How To Get A Better Return On Marketing Analysis?

　　 Marketing Executives point out that their companies spend 7.1% of their marketing budget on marketing analysis every year, and plan to increase it to 12.3% in the next 3 years. Such a level of marketing costs may mark the arrival of the long-awaited "marketing information revolution" era, which was put forward by Bob Blattberg, Rashi Glazer and John Little 25 years ago. However, we find that this revolution is beset by some fundamental problems. In fact, marketing information itself has been subject to the same problems for decades. Specifically, there are many information, but it is always difficult to make use of these information to contribute to the company's performance development.

The CMO Survey, a joint research sponsored by the American Marketing Association, Duke University and McKinsey, joined the marketing analysis section in August 2012 and asked respondents how much help they made in using marketing analysis to your business performance. The score was divided into 7 files, 1 points for "no help", and 7 points for "great help". We find that the contribution of marketing analysis has not increased over the past two years. According to the chart in this paper, the contribution of marketing analysis is not satisfactory. More money was spent in marketing analysis, but the returns did not increase. From the investment point of view, it did not have sustainability. Here are some ways that businesses can improve marketing analysis of ROI:

1. handles Marketing analysis Users are regarded as consumers of information. Deshpand and Zaltman are the first scholars in the marketing field to start studying why enterprises can not make full use of marketing research. They conclude that the key reason is that there is a lack of attention to users in marketing research management. Think of your users as your customers, ensure that marketing analysis can answer their questions and guide them to ask better questions in the future.

2. evaluate the quality of your marketing analysis. In The CMO Survey, only 1/3 interviewed companies regard this as an important aspect of marketing. Evaluation must reflect users' opinions.

3. realize Marketing knowledge Production and use are independent actions in enterprises. In fact, a better way to think about marketing analysis is to regard it as an innovation that must be spread within the enterprise. This requires everyone to agree with it and establish knowledge accumulation, and persuade potential users to realize their advantages and values compared with traditional marketing decision-making methods. No matter what kind of innovation, there are costs and interests that need to be managed.

4. win management support. The basic work of Kohli and Jaworski in market orientation shows that company executives must unite to support companies in their efforts to acquire, publicize, and use information from consumers and competitors. Marketing analysis is the same, but today's marketing managers also need to develop the necessary technical skills. I think of a video of marketing practice awards, one of which is CEO, "I have to learn regression analysis." Managers should now learn the matching tendency score and breakpoint regression model, but it is still the saying: organize your management to help them realize the value of doing mathematics.

5. experiment. Only 11.9% of enterprises in The CMO Survey measure the return on investment in marketing by experiment. There are many ways to deduce the effect of marketing expenditure from observation data, but experiments provide enterprises with the best insights into the impact of different types and levels of costs on returns.

6. invest time in acquiring knowledge. Jim Figura (vice president of global consumer views before Colgate Co) and I have discussed this concept for many years. The question is how long it takes for your company to transform data and information into useful knowledge and insights. Considering that your competitive advantage may come from the rapid response of your company to marketing analysis, it may be a field worth investing in.

7., be a leader. According to the survey, only 68.3% of the company's marketing analysis is led by the marketing team. This means that marketing leaders often cooperate with other core managers, such as CIO and CTO, in the analysis area. From this point of view, it is important to establish credibility through the establishment of technical skills. However, it is also important to ensure that technology does not dominate opinions or distracts customers. If customer sentiment is the core goal, marketers must emphasize this in collaboration.

8., build up a team of analytical talents. Only 3.4% of the marketing executives clearly indicated that their company had the right talents to make use of marketing analysis. When using 1 (worst) - 7 (best) points to assess whether a suitable analytical personnel was available, the August 2013 report showed an average score of 3.4 points. In addition, when asked how difficult it is to find the right marketing analysts, 83% of the respondents scored 4 points and 4 points in 1 (not difficult) - 7 (the most difficult) points. One solution is to tap the potential inside the company to find managers who can be trained and take responsibility for marketing analysis within the company. If the company adopts this way, it will need to increase the cost of marketing training. Research shows that the cost will only increase by 2.5% in the coming year.

9. regard human capital as financial capital. Early analysis of the survey results shows that companies with more than average level of marketing analysis talent are significantly more aware of +4.18% VS+2.51% than those with only below average level of marketing analysts. The same is true for profit margins (+4.69%VS +2.71%).

10., focus on core marketing assets. When asked about the areas in which companies use marketing analysis to improve the formulation of marketing decisions, only 1/3 less than 31.7% of them indicated that they could use marketing analysis to make decisions in terms of acquiring consumers (31.7%), retaining consumers (27.6%) and branding (22%). Considering that these are actually the core contributions of marketing, marketing managers must pay close attention to these areas. If the marketing leader hopes that marketing analysis can make a valuable contribution to enterprise performance, they must take the initiative to take measures to manage marketing analysis and regard it as an innovation that must be spread within the company. This includes the initiative to promote the value of insights generated by marketing analysis (especially for management). If this is not the case, the function of analysis will sooner or later turn to other business sectors or be classified into the category of scientific means rather than the core tool of enterprise strategic marketing plan.