While companies allocate a large amount of their marketing budgets to marketing analytics, organizations are still struggling to mine value from their analytics programs, according to a survey by research firm Gartner Inc.
Gartner surveyed 242 marketing analytics professionals from November to December 2012 to understand how organizations collect analyze and use customer data.
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Marketers, Gartner said, get value from data when they use analysis to develop and bring new products and services to market, gain better understanding of their target audience and optimize campaigns and online presence to raise conversion rates.
However in their interview of marketing professional, researchers found many companies “see their analytics operations as a bit chaotic.”
“A typical analytic tool inventory includes multiple cloud-based tools for Web, social, search engine marketing, advertising and email marketing,” the report said. “Only a small fraction of the organizations have stepped up to the challenge of integrating the analytics process and tools to get the big picture.”
Among Gartner’s recommends were the following:
- Development of marketing leaders that foster an analytics culture that seeks data to solve business problems
- Training marketers on how to effectively use data analysis to improve decision making
- Foster an environment in which even limited analytics expertise can be shared even to the point of having an internal consulting group that specializes in marketing
- Seek out external experts that can provide guidance on how to deploy analytics tools and transfer to appropriate staff how to effectively used these tool
View summary of Gartner’s Data Driven Marketing Survey 2013 here