Six Tips for Creating
an Analytics Driven Marketing Culture
Key
Takeaways from this article:
- Times are changing and Marketing has to adapt: If you want to deliver value with tangible results, you need to build an analytical culture.
- Applying analytics enables Marketing to combine fact-based decision-making with creativity.
- Analytics enables innovation and efficiency by rewarding curiosity, building confidence, and ensuring accountability.
Like
it or not, marketers have traditionally been viewed as creative types who rely
on catchy copy, clever promos, and gut instinct to reach customers and
prospects. Certainly they have not been seen as strategic business advisers.
That's because measurement has been so haphazard that Marketing struggled—and
typically failed—to demonstrate value.
But
times are changing and marketing has had to adapt. The bottom line is that if a
marketing organization is to deliver value and show tangible results, it must
build an analytical culture.
Why
is that important? Well, if you are like most marketing organizations, you
already pack a strong dose of creativity. Applying analytics enables you to
combine fact-based decision-making with creativity.
Analytics
doesn't replace innovation. Nor does it supplant people or programs. Rather,
analytics makes for less guesswork and more strategy. By rewarding curiosity,
building confidence, and ensuring accountability, analytics enables innovation
and makes a marketing program more creative and powerful.
If
you're not quite there yet, here are six tips for building your own
analytics-driven marketing organization.
Your
data is like your 401(k): You need to manage it so it delivers the results you
want. It needs to be accurate; otherwise, your analysis and ultimately your
decisions could be flawed. Accordingly, you'll need to rebalance it every now
and then: look for sources you don't need anymore or data that isn't providing
value... and get rid of them; reinvest your resources where you're getting
returns.
Recently,
in our marketing organization, we focused an initiative on data source
performance, and we were able to eliminate the poorest-performing investments,
which translated to cost savings and increased effectiveness.
2.
Recognize the many faces of analytics
Marketing
organizations have already evolved. They have readily adopted metrics, which
demonstrate value, pointing to areas of progress and areas that need
improvement. They are a critical component of the analysis you conduct, and so
you need a process for continual evaluation and adjustment of your metrics.
Analytics
in the marketing culture, however, is expressed in many other ways than just
metrics. Some of the most powerful uses of analytics involve marketing
optimization techniques that can dramatically decrease opt-out rates and
increase conversion rates.
Optimization
and modeling are pivotal for campaign design, list segmentation, and ultimately
campaign execution.
Scoring
and Web analysis anchor inbound nurturing campaigns, allowing us to better engage
website visitors who arrive via search marketing and other sources.
If
marketing can see the digital dialogue, the opportunities are endless. The
ability to analyze visitors' behaviors, assign scores accordingly, predict
which offers will be most attractive, and deliver the right message at the
right time... translates into high conversion rates and happy customers.
3.
Hire with analytics in mind
Hire
marketers who have a passion for data and analytics and understand their value
in decision-making.
Doing
so is not as hard as it was 10 years ago. Anyone used to measuring digital and
social media efforts or experimenting with A/B testing of Web pages or
one-to-one marketing is primed to use more advanced analytics to measure the
overall value of a program.
Hiring
with analytics in mind is not about killing creativity or innovation. You're
just seeking naturally curious employees with up-to-date skills.
4.
Ask, 'Do you have data to support that?'
Start
every project or request with that question. When considering a specific
marketing channel or approach, ask for data that suggests it will work. At the
very least, ask how you will know if it worked: What will you measure?
Taking
this approach encourages marketers to think about how they create value for the
company at a time when marketing channels are continually evolving and
resources are stretched.
When
you have hard decisions to make, data and analysis allow you to base those
decisions on facts and create the right balance in your marketing efforts.
What's
more, analytics will help you monetize your marketing investments. Say, for
example, that you have traditionally attended a large number of tradeshows and
conferences—which are costly and resource intensive. Now you have the
opportunity to reach even larger audiences through digital channels. But how do
you create the right balance?
Analytics
will provide you with insight about the value of each marketing activity, the
audience you reach with it, its historical and potential returns, and how to
use multiple channels for optimum outcomes.
Linking
the marketing activity to the expected value will provide you with the ability
to make fact-based investment decisions.
5.
Test, measure, and adjust
Give
your marketers the freedom to test and learn so they can make intelligent
decisions that will drive change. Optimization has a direct impact on results,
and it will indirectly increase the confidence level of your marketers.
Since
we began applying marketing optimization techniques, our conversion rates have
tripled on outbound marketing campaigns while associated communication costs
are dropping. Our list size has shrunk 14%, opt-outs have dropped 20%, and
click-through rates have jumped 25%.
Together,
all of that adds up to higher-quality leads, lower costs, and an improved
customer/prospect experience.
With
millions of visitors on our website, analytics is critical to determining how
we make the best use of a person's time on site. With scoring and nurturing
efforts, we have experienced conversion rates at 20%–30%. Add the ability to
integrate online chat capabilities, and we've seen even higher conversions;
and, more important, we have enhanced the overall experience in real time.
None
of that could have happened if our marketers weren't comfortable testing,
measuring, changing, and justifying marketing activities.
Let
analytics decide the best approach.
6.
Cement partnerships
Marketing
leaders should focus on forging especially strong partnerships with Sales, IT,
and Finance. Those relationships must be established on the basis of clear
alignment, mutual respect, and trust, and they must be maintained via
collaboration, joint objectives, and effective communication.
In
short, you need to shift from thinking of other departments as "internal
customers" to thinking of them as your partners.
Your
relationship with Sales will benefit from your analytical approach. Analytics
allows marketers to show how our activities deliver strong leads that convert
into sales and turn pipelines into revenue. Providing sales with such
intelligence builds Marketing's credibility and inspires confidence and trust.
IT
has undergone its own evolution; and, like marketing, it has had to focus on
delivering value to the organization. Working together, IT and Marketing have a
lot of influence. Creating an analytical culture within marketing is dependent
on IT infrastructure and expertise. IT needs marketing to advocate for the
value that IT provides. Together, there is power.
Finance
and Marketing also have a close connection—sometimes pleasant, and sometimes
stressful. Just as Sales appreciates a focus on the numbers, so does Finance.
So work with Finance to align metrics. If you can show that marketing
activities are boosting revenue while reducing costs, Finance will love you and
the relationship will flourish.
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