Tag: analytics

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Analytics and Data-Driven Marketing Trends

Transformation has taken hold of corporate marketing in a big way. Analytics and data are framing the top priorities for current investments by CMOs, who are increasingly responsible for predicting profitable growth for their organizations. This shift requires advancing and centralizing the practice of data-driven marketing people, processes and technology in order to effectively achieve the defined business goals and expected outcomes.

Data has long been part of every major function within a company. However, the current intention of CEOs and stakeholders is to unite the massive amounts of acquired bits and bytes to better inform decision-making throughout the organization.

It is the expectation that marketing, sales and finance data be combined and proactively analyzed to help understand the customer journey, improve company performance, predict revenue growth and increase profitability.

In order to bring together these disparate data sets and effectively utilize collected insights to predict, businesses are heavily investing in marketing technology (MarTech). In a recent survey of marketers by Squiz, these investments are essential to better understanding customers and prospects (62%), which is a key priority and as well as a challenge for enterprise marketing teams. The survey also noted that 55% of marketers are investing in MarTech in order to take a data-driven approach to marketing and 97% of the respondents said marketing technology has enabled them to be more strategic. (Source)

Businesses expect marketing to lead the way in achieving revenue growth targets. Data-driven playbooks are critical tools used to define the journey, understand customer preferences and capitalize on trends. Key to the playbook is the interpretation and translation of data through marketing analytics to support the tactics and activities.

Marketing analytics is the practice of measuring, managing and analyzing marketing performance to maximize its effectiveness and optimize return on investment (ROI).

Analytics empower businesses to recognize patterns and set priorities. Analysis centralizes the focus on outcomes and achievement of business goals by moving beyond standalone marketing metrics and reporting, to fully realizing the value of marketing from data insights.

Success comes from applying the insights that marketers acquire through data, learning from the input and then creating actionable playbooks to manage performance.

Because of the vast amounts of data and the fact that many of these complied repositories are nested throughout the organization, marketing leaders must work with the entire corporate landscape to realize the vision of data-driven marketing and decision-making. This includes researchers, digital and financial analysts, technology and innovation team members, IT, data scientists, product developers and sales operations. Collectively, this group must work together to continually challenge assumptions, push for collective understanding and master the “math” to increase predictability and usability of business intelligence.

What should marketers measure and analyze in order to create an effective data-driven marketing playbook?

Common Data Sets Analyzed by Marketing Data-Driven Organizations

  • Customer Journey Analytics: CJA data is acquired from CRM and MarTech to identify, analyze and measure each stop in the customer journey, from prospecting through acquisition to retention. Marketing data sets come from target data, marketing activities, lead generation and segmentation. Sales data sets come from pipeline activities, conversion, satisfaction, loyalty and retention programs. Financial data provides revenue, acquisition and retention costs and profit information.
  • Mobile and Web: Data from digital systems and online properties, including CRM, call center and web analytics platforms. Data sets include search, behavioral, and demographic information gathered via SEO, ecommerce, conversions and engagement.
  • Voice of the Customer: VOC includes perception and opinion data learned via sources such as structured surveys and feedback mechanisms, as well as unstructured data from open-ended survey questions, texts, reviews, customer service emails, social media, and human interactions via phone and in person.
  • Customer and Prospect Personas: Target and customer data gathered in profiling, segmentation, lead scoring and personalization campaigns. Data sets used in persona analysis includes demographic, physchographic, transactional and behavioral.
  • Lifetime Customer Value: LCV data measures net profit attributed to the entire relationship with a customer, often valued over defined periods of time. Net profit of a customer is lifetime customer value measured against customer acquisitions costs.
  • Media Analytics: Attribution and marketing mix modeling (MMM) data is used to analyze paid media results in all channels and includes campaign and spend details.
  • Social Media Marketing: SMM data includes all acquired information from social and digital media platforms such as Facebook, Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, WeChat, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn. Data is often used to measure targeting, reach and engagement.
  • Product Life Cycle: PLC data is acquired as a new product moves through a sequence of stages from introduction to growth, maturity and decline.
  • Reach Cost Quality: RCQ data, gathered at each touch point, measures the number of target buyers reached, cost per unique touch and the quality of the engagement.

In contrast to the obvious need and growing investments in data-driven marketing, it is a widely reported fact that most companies today are far from getting the “full value” of all the data available to them to help make better decisions. Most organizations are in the early or mid-stages of the shift to bring all data together in order to effectively guide and predict growth and profitability decisions. The undertaking is often very complex and expensive.

Marketing must press forward and lead the way!

Good news, a recent study by the Global Alliance of Data-Driven Marketing Associations (GDMA), Winterberry Group and MediaMath shows eight in 10 advertising and marketing professionals worldwide use data-driven techniques to maintain customer databases, measure campaign results across both individual and multiple marketing channels, and segment data for proper targeting. (Source)

Now, we must work together throughout the entire organization to ensure that driven-data marketing and analytics provide the proper insights that we can learn from and create successful outcomes, like increased growth and profitability.

