If data is considered “the oil of the modern age,” then analytics is the combustion engine, allowing today’s marketing leaders to harness a formerly useless raw material and use it to drive their company forward. Marketing is a highly attractive career choice for many young professionals, thanks to the job versatility, stability and salary, with marketing positions earning an average of over $70,000 annually, according to Glassdoor. Marketers can get an additional leg up in the job market by mastering the newest marketing analytics tools prior to entering the workforce. The best way to do this is typically by obtaining an advanced degree.
For example, the Southern Illinois University (SIU) Carbondale online Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a concentration in Marketing program offers courses on modern marketing technology and techniques, such as Marketing Analytics and Digital Marketing. Obtaining this degree will signal to employers that graduates possess the knowledge necessary to excel in most roles.
What Are Marketing Analytics Tools?
Marketing analytics tools help marketing professionals handle a wide array of tasks related to the company’s website, social media pages or email marketing efforts. Marketers can also use analytics tools to create optimal campaigns and track the performance of campaigns.
The role of a marketer is simple: Bring in new sales and customers by promoting the company’s products or services. However, this task is much easier said than done. On a deeper level, marketers must constantly brainstorm and implement new creative marketing strategies that generate sales cost-efficiently. Achieving this requires A/B testing, audience segmentation, attribution modeling and many other techniques. This is where marketing analytics tools come into play.
Analytics tools help marketers gain greater precision over their campaigns, increasing the return on investment. Modern analytics tools make it easier for marketers to research target markets, measure consumer behavior and design campaigns. Today’s marketers can leverage artificial intelligence to wring even more insights out of their analytics.
How Is Artificial Intelligence Changing Marketing Analytics?
Artificial intelligence has made it possible to draw insights from large amounts of data. For marketers, this helps eliminate guesswork and allows them to make more data-driven decisions. In the past, marketers often had to rely on their gut instinct when making certain decisions. But, thanks to artificial intelligence, they can now leverage factors like customers’ demographic information, spending behavior and personal preferences. Armed with this data, marketers can create highly personalized campaigns on a large scale.
The role of artificial intelligence in marketing is also expanding quickly. According to Harvard Business Review, there are three approaches to analytics used in marketing:
- Descriptive: helps marketers understand what has happened in the past so that they can make better decisions in the future
- Predictive: helps marketers understand what may happen in the future based on historical and current data
- Prescriptive: tells marketers what they should be doing based on historical and current data
Descriptive analytics has been around for a long time, and predictive analytics is commonly used today. However, prescriptive analytics remains on the cutting edge and is likely to be the preferred type of analytics for future marketers.
Learn About Marketing Analytics in an Online MBA Marketing Program
Like most technologies, the world of marketing analytics is advancing rapidly. For emerging graduates, this creates an opportunity. By learning to use the most advanced marketing analytics tools, you can gain a leg up over others in the job market. The best way to signal your analytics prowess to employers is by obtaining an MBA.
For example, SIU Carbondale’s online MBA Marketing program teaches students the most up-to-date marketing techniques so they can play a role in a company’s success. This program even offers a Marketing Analytics course, which gives students an understanding of how structured and unstructured marketing data is obtained, validated and processed and how to use marketing analytics to make more data-driven decisions.
Learn more about Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s online MBA with a concentration in Marketing program.