Marketing and Sales Analytics: Proven Techniques and Powerful Applications from Industry Leaders

by Cesar Brea

Overview

PROFITING FROM MARKETING ANALYTICS: YOUR COMPLETE EXECUTIVE ROADMAP

 

“Solid ideas and experiences, well-told, for executives who need higher returns from their analytic investments. Captures many best practices that are consistent with our own experiences at Bain & Company, helping clients develop actionable strategies that deliver sustainable results.”

—Bob Bechek, Worldwide Managing Director, Bain & Company

 

“Cesar has explored a complex subject in a clear and useful way as senior marketers look to more effectively leverage the power of data and analytics.”

—Bill Brand, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, HSN, Inc.

 

“Loaded with meaty lessons from seasoned practitioners, this book defines the guideposts of the Marketing Analytics Age and what it will take for marketing leaders to be successful in it. Cesar Brea has provided a practical playbook for marketers who are ready to make this transition.”

—Meredith Callanan, Vice President, Corporate Marketing and Communications, T. Rowe Price

 

“While the field has a lot of books on the statistics of marketing analytics, we also need insights on the organization issues and culture needed to implement successfully. Cesar Brea’s Marketing and Sales Analytics has addressed this gap in an interesting and helpful way.”

—Scott A. Neslin, Albert Wesley Frey Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College

 

To successfully apply marketing analytics, executives must orchestrate elements that transcend multiple perspectives and organizational silos. In Marketing and Sales Analytics, leading analytics consultant Cesar Brea shows you exactly how to do this.

 

Brea examines the experiences of 15 leaders who’ve built high-value analytics capabilities in multiple industries. Then, building on what they’ve learned, he presents a complete blueprint for implementing and profiting from marketing analytics.

 

You’ll learn how to evaluate “ecosystemic” conditions for success, reconcile diverse perspectives to frame the right questions, and organize your people, data, and operating infrastructure to answer them and maximize business results. Brea helps you overcome key challenges ranging from balancing analytic techniques to governance, hidden biases to culture change. He also offers specific guidance on crucial decisions such as “buy vs. build?”, “centralize or decentralize?”, and “hire generalists or specialists?”

 

 

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780133761719
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	05/29/2014
Series:	FT Press Analytics
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	902,868
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Cesar A. Brea is Managing Partner of Force Five Partners, LLC (forcefivepartners.com), a marketing analytics agency that works with clients in a number of industries to design and execute multi-channel marketing and sales strategies, and to build pragmatic, sustainable analytic foundations.

 

Cesar has more than twenty years experience as a line executive, advisor, and entrepreneur. Prior to co-founding Force Five Partners in 2008, Cesar served as Global Practice Leader for Marketspace, the digital media and marketing practice of Monitor Group, the international strategy consulting firm founded by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter. Formerly, Cesar was CEO of Contact Networks, an early LinkedIn competitor sold to Thomson Financial in 2006, and was Senior Vice President for Sales and Marketing at Razorfish, the world’s leading digital advertising agency. Before Razorfish, Cesar was Vice President for Marketing and Business Development at ArsDigita Corporation, an open-source software firm focused on online communities acquired by Red Hat Software in 2002. Earlier, Cesar was a management consultant at Bain & Company and a banker at J.P. Morgan.

 

Cesar holds an MBA from Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School, where he was named an Edward Tuck Scholar, and received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College. He is a frequent writer and speaker on marketing in the digital age. In 2012, Cesar published his first book on this topic, Pragmalytics: Practical Approaches to Marketing Analytics in the Digital Age. Cesar has been a guest lecturer in undergraduate and graduate programs at MIT and Harvard, and writes about marketing and ebusiness on his blog at http://octavianworld.org, and on Twitter (@cesarbrea).

 

Cesar and his wife Nan Leonard live in Dover, Massachusetts, and have three children, Ben, Kate, and Will. On summer weekends, they enjoy sailing on Nantucket Sound.

 

