George Bailey, a senior advisor to Sony and a MarketShare Advisory Board Member, addresses the struggles many marketing organizations are having with todays data explosion, and the secrets to successfully integrating marketing analytics.
In today’s data-driven environment it’s important not to confuse analytics with acumen. Analytics may help facilitate or enhance business acumen or astuteness, but it certainly doesn’t replace it. The Oxford English Dictionary defines acumen as the ability to make good judgments and quick decisions.”
Analytics, on the other hand, is logical analysis derived by applying some type of algorithms or mathematics to data. In 2007, Davenport and Harris described analytics as a set of technologies and processes that use information and data to understand and analyze business performance. Certainly well-thought out logical analysis can be very useful in understanding and addressing business situations and making quick decisions that will produce a desired outcome. But there’s more to business acumen than logical analysis. A McKinsey article I once read framed this well, good analysis in the hands of managers who have good judgment won’t naturally yield good decisions.
Research by the Perth Leadership Institute, the Conference Executive Board (CEB) and others offer a variety of recommendations for how we can improve our business acumen. One of the key competencies cited is strong, quantitative skills. Why? Because being able to see the big picture requires an understanding of your market and how your organization operates in that market, and what drives profitability and cash flow for your organization. This is where analytics come into play. Read More
Big data, smart data, little data. Data is everywhere; it powers our daily lives. As consumer media consumption continues to shift digitally, marketers are faced with a new set of challenges in reaching their audiences with the right message, at the right time, and through the right channels. Marketers ability to collect and analyze data big, small, social and otherwise is needed to help create great customer experiences. This discussion will take a look at the ways marketing is adapting across people, platforms, processes, screens, and channels because of this surge of available data.
Adobe 2013 Digital Marketing Survey. The survey was published April 26th. Some 53 percent of the digital marketers surveyed from around the world say they devote less than 5 percent of their budget to optimization activities. Last year 48 percent of the marketers said this. Only 6 percent of respondents are allocating more than one-quarter of their budgets to these activities, relatively unchanged from last year’s 7 percent. And that is strange, because through optimization companies can reduce the costs of their marketing operations. By calculating the ROI for the optimization projects it can become apparent that the reason not to, is actually the reason to do it; saving budget.
Adobe conducted this survey amongst 1800 marketers from around the World. “Some of the findings are eye-opening”, says John Cristofano, PR-Manager at Adobe, “like data showing a majority of the companies surveyed spend 5 percent or less of their marketing budget on optimization activities. Five percent or less, even though it’s also clear from the data that companies investing more get more in return. For example, companies allocating more than 25 percent of marketing budgets to optimization are twice as likely to see high conversion rates.”
With these kinds of results, it’s only logical to ask why there are not more companies are investing in optimization. According to the survey there are two major challenges. Budget and resources are the two most important things, that hold marketers back says almost half of the respondents.
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Recently one of our customers was completing their quarterly marketing report. She was frustrated because she was trying to complete nearly 500 input fields in her excel doc! Five hundred fields, yikes! Part of the reason she is collecting so many numbers is that the metrics for the marketing organization and the relationship between the various data elements are not clear. Selecting the right performance metrics and developing an actionable marketing dashboard is something many organizations are tackling. However, if the link between marketing activities and business results isn’t clear, you may find yourself wallowing in data.
For example, it’s important to be able to connect the dots between a marketing program and product trials with customer acquisition and market share. To do this will take three things: alignment, good data, and access to this data. As you grapple with measuring marketing, a key part of the work will be determining whether you have the data you need.
In today’s market marketing teams are under more and more pressure to perform and get results. ROI is a magic word in marketing now-a-days, while budgets and resources are under pressure as well. In the meantime customers are holding back and getting less and less faithfull to just one brand. So, pressure is on for the marketing department, because you can only do so much to get better results.
There are several trends today which cause this higher pressure, says a paper by SAS.
How can marketers keep their head up in all this turmoil? How can they identify the best strategy that will deliver the best returns on from marketing investments?
Wilson Raj, Global Customer Intelligence Director at SAS shed his light on how to improve ROI on your marketing investments during a webinar sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association and SAS. Optimization is the keyword, he says.
The modern technology, and especially digital technology like e-mail, websites, mobile and social media, are a blessing for marketers. Not ever before were they able to gather so much data on what they do. But, this also comes with a danger. The flood of data is large, marketers are awash in data. Marketing analytics is the way to take control over this flood. In the 2013 Marketing Analytics Benchmark Report
Over 1.100 marketers are surveyed for this research. It provides insight into analytics for all kinds of marketing channels.
According to Marketingssherpa the surveyed marketers provided some interesting insights, and also highlighted areas where marketers could improve in taking advantage of this valuable marketing asset.
The availability of marketing analytics data is promising with 79% reporting having average, significant and even vast amounts of client interaction data to analyze. Only 3% reported having no analytics data at all. An overwhelming majority — 97% — of marketers have some amount of marketing analytics data to work with.
Warc, wich combines trends observed in marketing budgets, trading conditions and staffing levels, the index has risen to a 56.2 in February, where 50 represents a positive trend. That is 1.2 point increase compared to January.
The biggest rise can be found in Asia Pacific. The headline GMI in this region stood stood on 53.8 in January, and has climbed to 56.2 in February.
The Americas are the most optimistic. It’s headline GMI went up from 58 to a firm 59.5 points.
Europe is lacking behind in this all. Although the trend is positive and the index went up 1.2 points, it stills keeps a low score at 53.1 points in February.
(graphic by marketingprofs.com)
Do you rely on hearsay when it comes to your marketingcampaigns? No you say? Feedback on your marketingcampaigns, showing results and measuring effectiveness. It sounds like every marketer would own one or more processes to do so, but do they?
Most senior marketers say they either have a formalized process or are using one when the situation calls for it. “But when it comes to the types of local market data used to impact campaign performance, those same marketers appear to be too reliant on ‘hearsay data’,” the CMO Council states in a new study.
Marketers are twice as likely to gather insights from field and business development teams as they are to examine online voice of customer listening and analysis (57% vs. 29%).
