Marketing Analytics’ Business Value Expected to Increase B2B Investments

According to survey results from ON24, a webinar marketing solution provider, B2B marketers are planning to increase their marketing analytics investments in 2015 as a result of the business value it’s been driving.

The data shows that 87 percent of B2B marketers intend to increase their investments in marketing analytics this year. Additionally, about 97 percent of respondents claim that analytics has made their business more successful.

“As marketers continue to rely on increasingly sophisticated tools, the integral role of data on all facets of marketing becomes more evident,” said Ken Robinson, chief marketing officer for ON24. “The results of our latest survey underscore the opportunity for all marketers to tap into the data available to them for enhanced lead generation programs that positively impact their bottom line.”

About 65 percent of respondents said that they have just the right amount of data for “big data” to be considered useful to their marketing initiatives. Through analytics, 86 percent of B2B marketers claim that they are able to measure how customers are interacting with their content.

But exactly how much money are marketers planning to funnel into analytics over the coming years?

Shifting the Focus to Data

The CMO Survey composed by Duke University found that the amount of money spent on analytics is expected to rise from 6.4 percent to 11.7 percent over the next three years.

“We observe that companies under-utilize the marketing analytics that they’ve requested and have available for decision-making,” said Christine Moorman, director of The CMO Survey. “So therefore it’s not surprising that marketing leaders also rate the contribution of marketing analytics to their company’s performance as decreasing as well. It’s clear that using marketing analytics remains a distinct challenge for companies — beyond the production of these sophisticated data.”

Moorman also goes on to note that marketing budgets are expected to grow by 8.7 percent over the next year, which is the sharpest growth in about three years.