Table of Contents

Foreword    x

Acknowledgments    xii

About the Author    xiv

Introduction    1

Why This Book    2

Who It’s For    5

Where It Fits    6

How to Use It    7

How It’s Organized    8

Part I  Improving Your Odds: Eco-systemic Conditions for Analytic Success    11

Chapter 1  Strategic Alignment—First You Need to Agree On What to Ask    13

Framing Your Focus Beyond the Answer Itself    14

Three Perspectives for Marketing and Sales Analytics    15

Venus    16

Mars    17

Earth    19

Applying the Three Approaches    20

Reconciling Organizational and Cultural Perspectives    22

Packaging for Balance: “The Analytic Brief”    26

Visions for the Analytics Capability to Serve These Needs    27

Chapter 2  Access to Data—Too Often Taken for Granted    29

Getting to Data: Historical Models and Patterns    29

The Paleo-Analytic Era    29

The Meso-Analytic Era    31

The Ceno-Analytic Era    32

Modern Times    33

Moving Forward    34

Lenovo’s “Analytic Maturity Model”    35

Building the Data Warehouse    37

The BENS “BRN” Story    38

Implications for Big Data Investments    40

(Aside: What’s Big Data?)    42

Supporting Ad Hoc Approaches to Defining Data Requirements    44

Managing External Sources    46

Chapter 3  Operational Flexibility—Don’t Analyze What You Can’t Act On    49

A “Common Requirements Framework”    50

Targeting    51

Content    52

Channels    53

Analysis and Testing    54

A Summary Picture    55

What’s Right for You?    55

Integrating Analytics into Operational Capability Planning    56

Chapter 4  People and Organization—Cultivate “Analytic Marketers”    59

Recruiting    60

Skill Mix    62

Developing    64

Organizing for Analytics    65

Part II  Practical Analytics: Proven Techniques and Heuristics    71

Chapter 5  Practical Frameworks—For Getting On the Same Page    73

The Analytic Brief    73

Chapter 6  Practical Research—Beyond Studies for Studies’ Sake    89

Chapter 7  Practical Analytics—Knowing When to Say When    95

Evaluating Performance    95

Do the Math    99

Proceed Iteratively    100

Interpolate Estimates    101

Model Iteratively    103

Assessing Solution Tradeoffs    104

Chapter 8  Practical Testing—An Underused Approach to Insight    107

Chapter 9  The Importance—and Limitations—of Storytelling    111

Chapter 10  Managing Bias—Like Air, Invisible and Everywhere    117

Part III  Making Progress    123

Chapter 11  Managing Pace and Results—Momentum Is Strategic    125

“Time is the fire in which we burn”    125

Keeping Score    127

Investing in Capabilities vs. Harvesting Results    128

Chapter 12  Governance Models—Because Analytics Are Political    133

Chapter 13  “Culturelytics”—A Practical Formula for Change    137

Part IV  Conversations with Practitioners    141

Chapter 14  Conversations with Practitioners    143

Paul Magill, Abbott    143

Doug Collier, La-Z-Boy Incorporated    147

Scott McDonald, Condé Nast Publications    154

Melanie Murphy, Bed Bath & Beyond    161

David Norton, MDC Partners, Harrah’s    166

Rob Schmults, Talbots    171

Annemarie Frank, HSN    177

Judah Phillips, SMARTCURRENT    182

Latham Arneson, Paramount Pictures    190

Mohammed Chaara, Lenovo    193

Belinda Lang, Belinda Lang Consulting, Aetna    199

Thomas White, TIAA-CREF    206

Perry Hewitt, Harvard University    210

Todd Purcell, The Hartford    214

Ben Clark, Wayfair    219

Index    225

 

 

Editorial Reviews

“Solid ideas and experiences, well-told, for executives who need higher returns from their analytic investments. Captures many best practices that are consistent with our own experiences at Bain & Company, helping clients develop actionable strategies that deliver sustainable results.”

—Bob Bechek, Worldwide Managing Director, Bain & Company

“Successful marketing today demands balancing analytic sophistication with the practicality that can put insights to work. Cesar’s book synthesizes a set of ideas and case studies that offer proven approaches for getting this balance right.”

—Torrence Boone, Managing Director of Agency Relations for North America, Google Inc.

“Cesar has explored a complex subject in a clear and useful way as senior marketers look to more effectively leverage the power of data and analytics.”

—Bill Brand, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, HSN, Inc.

“Loaded with meaty lessons from seasoned practitioners, this book defines the guideposts of the Marketing Analytics Age and what it will take for marketing leaders to be successful in it. Cesar Brea has provided a practical playbook for marketers who are ready to make this transition.”

—Meredith Callanan, Vice President, Corporate Marketing and Communications, T. Rowe Price

“In my time at both Condé Nast and Gilt, we used data extensively to create the best possible experiences for our clients and partners. Cesar’s focus on getting the conditions right for analytics, and the experiences he captures to illustrate this theme, bring uniquely valuable perspectives to the conversation on this topic.”

—Sarah Chubb, Digital Media Consultant, former president, Condé Nast Digital and Gilt City

“In Marketing and Sales Analytics, Cesar Brea takes complex Big Data issues and frames them in a straightforward way that business executives of all kinds will find helpful and enlightening. This book is a great first step to using data analytics strategically to build stronger and more genuine customer relationships that drive growth and profitability.”

—Chris Malone, Managing Partner, Fidelum Partners and co-author of The HUMAN Brand: How We Relate to People, Products and Companies

“As a provider of a marketing attribution management platform, we work with many leading brands that have charted a course to more holistic measurement across their entire marketing ecosystem. This has resulted in truly actionable insights as well as recommendations for optimizing their overall performance. Cesar’s book is a tremendous guide for marketers looking to implement a more integrated, cohesive measurement and optimization strategy, empowered by a data driven approach that’s woven into the fabric of their businesses.

—Manu Mathew, CEO, Visual IQ, Inc.

“While the field has a lot of books on the statistics of marketing analytics, we also need insights on the organization issues and culture needed to implement successfully. Cesar Brea’s Marketing and Sales Analytics has addressed this gap in an interesting and helpful way.”

—Scott A. Neslin, Albert Wesley Frey Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College

“Cesar’s book comes at a time of unprecedented change for sales and marketing executives. He’s captured the transition point between analytics as we have known it with the future of Hadoop and related big data technologies to create a driving force of continuous learning and optimization.”

—John Schroeder, CEO and Co-founder, MapR Technologies

From the Publisher