Do you ever get the feeling you are leaving too much to chance when it comes to your marketing decisions? Do you sometimes wish you had more to fly by than just the seat of your pants? Adele Sweetwood, VP of Americas marketing and support at SAS, reminds us in her article ”Six Tips for Creating an Analytics-Driven Marketing Culture”, analytics should be at the core of your decision-making and therefore ingrained in your company culture. While we can be tempted to rely on clever creative alone, bringing analytics into the equation leads to efficiency, confidence, and ultimately time and money savings. Now that’s a great way to start your day!
Sweetwood suggests creating an “Analytics-Driven Marketing Culture” by following six tips:
- Treat data as a portfolio – Revise your data often to ensure it’s still an accurate reflection. Refreshed, up-to-date data will lend itself to better results and a more efficient use of resources.
- Recognize the many faces of analytics – Analytics lead to more than just basic metrics. Use analytics to predict, optimize and ultimately boost conversion rates.
- Hire with analytics in mind – Make sure your office desks are filled with individuals with a penchant for both analytics and creative. Meshing the two will lead to effective and efficient marketing with a solid foundation for growth.
- Ask, “Do you have data to support that?” – Don’t put so much pressure on your gut! Collect data and let the facts create solid reasoning to support or guide your decisions.
- Test, measure and adjust – Think quality rather than quantity. Let analytics help you better define and refine so you can save time, money and resources.
- Cement partnerships – Develop strong relationships with other departments within the company and any outside vendors with whom you collaborate. Allow input from all sides to round out your approach.
Integrate! Strategize! Communicate! At the end of the day, your goal should be to encourage and support your team toward fact finding and reasoning through analytics. Dig deep and determine the best course for your marketing objectives or individual campaigns. While distinctive creative is great, a lump or two of analytics makes for an even sweeter result.
Click here for the Sweetwood’s complete article.