Adopting Marketing Analytics
The 2014 Marketing Analytics Survey conducted by American Marketing Association (AMA) surveyed over 500 marketing and research professionals revealing new insights into how today’s marketers are using analytics software, tools and tactics in their companies.
While majority of companies are leveraging marketing analytics to some extent, for many businesses “that information still doesn’t travel beyond the marketing department — and when it is shared, the distribution frequency is nowhere near real-time,” writes Elisabeth Sullivan, the editor of AMA’s Marketing News magazine.
One challenge is perhaps the medium in which analytics findings are communicated to organization’s stakeholders. When respondents were asked how the resulting information and insights were shared, many responded citing meeting-style PowerPoint presentations as well as number of indirect mediums such as e-mail and dashboard access.
In the survey commentary published in the December issue of AMA’s Marketing Insights, Courtney Moore, VP of Strategy & Insights at Big Heart Pet Brands, shares a story of a colleague who achieved great success in leveraging marketing analytics in his organization. By changing the way he presented analytics from big boardroom-style presentations to one-on-ones with key stakeholders, he was able to lead organization-wide acceptance and understanding of marketing analytics. This story highlights the challenge that marketing executives may have with adopting analytics as their success not only depends on the insights they can bring to the organizational strategy but also their success in getting key stakeholders on-board.
As marketing analytics continues to grow in its adoption across businesses in the U.S. and worldwide, marketers and business leaders will face baseline knowledge expectations of this empowering business tool. In Missouri, this need is met by a number of companies such as Alright Analytics, who are not only providing marketing analytics services to other firms but also offer a range of analytics workshops for marketing professionals.
To prepare students for the future world of business, the William Woods University MBA in Entrepreneurial Leadership offers BMT552 – Marketing Research Decisions and Analysis. This course helps students sharpen their analytical skills while teaching students how to make data-informed decisions and answer key business questions through data analysis.