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Gartner Draws Digital Marketing Transit Map to Illustrate Complex Landscape

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Gartner is at the forefront of helping marketers understand the digital marketing landscape and the value of data-driven marketing. The analyst firm estimates that digital marketing accounts for 25 percent of companies’ overall marketing budget, according to figures shared by Research VP Laura McLellan at the recent Marketing&Tech Summit we attended. Of that, the biggest allocation of spend was – from highest to lowest – digital/online advertising, content creation/management, search marketing, website design/maintenance, email marketing, analytics and social-network marketing.

Given this level of investment in digital marketing, what are the underlying people, processes and technologies that run these campaigns? Gartner’s VP Distinguished Analyst Andrew Frank and Research Director Jake Sorofman tackled this complex issue by designing an interactive Digital Marketing Transit Map.

Source: Gartner Inc., June 20, 2013

Source: Gartner Inc., June 20, 2013

While Gartner stresses that this map is not a complete representation of the territory, it’s the best we’ve seen! In particular, it illustrates the central role the marketing analytics “track” takes in aligning disparate practice areas, shown as neighborhoods. The map identifies more than 25 technologies – shown as stations on the analytics track – that deliver data for campaign analysis. Everything from predictive analytics, social analytics and web analytics to SEO/SEM, email marketing, digital agencies and business intelligence intersects with the analytics track. It’s not surprising that Andrew Frank’s reportCool Vendors in Data-Driven Marketing” made its debut as a category this year.

In its slideshow explanation of the map, Gartner defines the Analytics Track as, “the discovery and evaluation of meaningful patterns in the data, often through a solution to address specific business issues rather than generic business intelligence tools.” We completely agree. As marketers, we know what analytics are needed to solve our challenges in understanding the complex, multichannel relationships between paid, owned and earned media (POEM), and that core concept fuels our vision for the Anametrix Marketing Analytics Platform.

“Organizations should use the map to identify the connection among business functions, applications tracks and providers. Map elements can be used to find additional research or structure questions about strategy and best practices as well as providers, products and selection criteria. It is also a useful device for mediating discussions between marketing and IT.”

– Said Jake Sorofman, research director at Gartner, in this press release

Map elements include:

  • Neighborhoods: Operational areas with services aimed at awareness, traffic and engagement quality to the north and lines of business that connect with other parts of the organization to the south
  • Ι Tracks: Application domains that all connect to a central “digital marketing hub,” including a dotted line for emerging technologies under construction
  • Stations: Technology types, technology providers and multi-purpose solutions

Kudos to Andrew Frank and Jake Sorofman for this fascinating model. How well does it resemble your infrastructure? What neighborhoods, tracks or stations are you currently investigating? What do you think is missing from this map? Post a comment below. Or engage with us any time on the  WebLinkedInFacebook and Google+.

The post Gartner Draws Digital Marketing Transit Map to Illustrate Complex Landscape appeared first on The Analytics Blog for Marketers.


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