Interview: How to Use Analytics to Optimize the Marketing Mix

IBM measures everything. Using a small army of mathematicians, IBM has put anything that it could measure into a mathematical model to determine what is relevant and what is not relevant to predicting the desired outcome: a sale. We spoke to Katharyn White, vice president of marketing for IBM Global Business Services, about IBM’s program.

ITSMA: Tell us how you use analytics to determine which marketing tactics you should use and when you should use them?

White: We go through a process where we take the best insight globally and we brief the various countries on what we think is the right guidance. The trick to that is doing it as much in advance as possible-at least six months-so the different marketing groups have time to really localize, modify, and optimize based on their particular scenario.

Then they will do the work to develop their marketing mix. They will look at what’s worked in the past, what needs to be refined going forward, and what’s already in plan. We like to see things in plan for a long time. Our analytics show that consistent marketing yields better results than random marketing.

Once they look at what’s in plan, they can augment it with the things that are working. The ability to analyze effectiveness varies a bit by tactic. For example, digital campaigns are easier to measure than events, which are typically part of a broader campaign. So it can be hard to isolate what really drives results for some tactics.

ITSMA: How do you use analytics to reshape the marketing mix?

White: We put a process in place so we can carve off the 10% of the tactics that aren’t working and reallocate those funds to the things that are working. The idea is to push the system, to continue to drive the analytics to make better decisions.

ITSMA: What, if any, are the pitfalls of this approach?

White: This idea of constantly reevaluating the top and bottom tactics within your mix will force change where some people don’t want it. There’s always someone out there who believes a particular tactic is the right thing to be doing. So you have to keep measuring consistently and make sure you have a closed-loop process.

To meet Katharyn White and other top B2B marketers at ITSMA’s 2009 Annual Conference, go here.

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