Today’s value-oriented, less loyal customers create even greater challenges in an already challenging business environment. With a keen focus on growth, increased customer expectations and competition, and the proliferation of new technologies and channels, the world is just too dynamic for businesses and especially marketers to rely solely on intuition and experience to succeed. Relevant, timely data; and analytical skills must back up all decisions.
An Accenture High Performance research study found that companies that invest heavily in their analytic capabilities outperform the S&P 500 on average by 64%. How are these high performers different?
First, they have above-average analytical capabilities. Second, they have better decision support analytical capabilities. Third, they value analytical insights more highly than the average company, which seems obvious, or they wouldn’t have invested in the first two. And finally, they use analytics across their entire organization, including sales and marketing.
Julio Hernandez, once a partner at Accenture and now at KPMG, says, “Companies need to be analytically inclined and data-driven in order to turn insights into action for driving growth.”
How Analytics Drive Growth
Let analytics be your growth mantra. Use analytics to evaluate and address five growth opportunities:
- Acquire new, valuable customers
- Acquire customers who will buy more from you
- Acquire customers who will buy your higher-value products/services
- Retain high-value customers longer
- Determine which marketing activities will have the greatest impact on accelerating customer acquisition and improving retention
The Best Way to Get Started
We all know that analytics is challenging and time-consuming. And there are so many possible projects to evaluate that it’s hard to know where to start. To prioritize projects, we recommend you evaluate projects against two dimensions: ease of execution from easy to hard and value derived, from low to high.
Here’s how to use this idea.
- Create your criteria for each dimension.
- Make a list of all your potential projects.
- Score each project against the criteria.
- Plot each project based on its score into one of the four boxes.
- High-Value/Easy-to-Execute- Must Dos
- Low-Value/Easy-to-Execute – Quick Hits (things you can do in 30 days or less)
- High-Value/Hard-to-Execute- Transformative
- Low-Value/Hard-to-Execute- Nice to Have
We recommend you focus on the high-value/easy-to-execute first. Create and implement a plan to act on these NOW. These projects prove your way to demonstrate fast, high-value wins.
Then tackle the easy-to-execute/low-value for the next set of fast wins. These may be projects where university students can help if you’re short on internal staff.
Put a plan in place to address the hard-to-execute/high-value projects. These may require you to seek external expertise.
Place the last group in your “parking lot” for reevaluation when you repeat this process.
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Marketing Operations is Oxygen for Growth
An analytical approach to the business takes skills and resources, and it is not easy to scale. How do you scale it? The optimal way to scale is with marketing operations. Marketing operations are oxygen for growth. A properly chartered and resourced marketing operations function facilitates an agile marketing organization. Best-in-class marketing organizations:
- Define efficient and scalable processes, including data capture and management
- Use analytics to identify and recommend ROI-led marketing investment, including developing models to optimize channels
- Facilitate strategic planning and growth by using analytics to develop market and customer segmentation models
Our research shows that many organizations have someone performing some part of the marketing operations function, primarily budgeting, research, and planning. As you plan for the role of Marketing Operations, consider how combining increased investment in infrastructure and skills will help you prove Marketing’s contribution, value, and impact on growth.
FAQ:
A: Because today’s customers are more value-oriented and less loyal, and the environment is more dynamic—higher expectations, more competition, more channels, and rapid technology change. To make effective decisions in this context, organizations need relevant, timely data and the analytical skills to turn that data into action.
A: Accenture High Performance research found that companies investing heavily in analytic capabilities outperform the S&P 500 on average by 64%—indicating that analytics is strongly associated with superior business performance.
A: High performers tend to:
- Have above-average analytical capabilities
- Have stronger decision-support analytics
- Value analytical insights (and therefore invest in them)
- Use analytics across the enterprise, including Sales and Marketing
A: Use analytics to evaluate and act on five growth opportunities:
- Acquire new, valuable customers
- Acquire customers who will buy more from you
- Acquire customers who will buy higher-value products/services
- Retain high-value customers longer
- Identify which marketing activities will most accelerate acquisition and improve retention
A: Use a two-by-two prioritization grid based on ease of execution (easy → hard) and value derived (low → high). This helps teams focus on projects that deliver fast, meaningful wins and build momentum.
A:
- Define criteria for “ease” and “value”
- List potential analytics projects
- Score each project against the criteria
- Plot projects into one of four categories:
- High-value / easy-to-execute: Must-dos
- Low-value / easy-to-execute: Quick hits (often 30 days or less)
- High-value / hard-to-execute: Transformative
- Low-value / hard-to-execute: Nice to have
A:
- High-value/easy: Execute now to prove value quickly and build credibility.
- Low-value/easy: Use for additional fast wins; consider leveraging interns or university students if staffing is limited.
- High-value/hard: Build a plan and consider external expertise to accelerate progress.
- Low-value/hard: Put in a “parking lot” and revisit in the next planning cycle.
A: Because scaling an analytical, data-driven approach requires infrastructure, process discipline, and skills development—exactly what Marketing Operations enables. A properly chartered and resourced Marketing Ops function supports agility and helps Marketing prove and improve its contribution to growth.
A: Best-in-class Marketing Ops teams:
- Define efficient, scalable processes for data capture and management
- Use analytics to recommend ROI-led investments and build models to optimize channels
- Support strategic planning and growth by developing market and customer segmentation models using analytics
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