Digital Analyst: New mindset to excel in the New Data Economy

In the new data economy, digital marketing and analytics is not a should-do thing but a must-do thing. As a graduate student in Northwestern University Medill's M.S. Integrated Marketing Communications program, with a focus on marketing analytics and digital marketing, I have discovered 2 essential articles for Digital Analysts who want to help companies in the new data economy to leverage digital analytics towards better performance.

One of the fascinating things in doing digital marketing is that it is always changing and evolving. According to an article by a blogger Joe McKendrick on Informatica Blog, Analytics 3.0 – The Emerging Data Economy, he summarizes, from a report by International Institute for Analytics, the evolution of data analytics from Analytics 1.0 which was based on relatively small and structured data sources internally to current Analytics 2.0 which are leveraging big data stores and employing prescriptive analytics to target customers. Then the arises Analytics 3.0, which is “Large organizations across industries are joining the data economy and they are not keeping traditional analytics and big data separate, but are combining them to form a new synthesis.” This new state of management “Analytics 3.0” coined by the International Institute for Analytics are the concepts and practices of competing on analytics are no longer confined to data management and IT departments or quants rather analytics are embedded into all key organizational processes. That means models in Analytics 3.0 are often being embedded into operational and decision processes, with dramatically increasing their speed and impact. So as a digital analyst, it is really important to understand this trend and seize the value of Analytics 3.0 to embed real-time analytics into business decisions.

Source: http://blogs.informatica.com/perspectives/2014/03/05/the-emerging-data-economy/

Another important step in doing digital analytics is to have a clear framework to guide through the all process. Digital analytics can be confusing as data is overflowing, so as a digital analyst, you should have the clear objectives and goals to do the analysis and move them into business suggestion and decisions. In an article written by Avinash Kaushi (Author of Digital Marketing, Evangelist – Google and Co-founder - Market Motive), Digital Marketing and Measurement Model it introduces a digital marketing & Measurement Model to guide you as digital analyst to integrate digital analytics into digital marketing. According to Avinash Kaushi, you should always start with identify business objectives whether it is to create awareness, generate leads or highlight events. Then you identify the specific goals for your business objectives and identify the Key Performance Indicators associated with these goals. Finally, you should identify the Targets and valuable Segments for analytics. In a nutshell, the article maintains that it should always be associated with the objectives to have the better measurement.

After reviewing these two articles, as a digital analyst, there are three action items you should immediately consider for your company.

1.   Go real-time with Analytics: Integrate Analytics into real time business decisions.

2.  Always relate to the business objectives: When doing digital marketing, start with business objectives, stick with business objectives and end with them to measure.

3.  Just identify your Key Performance Indicators: The KPIs you measure when doing digital analytics should be specific to your digital marketing

Today digital analytics is the new sexiness in business world. However, as a digital analyst you should really following the framework in this data economy-Analytics 3.0, which means you should embedded real time analytics into your business decisions, always be aware of the business objectives, and identify your KPIs to better measure the ROI of digital marketing.

Feng Liu is a master candidate of Integrated Marketing Communications in Medill, Northwestern University. Previously, he had experience as a market analyst and marketing researcher in China. And he has always been interested in marketing analytics and digital marketing and is dedicated to purse a career on these fields. If you have questions or comments,  please contact me through Twitter @blakeliu0711 or Email: blake.liu@u.northwestern.edu

Social Media recipes to measure your brand's success

As a brand manager, your brand's presence in social media is critical but difficult to measure. In my selection of coursework at Northwestern University, I have been studying the issue of measurement of social media activities (and activities on other new media platforms). Customers today constantly hop back and forth between offline and online media. Although many organizations have activated social media programs, majority struggle to measure its impact on revenue. In this post, I will highlight some important findings on this burning topic of how to measure social success for your brand.

To tell this cryptic correlation, Altimeter Group, a research and advisory firm based in San Mateo, California, conducted a study to understand challenges, as well as strategies for understanding the financial impact of social media. In her report titled “The Social Media ROI Cookbook”, analyst Susan Etlinger, lays out the best practices and “recipes” that organizations are using to understand its impact.

