Measuring your way to customer insight
To build closer connections to customers, start by developing analytical prowess.
As marketers move to a more varied, shifting mix of advertising and promotion, they are coming face to face with the lack of insight they have historically had about which media choices work well, why customers buy, and what returns will be generated by their spending. This lack of insight did not matter very much when marketers had no choice but to depend on television, radio, and print — the traditional mass-market media. Television’s gross ratings points (GRPs), which measure the percentage of a target audience reached by a particular advertisement, didn’t explain why particular ads or placements led to increased sales and others didn’t, but that combination of mass media and metrics was the only game in town.
Now, however, there has been an explosion of media vehicles, and data is much more complete, granular, and evocative of consumer attitudes and willingness to purchase products. It is possible to accurately quantify the return on marketing spend. All that’s lacking is the sophistication needed to gain insight from analytics, and the will to use that insight — not just in the marketing function, but in the company as a whole.
The need for marketers to develop analytical prowess — the ability to use data and analytical approaches to optimize the return on marketing spending — is already well established. An ongoing study by Booz & Company reveals that ROI analytics and consumer insights (many of which are derived from analytics) are the two capabilities that marketers identify as the most important to develop.
read more >>
As marketers move to a more varied, shifting mix of advertising and promotion, they are coming face to face with the lack of insight they have historically had about which media choices work well, why customers buy, and what returns will be generated by their spending. This lack of insight did not matter very much when marketers had no choice but to depend on television, radio, and print — the traditional mass-market media. Television’s gross ratings points (GRPs), which measure the percentage of a target audience reached by a particular advertisement, didn’t explain why particular ads or placements led to increased sales and others didn’t, but that combination of mass media and metrics was the only game in town.
Now, however, there has been an explosion of media vehicles, and data is much more complete, granular, and evocative of consumer attitudes and willingness to purchase products. It is possible to accurately quantify the return on marketing spend. All that’s lacking is the sophistication needed to gain insight from analytics, and the will to use that insight — not just in the marketing function, but in the company as a whole.
The need for marketers to develop analytical prowess — the ability to use data and analytical approaches to optimize the return on marketing spending — is already well established. An ongoing study by Booz & Company reveals that ROI analytics and consumer insights (many of which are derived from analytics) are the two capabilities that marketers identify as the most important to develop.
read more >>
