My simple definition of marketing analytics is the use of evidence, usually in the form data and analysis, to inform various aspects of marketing to deliver marketing effectiveness. This means marketing analytics can be used to inform your marketing strategy, communications plans, tactical executions, and in-market resource re-allocations.

Marketing analytics can address a wide range of marketing and advertising questions, especially when the right datasets exist – and they usually do. Questions like how much should we budget to support our brand marketing or campaign this year? Which customers should we prioritize or target? If we decide to target all customers, what investments should I commit for each customer type to ensure optimal ROI? Which media channels, tactics, or mix can deliver the most impact for our planned marketing exercise? How well are the various tactics contributing to the results we are seeing in-market? What changes should we make to the existing marketing plan to deliver more result? And even questions like where should I spend this additional naira we just received for an end of year marketing push? Many of these questions cross the minds of most marketers but are often pushed aside because they may think it’s impossible or a heavy lift to address these questions. With the right analytics partner, it’s easier than many think.

It’s indeed a no-brainer but I will not paint all marketers with a broad brush as we have seen different levels of sophistication and applications here in Nigeria. Companies and marketers in industries with a lot of datasets have historically applied some form of analytics especially using their databases. Think banking or telecoms. These clients do have large customer datasets that have been used for segmentation and churn analysis. That said, there are lots of analytics opportunities on the realm of campaign analytics, digital analytics, or attribution modelling that are not executed, meaning a lot of marketing efficiency is un tapped. Other brands that do not have the databases of the industries I mentioned above are usually less sophisticated in the application of a wide range of analytics capabilities available to them as we’ve seen done by clients in similar verticals outside Nigeria

There are lots of reasons why marketers have not taken advantage of analytics. In short, it’s because they can. They can get away with current performance levels, which while not optimizing their marketing ROI, remains tenable to them or their organizations. Not in any order of priority but ranges from the organizational culture –lack of adequate accountability because performance has not been rigorously assessed and things are done the way they always have been, there is less incentive to explore the power of marketing analytics. The lack of datasets, Lack of access to quality analytics talents as some have tried some not so strong analytics partners, only to be disappointed in getting truly insightful impact and recommendations or results, fear of facing the reality of the relatively weak performance that would demand major changes in decisions, partners, or resource allocation.

To your second question, when senior executives demand more visibility into performance or demand more returns per marketing investments, or when competition becomes intense, or when new ambitious managers take it upon themselves to deliver ambitious performance, we have seen rise in curiosity for using analytics to drive results.

In our experience, the first step marketers should take is to educate themselves, this can never be underestimated. There are lots of resources out there, including on our website, cogniko.com where we publish articles and blogs specifically tailored towards the Nigerian marketer. We understand time is limited, but find opportunities to read articles, books, watch online videos or webinars, or inviting very competent analytics talents for educational session. Does not have to be a capabilities or sales visit. As marketers get more comfortable about analytics and what it can deliver for the specific brands or their situation, then you can identify a small pilot project to test out analytics – could be a small campaign. As the confidence and experience builds as well as measurable results, marketers can gradually expand analytics application to bigger and broader marketing initiatives..

As with any professional services, marketers need to vet their partners for track record and demonstrated competence, request for clear deliverables and where possible, impact expectations. I want to add that marketers do not necessarily have to tap into external consultant. Some of our global clients do have internal analytics teams who can provide the analytics support or help identify and manage analytics consultants. Many Nigerian companies have internal departments in quantitative roles such as research, forecasting, or database management and may be able to find strong talents there who they consult with to help identity and bring in the right analytics consultants.
This has indeed been helpful and I believe many of our readers will find this informative as well. Thank you.