First off, thanks to Manoj for the opportunity, and for producing a consistently great blog that is truly a resource for our community.

So why did Manoj offer me a guest blogging stint? Well, I work for Evantage Consulting in Minneapolis, and we just produced a whitepaper on marketing analytics. Though our focus was marketers based in the Twin Cities (with 345 local respondents), it is our feeling that there are a lot of parallels to what people are seeing in other markets, and hopefully our conclusions will provide some food for thought.

So, what did we find? Well, you can get a free copy of the full white paper here, but for the sake of brevity I’ll give you the Cliffs Notes version:

• Most marketers are investing more in analytics and resources, but the shift to data-driven marketing is still not a reality in most organizations

We chose to use Eric Peterson’s Web Analytics Adoption Framework to see how companies are advancing. To jog your collective memories, Eric identified three “chasms” that companies must cross on their way to analytics maturity:

• The Investment Chasm
• The Staffing Chasm
• The Action Chasm

Since we last performed this survey in 2006, most companies have crossed the Investment and Staffing Chasms (64% of respondents have at least one FTE devoted to analytics) but are stuck at the Action Chasm. They have invested time, money, and resources in analytics, but the cultural shift to data-driven marketing is proving more difficult. In fact, just 37% of respondents agree that they have clear KPIs to support their marketing goals, and only half (52%) feel they are getting actionable insights from their analytics. Additionally, and this is key, roughly two-thirds (64%) of respondents are neutral or disagree that management places significant strategic priority on analytics or that they even understand it (69%).

• There is a group of top performing marketers who have taken data-driven marketing to heart.

We decided to see if we could identify a group of survey respondents that have been able to institute a data-driven culture of marketing effectiveness, and indeed we could. These organizations are typified by strong management support and understanding of analytics, line of sight to the final conversion, and alignment on online marketing goals and metrics. When you start looking at this group and comparing it to overall respondents, strong trends emerge. Here are some highlights:

• Marketing dollars are beginning to shift toward more measurable media.

Despite the fact that most organizations are not doing the day-to-day optimization made possible with analytics, money is most definitely shifting to more measurable media like online at the expense of media such as Print, TV, and Radio. Our hypothesis is that while most organizations are having trouble with the day-to-day optimization, it may be easier to look at budgets on a yearly basis, and shift budgets at that level .

• Management is key in making the transition to data-driven marketing, and is slow to get on board.

The single biggest differentiator between top-performing organizations and everyone else is the extent to which management is on board with pushing the shift to a data-driven culture. Here’s a typical quote from a top performer, Mike Keyes at ShopNBC: “It really helps if it comes from the top. My manager is a numbers guy and has really taken analytics to heart.” This tracks with Eric Peterson’s thoughts as well. “Will you have a greater chance of being successful with web analytics if the executive suite is focused on numbers? Absolutely.”

In the end, the biggest takeaway for us was that marketing management needs to get on board, because it’s very difficult to drive organizational change without their support. We came away with a number of questions we think marketers should be asking themselves:

• How do we better demonstrate and communicate the value of analytics in driving improved performance?
• How do we as managers consistently ask for the data that supports recommendations and proves performance?
• How do we engage organizational leadership to integrate a philosophy of data-driven marketing that corresponds with organizational objectives?

So, that’s it in a nutshell. As I said, please feel free to access the full report at the link above, and if you have any further questions, please give me a shout ajanis at evantageconsulting.com.

Thanks again to Manoj for the opportunity.

Labels: Web Analytics

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