Data-Driven Marketing
Book

Data-Driven Marketing

The 15 Metrics Everyone in Marketing Should Know

Mark Jeffery
Wiley, 2010
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Many marketing insiders are not fans of quantitative business analysis. They prefer the creative side of the business. But in today’s cost-cutting, profit-focused environment, marketers should understand the data metrics that define their results. This important book explains these utilitarian, beneficial metrics. Technology and innovation expert Mark Jeffery, writing in a disarming, first-person style, presents the case for using data. He cites companies that have applied data to drive sales and to deploy their marketing budgets more effectively. getAbstract suggests that this book could elevate the perceptions, performance and results of many non-data-oriented marketing departments, and could advance an individual marketer’s career.

Summary

Tough Times

As marketing departments come under increased pressure to produce measurable results, more nonmarketing executives are scrutinizing marketing managers and challenging them to justify their budgets. But many pivotal marketing functions, such as branding and image, are not directly connected to generating revenues, and many marketers don’t know how to measure them. In fact, studies have found that 55% of marketers do not use basic marketing metrics at all, and 80% do not use marketing data to make decisions.

One commonly cited problem is that marketers do not possess the relevant data or, if they do, they don’t know how to interpret it. Yet marketers who regularly use data are promoted faster and hold more senior positions than their less data-literate counterparts. For example, when author Mark Jeffery asked the chief marketing officer of Best Buy to name his main competitor, he responded, “Walmart.” Jeffrey had expected him to name Circuit City, but the marketing officer explained that Circuit City constantly held sales, which diminished its already thin profit margins. Circuit City operated in a downward cycle – holding nearly constant sales to drive revenues...

About the Author

Mark Jeffery is the Director of Technology Initiatives and a senior lecturer at the Center for Research in Technology and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management. He has published multiple Harvard Business School Publishing case studies.

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