Should B2B Marketers be Don Draper or a Data Scientist?

Essentially there are two kinds of data. Data that measures stuff that happened and data that anticipates what is most likely to happen in the future. All told, there’s huge amounts of data (zettabytes! yottabytes!) available to marketers, yet many remain uncertain about how to make the most of it.
But that uncertainty might be drawing to a close. A new report by MarketingID entitled the 2015 State of Data-Driven Marketing Survey Report demonstrates that 64% of the marketers they surveyed intend to increase their data-driven marketing budgets over the next 12 months with nearly half of the same group allocating more than 10% of their budgets to analytics next year.

Follow the Money

Far and away, most marketers are investing in the kinds of data that look back, cannily using past successes to forge future plans. Fifty percent of marketers cited Web Analytics as their primary investment—a clear indication that the humble website remains a powerful tool for marketers seeking more data on web visitors.

The Future’s so Bright…

While the data shows that savvy marketers are increasingly making web analytics a cornerstone of their practice, it also shines a light into the near future. The Data-Driven Marketing report goes on to state that 33% of marketers mark Predictive Tools ad their top budget priority, a clear harbinger of future growth.

So Why Predictive Analytics?

It would seem that if the preponderance of marketers are making the most investment in web analytics, it would take a visionary to chart a course into the relatively undiscovered country that is predictive.
More likely, however, those making the move into predictive analytics are already well invested in the web with dedicated, documented processes for making the most of this valuable data. Predictive is the natural extension of web analytics: intelligent, algorithmic logic that anticipates a prospect’s propensity to engage with a marketer’s campaign.

What We Talk about When We Talk About Intent Data

At Madison Logic predictive begins with listening to more than 4 billion intent interactions of more than 400 million unique users and more than 2 million companies. But with or without intent data, marketing is moving inexorably to a data-driven practice. Creative solutions will depend heavily on the data scientists, ROI will only become an increasingly important metric. The 2015 State of Data-Driven Marketing Survey Report demonstrates that some marketers are already on the cutting edge, fusing the art of marketing with the science of data. We’ve come a long way from Don Draper.