Jamie Glass, CMO + President, Artful Thinkers, a sales and marketing consulting company.

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Leading Transformation in the New Year

Executives around the world are locking down budgets, business plans and growth strategies that will lead them into a new year with confidence and clarity. Or, at least that is how the process is supposed to work as we exit another year.

The reality is we are often distracted from planning our future, as we are buried in the real-time business demands of “now” for closing out the year, assessing our performance and measuring the success of our current year stated business goals. Our future is ahead, not behind us. We need to look ahead.

The actions we take today to change how we do things in the next year really deserves our full attention. Transformation requires prioritization.

There are many businesses who have great stories to share about the past year, highlighting lists of remarkable accomplishments in growth and opportunity. They have expanded into new markets, launched new products, added new channels for business development. The simple recipe for those businesses will be to double down and do more of the same. We’ve all heard it, GROW MORE! Those that look at how they might have done better over the past year will be focused on clarified business plans that pivot from where they have been to a future path of prosperity.

One thing is certain, whether looking to exploit past success or tearing down the obstacles that led to failure, transformation is imperative for any business in the new year.

Transformation is more than updated goals or repeating the past, it is doing things differently. It is tackling “big” things that others can’t and won’t do.

Transformation is change. It is new coordinates, new variables, new operations and new formulas for success. It is what leads to great. As marketers, we often hear about digital transformation. The way in which we consume information, the speed of the Internet, the Internet of Things, all driving behaviors and pushing businesses to behave differently with their consumers, partners, employees and even regulatory agencies. Yet, transformation applies much more broadly today than just digital. It applies to everything.

Change will happen. The upcoming 12 months will be loaded with transformation for most people, some of which they will have no control or input. It is taking place all around us. Point to the many global examples ripe with political change, where we will see instances of transformation in a new year that can and will change our existence in the world as we know it today. It will likely change how business is conducted globally.

It’s also personal. We’ve all rehearsed transformation to some degree. Personal and professional transformation will be veiled in the guise of declarations of resolutions in the next few days. We all need something to work on and often will state so “out loud” to be held accountable for our changing ways.

What about business transformation? How will businesses change in the new year to capitalize on the new, inspire the potential consumer, foster team development and capture the imagination of dreamers through vision and execution? Well, businesses like people, have to do things differently.

There are five signs a business is ready to lead through transformation.

  1. A focus on globalization will transform any business, as it is not just about selling products beyond a geographic region. It is thoughtfully reaching out through cultural connectivity to orchestrate engagement, learn and drive meaningful (and profitable) relationships around the world. It is understanding the global economy and embracing differences that are ripe in worldwide opportunity through relative experiences. A bit of advice on this point, rely on experts to guide you through the market, cultural and language complexities if you really want to take advantage of transformation through globalization.
  2. Acquiring talent with new insights, skills and competencies that do more than align to a job description will transform a business. Hiring smart and passionate people to join the “team” to challenge the status quo, rule outside the governing boxes and raise the ceiling on what can be done by thinking and ACTING differently is transforming. These individuals will bring experiences and richness of ideas that can expand the possibilities when embraced by an environment of collaboration and exchange.
  3. Diversity of thought and leadership that spans across all functions and roles is encouraged and celebrated by businesses that lead through transformation. Create an environment for bringing people together through idea generation, expanding digital and remote work spaces and systematically rewarding those for participation in solving problems and offering ways for capitalizing on change.
  4. Go beyond innovation, as it is an overused word in the lexicon of business strategies. Innovation is survival today, part of the life blood of existence as a business. Leading in innovation requires transformation, going beyond what has been done in the past and exploring the possibilities through new approaches, processes, technology, thinking and knowledge sharing capabilities. Innovation should be flowing throughout the organization and fundamental to how a business directs and drives transformation. Leaders must ask every team member, “How are you transforming what you do today to take us into the future?”
  5. Predictive analytics must be a basis for transformation, using smart data to guide decisions and empower actions with a bet on the future. Reporting is old, tiring and can paralyze an organization with constant reviews of the past. Using data as intelligence to guide decision-making and focus on outcomes that are in front of the business will free businesses from spending all their time looking in the rear view mirror. Let data push you forward.

Change is constant. Change is here. Transformation is critical to success.

Executives and business leaders that are thinking about their global journey, pushing the boundaries on talent acquisition and diversity of thought, living innovation and predicting the future with accuracy are the leaders of tomorrow and beyond. They will transform the world, doing more and doing things differently.

How are you transforming your business?

Jamie Glass, President + CMO at Artful Thinkers, a sales and marketing consulting company.