While the report sites multiple challenges, the prime challenge that organizations struggle with is actually tying social media to business objectives. But, while revenue is important, it isn’t everything. Eighty-four percent of survey respondents reported that the primary business impact of social media was not revenue generation, but “insight that helped us meet customer experience goals.”

Based on this research, the Altimeter team identified six primary guidelines that brands are using to measure the revenue impact of social media.

What is important to remember is that while top-down approaches provide business context and bottom-up approaches provide granularity, they are most valuable when viewed in context of each other to evaluate the complete picture.

Based on the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) model, the lesson for a brand manager is that the criteria for choosing the right measurement mix are:

· Identify your business type: the way your company goes to market (exclusively online or multi-channel) largely drives what is possible when it comes to revenue measurement.

· Assess your service or product type: sales cycle is key criteria in determining revenue measurement strategy, sales cycle vary considerably for low consideration and high consideration purchases

· Factor in your media mix: the type of medium (Paid, Earned and/or Owned) also influences your measurement method, as you can only measure online properties that you control.

· Consider your customer profile: possibly the most important factor, the type of customer (business, consumer and/or highly social) will determine what measurement is possible

To conclude, it’s important to remember that in real terms we are still at the very beginning of social business and no one set of measures can tell you everything. But looking at the granular data in context of broader trends will deliver a more representative view of the revenue impact of social media.

By Nikhil Kaul


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nikhil Kaul is a technophile, shutterbug, avid traveler, and foodie. When not indulging, he seeks problems in the ever-evolving marketplace to rattle his brain for solutions. A masters' student of Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, he enjoys wrestling with the challenges that businesses face due to the increasing influence of new media and changing customer behavior.

Marketing in B2B: Keep the Best of Both Worlds

The burst of social media is creating many new avenues for B2B customer engagement and analytics. Being in a class where I work with state-of-the-art monitoring and analysis tools and as an experienced marketing professional, I see how social media can enhance customer feedback collection and analysis.  I will argue, however, that while embarking on new avenues of social in B2B can prove to be worthwhile, marketers should not ignore the significance of customer feedback collected by sales force. It’s time to organize our old closets of under-collected and under-processed customer data and finally meet our customer.

Image linked from the Real Time Report 

B2B companies are social, but 75% of them do not measure it 

One of the takeaways from the 2012 International BMA Conference as seen by B2B online, is “that B2B has always been social, is social and will always be social,” according to Ralph Oliva, Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets. “The implication is more about this new way for community to happen and how you can penetrate that community and mine for value,” Ralph continues. Yet, 75% of B2B companies do not measure or quantify social media. Could these ¾ of B2B marketers be relying on their sales teams for feedback gathering? In my experience, this is where marketers can lose visibility and control, if no formalized process exists for collecting and analyzing information.


A massive lost opportunity

B2B world sits on myriads of own data which doesn’t get processed or shared internally. Good, transparent, and easy processes of sharing customer data are not widespread in the B2B world. And now we have more data that comes from social.  “This is both a huge threat and a massive lost opportunity”, concludes Richard Owen, CEO of Satmetrix. “B2B firms have the advantage here because the "crowd” is easier to manage and engage.  And that presents a great opportunity for this "after the sale” value mining”, concludes Ralph.  


Still, marketers and sales seem to have slightly different goals. “These are two functions with an identical mission, so how can they be like ships passing in the night?” sales guru Neil Rackham asked during his keynote.

So what can marketers do?
Ralph Oliva believes there are three distinct areas where change is influencing B2B marketing:

1. Use new social frontiers – ask yourselves “how do we create new value by utilizing this new space?”
2. Use integrated marketing efficiently – Align the entire company and its assets to customers and markets, and ask a question, “Can the whole firm be focused on achieving your objectives in the market place?”
3. Bring state of the art tools that will make the whole firm better. The question that should drive the corporate marketer is "How can I mobilize the innovative capability of the firm?”

While social media should definitely be a focus and given more attention going forward, collecting customer feedback from sales remains to be a valuable underutilized tool. As a Northwestern University IMC graduate student and an experienced marketing professional, I see sentiments collected from social media and feedback brought by sales teams complimenting each other in an effort to meet our customer.  

Tanya Tretyak is a seasoned marketing professional and a part-time graduate student in Northwestern Medill Integrated Marketing Communications program.


Follow @TanTret