Marketing Analytics: Trends in 2021

Marketing Analytics: Trends in 2021

With the increase in the amount of day-to-day data, it's becoming necessary for every organization to go for their customer data analytics. The survival of these organizations hugely depends on the data. Therefore, a data-driven analysis supports the future growth of the business. Information technology combined with computer science has created an impact on marketing analytics. It made possible easy access to the data and the structural analysis. Data analytics, therefore, is supported through artificial intelligence, statistical modelling, and machine learning.

It's the world of AI and data science. When it is the blooming trend of the era, why not apply some AI over the marketing analytics platform. With the development of this science, markets are improving in varied aspects of marketing analytics trends. Organizations can now improve their ad targets, the content of the ads, increase customer lifetime value, etc. The report states that the Marketing Analytics market is expected to reach USD 4.68 billion by 2026 from USD 2.13 billion in 2020.

Several analysts and reviewers have discussed the changes that marketing analytics will face over the coming years. Few are the associated changes that the top minds have predicted for 2021.

1. Social media marketing

There is a shift from traditional marketing towards social media in the current years. Owing to the development of applications, like a chat box and several others, advertising through social media has doubled over previous years. It is an estimated fact that machines generate 20% of the content. Therefore, social media have emerged as the primary medium of advertising.

2. Rise of real-time analytics

The working of the organizations can truly be changed through the power of real-time analytics. These types of data let the organizations know the present status and might then plan for future actions. It deals with the current information rather than scrolling through records of past events or experiences. To build better customer relationships, the data is to be collected through various customer channels to provide a clear picture of the customer needs.

3. Securing marketing data

The outburst of the global pandemic has led to the digitization of every business. As a result, enormous data gets generated that needs to be secured somehow. The year 2021 will see a rise in interest of the markets towards securing the market data. The investment is to be made by the enterprises towards data encryption and protection to provide access controls. Hence, it will lead to increased chances of partnering with services providing cybersecurity services.

4. Securing customer privacy

Customer information like their location, billing information, and email might become a threat if it gets leaked. Therefore customer privacy is another factor that has to focus on the rising amount of digital businesses. Organizations have to undergo safety measures to remove unnecessary information once the customer leaves the platform.

5. AI mediated creation

The advancement of technology has marked its importance in every sector of society. Even in marketing, it is making its impact globally. Content creating was a burdensome task for the marketing teams as a huge effort lies towards its creation. But with Artificial Intelligence, digitalization of the contents will be common towards the end of 2021, producing more realistic images and video. Through AI, large content variation can be prepared and tested against specific groups. The advantage lies in the fast optimization of the campaigns.

6. The shift towards predictive analytics

As time passes, predictive analytics is the prediction of future outcomes. With the advent of AI, markets will predict the future growth of markets through ancient data. " Look-alike" and "affinity scoring" are the two types of modelling approaches that will be applied. The former method will identify people that mimic the target audiences, and the latter will specify the customer's interest based on their browsing history. The AI models keep on improving with time towards more accurate future predictions. An application of AI reported reaching a dollar 11 billion by 2022.

7. Investment towards the collection of first-party data

With all those cookies blinking at the visit of every site, marketers were very well collecting the customer data. But in 2020, an announcement strikes the organizations that collecting first-party data will no longer be that easy. It was Google who announced the removal of cookies from chrome within two years. This removal will be a setback for the advertisers as they will fail to target their ads and, therefore, unable to build audiences.

8. Reliance on third party sources

With the advancing blockage of the first-party data, organizations will have to shift towards their data collection strategy from third-party sources. Also, the data being from direct customer interaction, the first-party sources always have a drawback. Therefore, investment in third-party sources by the organizations will increase, which will provide a clear view of the customer data supporting the first-party data.

A survey carried out by a renowned group reported that a total of $11.9 billion is invested in third-party sources by the U.S markets the previous year. Also, 6.1% of this investment was reported in the year before. This growth of investment curve highlights the 

The Covid era: pandemic over analytics

Speaking of the entry of digital technology into human welfare, we always end up with the word 'COVID-19". The global pandemic shook up the whole world, affecting the business and commerce sector. Despite developing vaccines, the pandemic sought to remain in life, driving the businesses to go digital. Hence, a concern arises regarding the data and analytics for every enterprise and their future growth. In another way, this is the "new normal." Keeping in view the pandemic, a lot of opportunities arise for the digital world of businesses. 

1. Cloud-based data analytics

Enterprises were not accepting the idea of moving their data to the cloud initially. However, as cloud technology gets smoother with time, many organizations have been found to transfer their data into the cloud. With the concept of homomorphic encryption, direct analysis of the data stored in the cloud is possible without decrypting the data. Therefore, it further aids the data security process. A report by Gartner has mentioned the importance of the cloud for 90% of data. It also reports that AI applications will increase five times by 2023 and analytics-driven innovation by 2022.

