How analytics can help you stand out from the marketing noise



Considering he was wandering the streets of London between 1887 and 1927, Sherlock Holmes might seem like a strange icon for anyone dealing with analysing the modern trend of Big Data. However, it was the detective who said, “I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

That same mistake is being made my marketers around the globe right now. Marketers are making assumptions based on faulty data, a lack of data or even too much data. If you are running a modern marketing campaign you will have to follow metrics from Google Analytics, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You’ll have data coming in from traditional sources like television, outdoor metrics and more too.

Trying to find the aspect of your campaign that is performing well while simultaneously trying to figure out the areas that aren’t working is an onerous task. However, with the advent of the modern advanced analytics dashboards, all your information can be collected and curated in the one place on your personalised dashboard.

It can show you what posts are doing well on Facebook for example. You can then replicate those campaigns across other social media channels or decide to put extra marketing spend behind the best-performing posts to amplify the message.

Looking into the data can be a powerful win, with marketing teams the world over deploying smart tactics to up their capital.

Good content is not enough

Cisco is one of the digital world’s behemoths but it had something of a social media problem. It was publishing what it thought was ‘good content’ but it wasn’t getting any traction at all. When Cisco had a new product to launch – the Aggregated Services Router – it used analytics to see where its customers were. The data showed that its main channels weren’t being used by potential customers.

Instead, Cisco used its much-vaunted Social Media Listening Centre. This centre “monitors 5,000 daily social mentions across 70 company-related Facebook pages, 100 Twitter accounts, as well as other social platforms including LinkedIn, YouTube and company-run blogs and forums.” In the five months after being launched, there was a 281 percent ROI for Cisco.

The data showed Cisco that its customers would prefer to be contacted on a dedicated ‘Cisco Support Group for Uber User Internet Addicts’ and via Second Life and online forums. Cisco realised its clients were self-proclaimed nerds who wanted to be acknowledged as such.

So Cisco decided to ditch the traditional software launch and instead have a huge online launch. The launch was its most successful ever – and was attended by 90 times more people than usual. It cost $100,000 less than any launch Cisco had before and resulted in 20 percent more sales than predicted.

Bad Moms relies on good data

Of course, the appeal of mining data doesn’t just work for ‘nerds’. STX Entertainment used data when it was launching a movie, Bad Moms, starring Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Christina Applegate.

STX figured the audience was the traditional ‘mom’ demographic but noticed that its ads were not resonating with that audience. So STX used the data it was provided with – that 18-24 year old females were the most engaged with the ads they’d seen for the movie. The movie about moms was not resonating with moms – but instead with their daughters.

STX regrouped and retargeted towards the younger demographic. It found that younger women were 22 percent more likely to go see the movie in the theatre – and STX saw incremental ticket sales of over 428,000. In addition, the campaign turned every $1 spent on digital advertising into $2.31 in incremental ticket sales.

"Understanding who is convertible—that's when you can change your box office in the millions,” said Amy Elkins, senior VP-media and marketing innovation at STX Entertainment.

These two cases show the value of understanding your data. Cisco saw that its customers wanted to be reached in a different manner and STX saw that its audience wasn’t quite what it had anticipated. Both organisations were nimble enough to go where the market was – but they had to see the opportunity in the data first.

Interested in a combined analytics dashboard that can make your job easier?

If you want to gain insight into your marketing data and figure out your next opportunity, then you're in the right place. If you want to see what a combined marketing analytics dashboard can do for you, get in touch with the Statwolf team.

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