Big Data, Analytics and the Future of Marketing & Sales
Big Data, Analytics and the Future of Marketing & Sales
Published on July 16, 2013
Featured in: Marketing & AdvertisingDavid Edelman
McKinsey partner leading Digital Marketing Strategy Practice
There’s been so much written about Big Data that it’s sometimes hard to keep track of how – or whether – the conversation is actually progressing. Stats, best practices, insights have a way of all running together.
So we thought recently: Let’s take a step back and take a look at what’s been said, what’s been most meaningful, and how to organize it in a way that gives some structure to the range of insight.
The outcome is our first eBook: Big Data, Analytics, and the Future of Marketing & Sales. As we looked over the content in putting this together, there were a few points that really jumped out at me that I wanted to share:
While Big Data is still far from its potential, companies are already finding real above-market growth. Companies that use Big Data and analytics effectively show productivity rates and profitability that are 5–6 percent higher than those of their peers.
Big Data and analytics are about more than just crunching massive amounts of data. It's about using data to make better - and more profitable - decisions. McKinsey analysis has revealed that companies that take a more data-centered approach improve their marketing return on investment (MROI) by 15–20 percent. Given the roughly $1 trillion companies spend annually on marketing globally, that’s $150 billion to $200 billion in additional value. Creativity still has an important role to play, but no decision should be made without turning to the relevant data first.
Data must lead to action or it's worthless. So much of what’s been written is about how to collect and crunch the right data, but far too little attention has gone to how to turn those insights into actions that drive above-market growth. That means having the people and processes discover insights from the data, design great products and offers based on them, and then delivering them to your customers wherever and whenever they are on their decision journey. It’s that complete “discovery-design-delivery” capability that is needed for above-market growth to happen.
So I hope you’ll try out our eBook (it's available for free on iBookstore, Amazon,Barnes & Noble and Vook). Please send your feedback and ideas. We’re still at the beginning of the conversation on this turning-point issue.
Where have you seen growth come from Big Data, and what are the most important things you got right to make it happen?
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Learn more about Big Data and other topics on the Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Forum site, and follow us on Twitter @McK_CMSOForum. And please follow me on Twitter @davidedelman.