2. Data Analytics process will be generalized

Earlier it was the responsibility of the IT team or the computer science team to carry on the data analytics process. But, there is a rise in data and the dependence of every business on AI-driven analytics. Therefore, a more generalized approach is needed to develop. Also, the development of tools for self-analysis will focus on an easy understanding of the data. Thus, when technology and computing are advancing, why not the companies develop some business intelligence models for themselves. It will help marketers gain a proper insight into their data through pattern identification and collaboration with team members.

3. Faster and increase automation of AI

Development in information and technology will create a faster and automated mode of AI and machine learning. The future will see its impact by 2021, which will produce more accurate results for businesses. It will benefit the organization as it can see the trends ahead of its time and go with the market trends at an early phase.

Another automated process that will mark its importance is Natural Language Processing (NLP) which translates the natural query language into results. Integrating it with a computer, NLP can now sense human language through customer conversations. Focusing on social conversations, NLP uses that as real-time data and can now predict the changes the customers want. It allows the brands to apply the changes over the product through its campaign.

Gartner forecast reveals the use of automated operations over around 75% of enterprises.

4. Shift towards personalization of customers need

With the pandemic still in force, people are struggling to meet their needs through online services. 2020 has seen the importance of digitization, where even the people who have minimal knowledge of the internet go online. It has increased the online surfing of products and services by the customers. With the advent of data technology, the shifting from traditional to online shopping has benefited the organization as they now know the requirements of their customers. As a result, more personalized products will come, and the future will focus on generating personalized services.

Therefore it's a clear aspect that by 2021, customer personalization will be a vital strategy for business growth.

5. Increase in the landscape of customer data

The customer data platforms (CDP) have been in much demand since 2020 because of the digitization of companies. The CDP holds information of all things ranging from sources to customer information. As a customer enjoying the online services, we all leave behind important information. The organizations easily can track the entire customer's surfing history and their online footprint, storing their interactions with the brands. 

Therefore the year 2021 will see a rise in the CDP, with more data inflow. The database will need to get updated with every input of data from various channels. After the update, the data gets compared with customer profiles providing better engagement with the customers. The products and services a company delivers to the customers are as important as the experience they provide. Around 84% of customers have reported this fact.

Challenges associated with the marketing trends

Although digitization has impacted lives, it has created an opportunity for marketers to develop strong relationships with their customers. Proper engagement of the company and the customer is promising. Therefore, the marketers are working towards achieving this goal. Advanced data and analytics are to implement to gain knowledge of such relationships. The review reported in one of the articles "'Marketing Intelligence Report: Data and Analytics Trends to Drive Future Growth," discussed the importance and challenges that marketing analytics faced. 

• The complexity of marketing analytics

People tend to be more active nowadays. It results in their constant exploration of various services like TikTok, Whatsapp, Facebook, etc. Social sites are being experimented with continuously by marketers to reach out to their customers. A report states that around 21 marketing platforms are reaching customers. However, the aim is to deal with the data rather than dealing with the customers physically. With these platforms, the data generated is very high. But, it creates an opportunity for the marketers to gather the required consented information for understanding the customer behaviour. However, it stands as a challenge for marketers: the broad range of data along with the volume of cross-channel resources. 

The survey also reports that 52% of the organizations have average or poor analytics infrastructure.

• Data and Analytics: a hurdle towards growth

A ranking of the most critical barriers in company growth hovered around the challenges associated with data management. Data analytics follows through efficient data collection from varied sources and is a time-consuming process. Data analysis is a tedious process that further results in error-prone outcomes or results. The survey reported that 43% of the markets devoted a week or a month to collecting and cleaning data. Also, 33% of the marketers were confident regarding their error-free predictions. Hence, the marketers couldn't devote much time to analyzing the insights as much dedication is towards data processing.

Here comes the application of AI, which the marketers are increasingly planning to apply or have already been in use for their automated processing of data. The survey also reports that AI is the most promising factor for the company's growth by around 92% of the marketers in the survey.

• Data-driven future shows a bright path.

We have seen quite an improvement in the digital field in the past few years. Although the internet and technology marked their presence in most areas, the overall landscape of the digital market was not that high. It was only through the expansion of the business into e-commerce services, Customer engagement, and all the AI-driven sector that digitization has seen some growth. It's all in the data and its measurement strategies that the marketers will understand where to devote their attention or what trends will drive the future. According to the survey report, two factors: data accessibility and veracity, are the most important for marketing success.

Therefore the marketers are more focused on engaging with the customers, understanding the performance and effective spending of resources. Reports state that 60% of the marketers get support through executive leadership, 58% have been applying AI-driven data analytics approaches, and 57% applied marketing analytics platforms to get better insights.