An Analytics Mindset: Changing Marketing Culture

Written on 02/27/17 9:18 PM

Analytics is embedded in everything today’s marketers do. This not only requires a cultural shift that impacts how marketing teams work together as much as it impacts what they do. An analytical marketing approach requires that teams act differently, as much as it demands that they think differently based upon what data is telling them.

In this Harvard Business Review article, Adele Sweetwood, the Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Shared Services at SAS, looks at three approaches to build an analytical culture. The idea of a “common analytical culture” helps organizations develop the ability to make adjustments on the fly, creating the opportunity to implement real-time changes and empowering the marketing [are we missing a word here? Team? Group?] to respond more quickly.  She looks at three ways that teams in an analytical culture must think differently.

1. Use data to change the status quo – Teams need to think differently about marketing because the availability of new data and metrics allow them to be more effective and enable them to identify new approaches
2. Use stories to convey data insights – Teams can ask what-if questions to uncover other stories it can begin to tell, enabling teams to shift from being reactive to proactive, creating a culture focused on the future, rather than having one weighed down by the past.
3. Use different metrics – In the past, metrics provided something to react to, but today reacting to metrics isn’t enough. Customers now have greater expectations about what they expect us to know as marketers and how we interact with them.

Learn more about how an analytics mindset changes marketing culture, read the full article here.