA platforms include advanced analytics such as predictive, traffic, conversions, engagement, click-through rate (CTR), and site load speed to provide businesses with actionable insights. Digital marketing analytics is powered by an integrated source of customer journey data, allowing organizations to analyze and score campaign performance more quickly.
We are increasingly looking at digital marketing analytics companies providing platforms that go above and beyond just the value matrices and offer more sophisticated and personalized functionalities such as omnichannel marketing management, customer journey design and optimization, and traffic sourcing. You must evaluate all these features against your business needs and choose the platform or a combination of DMA tools that suit them.
Lastly, from the point of view of the software developers and technology vendors, Rony highlights one crucial opportunity that the market presents to them.
“The technology providers need to behave more as trusted advisors. If we agree that the market and technology are constantly changing, then the buyers are themselves confused. They are also trying to respond in the manner they think will work. So, if you are simply trying to sell your product, it may not be the right move. By becoming their trusted advisor, you need to bridge the gap between the challenge they are facing and the solution that might help solve it. It builds trust. You are not limiting yourself to just adding new features in the product or engaging in creative branding, but you are building the trust of your clients.”
The future of marketing with DMA is a wise combination of humans and machines. The more technology makes things accessible and flexible, the more independent will be your marketing team in monitoring, evaluating, and optimizing their efforts in real-time.
QKS constantly keeps track of what is happening in the Digital Marketing Analytics landscape with the in-depth market research conducted by its expert analysts, TechTalk video series, SPARK Matrix, and many more. Connect with us to find out more.
Author:
Vaishnavi Dave, Content Writer at Quadrant Knowledge Solutions
