3 Things Your Marketing Analytics Solution MUST Deliver

How do you know if a MarTech vendor’s solution is really going to allow your brand or agency to achieve its goals for data-driven marketing?

That’s a question that Matt Hertig is uniquely positioned to answer. As the CEO of Alight Analytics and the creator of ChannelMix, Matt has been helping marketers get control of their media data for more than 10 years — longer than just about anybody else in our industry.

Matt is going to share his insights during an exclusive, first-of-its-kind forum on Feb. 23 with Elissa Fink, CMO of Tableau Software, the world leader in visual analytics. Elissa and Matt, two of the industry’s best minds, will share best practices with marketers at New York City’s Downtown Dream hotel.

Specifically, Matt’s going to be talking about the three principles for success in marketing analytics.

These three concepts aren’t just talking points. They’re fundamental truths that Alight has learned in 10 years of helping brands and agencies around the world.

If you’re searching for a better technology solution for managing your media data and driving true analysis, you need something that delivers in the three following areas:

1 – Efficiency

Reporting is a miserable process for so many marketers because they’re forced to manually download media data from dozens or even hundreds of channels, then cut and paste it into a spreadsheet.

We call this the Data Death March, and it’s an expensive, inefficient waste of your resources.

A proper analytics solution will automate your data collection for you, combining all your marketing data channels into a single source of truth. That way, you can reinvest your time in higher-value activities such as analysis and strategy development.

One distinction we should note here: Reporting is a two-step process consisting of data management first and then visualization.

Of course, reports and dashboards are essential tools for understanding and communicating your marketing results. But you can’t create an effective, accurate visualization unless you’ve first collected, consolidated and cleaned your media data in an analysis-ready format.

Our solution, ChannelMix, does just that. Our clients can then take their perfected data and easily create gorgeous dashboards with Tableau.

2 – Value

Let’s say you’ve found the right technology solution for your business. The next step is to make sure the rest of your resources are correctly aligned, so that you’re deriving the full value of that investment.

Here at Alight, we stress the 4 Ps of marketing analytics: people, process, plan and platform.

In our case, the platform is ChannelMix. But we combine it with a time-tested process for monitoring and automating data capture, guided by a plan tailored to each client. Namely, what are they trying to measure, and how is that going to drive their company’s strategy?

And don’t forget about the people. Alight employs a seasoned team of technologists and marketing experts. They’re able to help clients develop and execute the best possible strategy for their companies.

You might choose to employ your own team in-house, and that can be a good option, too.

Just be wary of vendors who say their solution is completely self-service. Even the most elegantly designed applications have their limits. You’re going to require good people, either internally or externally, to create the value you need. You’ll need professionals who can write code, who can create and manage complex data structures and who understand the intricacies of marketing data.

Of course, by subscribing to ChannelMix and letting our team assist you, you could avoid the headache of trying to find new employees with those skill sets.

3 – Revenue

The last step is where the fun happens. You’ve got your marketing data right. And you’ve put the resources in place to get the most out of that data.

Now you get to dig into your numbers and search for opportunities to expand market share, grow sales or achieve some other business goal.

A best-in-class visualization tool like Tableau is essential here. A well-built dashboard will empower you to uncover insights that might get lost otherwise. And those insights should help you drive revenue to new heights.

That’s the ultimate test of marketing analytics and any solution or vendor working in this space: Data should help you make money.

Eager to leverage your media data for more powerful marketing? We can help. Let’s talk!