Why you need marketing analytics, not web analytics

While web analytics provides useful insight into website performance, it doesn’t give marketers the richer data needed to understand how campaigns are actually performing. Marketing analytics helps marketers connect campaign data to leads, customers, and revenue

Table of Contents

• The Difference Between Web Analytics and Marketing Analytics
• The Marketer’s Measurement Challenge
• Why Marketing Analytics Matter
• What Marketing Analytics Can Do For You
• Frequently Asked Questions About Marketing Analytics

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The Difference Between Web Analytics and Marketing Analytics

So what exactly makes marketing analytics different than web analytics? HubSpot’s former CMO Mike Volpe can clarify:

“Web analytics measure things a webmaster cares about, like page load times, page views per visit, and time on site. Marketing analytics, on the other hand, measure business metrics like traffic, leads, and sales, and which events (both on and off your website) influence whether leads become customers. Marketing analytics includes data not only from your website, but also from other sources like email, social media, and even offline events. Marketing analytics are also usually people-centric, featuring the prospect, lead, or customer as the unit of focus, whereas web analytics usually regard the page view as the unit of focus in its reports.”

With marketing analytics, marketers can understand the effectiveness of their marketing, not just the effectiveness of their website. It helps teams compare channels and turn that data into better decisions, such as:

• Comparing channel performance across social media, blogging, email marketing, and other programs
• Measuring true ROI for each initiative
• Tracking progress toward business goals
• Spotting weak points in specific channels
• Adjusting strategy and tactics to improve your overall marketing program

Together, these capabilities give marketers a more complete picture of what’s driving results and where to invest next

The Marketer’s Measurement Challenge

So why is marketing analytics so underutilized by many marketers? Probably because of a lack of cohesion. The fact of the matter is, most marketers need a number of different marketing analytics platforms in place to glean the insights they need to understand their marketing performance and, thus, make sound decisions.

They gather data on their email marketing through analytics from their email service provider, on their social media performance through their social media monitoring tool, and on blog analytics from their blogging platform, and the list goes on.

The fragmentation of data across platforms is one of the main reasons marketers default to web analytics tools like Google Analytics

Why Marketing Analytics Matter

So why exactly do marketing analytics matter? Quite simply, because web analytics just isn’t enough. The data web analytics provides just don’t cut it for marketers. Web analytics alone no longer reflects how customers actually interact with brands. Google’s own evolution from Universal Analytics to GA4 reflects this shift, moving from session-based website tracking to an event-based model designed to follow users across channels and devices.

Today’s marketing extends well beyond a website. It’s the intersection of what happens between your marketing channels and the outcome on the other side that provides the most marketing insight.

You can spend hours and hours slicing and dicing data in web analytics tools, comparing new vs. repeat visitors month over month over month, but when it comes down to it, you’ll never have a comprehensive understanding of how your marketing is doing.

What Marketing Analytics Can Do For You

There are quite a few areas where marketing analytics excels that website analytics falls short. Let’s highlight three of the main differentiators.

1. Integration Across Different Marketing Channels

With marketing analytics, you have a good, solid look into the direct relationships between your marketing channels. It’s great to be able to see how each of your individual channels (e.g. social media, blogging, email marketing, SEO, etc.) are performing, but the true power of analytics comes into play when you can easily tie the effect of multiple channels’ performances together.

For example, if you send an email to a segment of leads, marketing analytics can show more than clicks. It can help you answer questions like:

• How many people clicked from the email to your website
• How many of those visitors converted into leads
• Whether that email generated more leads than a recent blog post
• How email performance compares with your social media efforts

2. People-Centric Data on the Customer Lifecycle

As you learned earlier, a key differentiator between web analytics and marketing analytics is that the latter uses the person — not the page view — as the focal point. People-centric marketing analytics shows marketers how prospects and leads interact with channels over time. Marketing analytics can answer important customer lifecycle questions, including:

• How a lead first found your website
• Whether they came from search, social media, or direct traffic
• Whether they engage with your email campaigns
• Whether they read your blog
• Which behaviors make them a stronger fit for lead nurturing

That kind of visibility gives marketers more useful lead intelligence for follow-up and segmentation.

In addition, reviewing all this information in aggregate can help you understand trends among your prospects and leads, and which marketing activities are valuable at different stages of the sales cycle.

You may find that many customers’ last point of conversion was on a certain marketing offer(s). Having this data makes it possible to implement an effective lead management process, enabling you to score and prioritize your leads and identify which activities contribute to a marketing qualified lead for your business.

3. Closed-Loop Data

Perhaps the most powerful function of marketing analytics is its ability to tie marketing activities to sales. Sure, your blog may be effective in generating leads, but are those leads actually turning into customers and making your business money? Closed-loop marketing analytics connects marketing activity to sales outcomes when your analytics platform syncs with your customer relationship management (CRM) platform. HubSpot CRM gives marketers and sales teams a shared view of which channels generate customers and revenue.

Closed-loop data helps you see whether marketing is contributing to revenue. For example, it can show you:

• Which channels drive sales, not just traffic
• Whether your blog generates customers
• Whether social media supports engagement more than direct revenue
• Which initiatives contribute most to the bottom line

Frequently Asked Questions About Marketing Analytics

What is marketing analytics?

Marketing analytics is the process of collecting, measuring, and analyzing data across marketing channels to understand what drives traffic, leads, customers, and revenue. Unlike web analytics alone, it connects marketing activity to business outcomes.

What is the difference between marketing analytics and web analytics?

Web analytics focuses on website activity like page views, bounce rate, and time on site, while marketing analytics looks across channels and ties campaigns to leads, customers, and ROI. In short, web analytics measures site performance, and marketing analytics measures marketing performance.

What are the 4 types of marketing analytics?

The four common types of marketing analytics are descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. Together, they help marketers understand what happened, why it happened, what may happen next, and what action to take.

What metrics should you track with marketing analytics?

The most useful marketing analytics metrics include traffic, leads, conversion rates, customer acquisition sources, ROI, and sales outcomes by channel. The right mix depends on your goals, but the key is connecting channel activity to pipeline and revenue.

How do you get started with marketing analytics?

Start by identifying your key business goals, auditing the data you already collect across channels, and making sure your marketing and CRM systems can share data. From there, focus on reporting that connects campaigns to leads, customers, and revenue.

What is the difference between marketing analytics and business analytics?

Marketing analytics focuses specifically on measuring marketing performance, channel impact, and campaign ROI, while business analytics looks across the broader business, including operations, finance, and customer service. Marketing analytics is one part of a larger business analytics strategy.

Is marketing analytics a good career path?

Yes. Marketing analytics is a strong career path for marketers who want to connect data to strategy, customer behavior, and revenue decisions. As measurement, attribution, and AI become more important, demand for these skills continues to grow.

What You Can Do With Marketing Analytics

Marketing analytics data is only valuable when it drives action. Marketing analytics data drives better decisions about where to invest, what to cut, and how to improve performance across channels.

Teams that rely solely on web analytics miss the cross-channel, people-centric, and closed-loop data that connects marketing activity to revenue. HubSpot helps marketing teams measure channel performance, track the customer lifecycle, and connect marketing activity to revenue in one integrated platform.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Free Marketing Plan Template

Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

• Pre-Sectioned Template
• Completely Customizable
• Example Prompts
• Professionally Designed

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