Project Thoughts: Data Analytics: An Insight Powerhouse

I recently attended the CCIMS McCombs Marketing Conference and the opportunity to listen to Bob Johansen of the Institute for the Future speak about the future of marketing. He referenced a New York Times article called "How Companies Learn Your Secrets" by Charles Duhigg. The opening of the article was about Target using their complex data analytics to determine if their customers are pregnant.  I found this idea fascinating, so I pulled up the article as soon as we took a break. Consequently, the day's second panel was all about Data Analytics. I heard from experts at AMD, Dell, AT&T, and a small start-up making a go at synthesizing data into usable reports. It was fascinating to see how these companies relied on data to make decisions. (Being a go-by-the-gut type of person, I think researching examples of how data really can drive insights will help even out my marketing approaches!)

Having lived on the cusp of the digital era - and by that I mean that I first started playing the Oregon Trail on a big beige Apple desktop computer when I was in 6th grade - I often struggle with the amount of data I am giving out about myself.  As a marketer, I can appreciate the quest for companies to learn about me. However, as the consumer I don't feel quite right giving away all my secrets.

I find the topic of data analytics fascinating, and I certainly expect to use this type of information in my future career.  Some of the most interesting points of his article - which are a precurser to his book out February 28th called  "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business" - include:

Almost every major retailer, from grocery chains to investment banks to the U.S. Postal Service, has a “predictive analytics” department devoted to understanding not just consumers’ shopping habits but also their personal habits, so as to more efficiently market to them. 

Chunking: that the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine, which thus decreases brain activity, and thus we think less and less. (Even if it looks like we are thinking more!)

The process within our brains that creates habits is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future. Over time, this loop — cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward — becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving emerges. 

Consumers going through major life events often don’t notice, or care, that their shopping habits have shifted, but retailers notice, and they care quite a bit. At those unique moments, Andreasen wrote, customers are “vulnerable to intervention by marketers.” In other words, a precisely timed advertisement, sent to a recent divorcee or new homebuyer, can change someone’s shopping patterns for years. 

I love the idea of the cue-routine-reward calculator from a marketer's perspective, but it is also scary how susceptible to marketing I (and we) are!  Duhigg goes on to talk about Target's targeted coupon circulars, sent to pregnant women but disguised as a normal ad. People were started to get spooked - understandably - so Target had to pull back and disguise how intelligent they were with their data.

In a time where we give up information so willingly, and usually without thinking, it is without doubt that corporations know way more about us than we would ever willingly tell them - if we had thought about it.  As much a people are afraid about Google knowing what they are searching for, or Facebook knowing what they are doing - they have been providing similar information to retailers, credit card companies, banks, etc. for years. I believe it will be a fascinating study to see what other interesting trends in data analytics are surfacing.  

Perhaps I can even do a report on Duhigg's book as well, although the gist of it seems to be more about how people form habits, and how marketers use these habits to better reach consumers. I find it all fascinating!

Looking forward to your thoughts, Professor Walls!

Blog Post 3 Assignment - Due February 24

This next blog is an opportunity for you to explore your paper topic. This is not a final contract on your topic - you can certainly change your topic after you right this. The whole point of this blog is to explore the topic enough so that you and I feel comfortable about your ability to create a full paper out of it. Here is what I would like to see included:

- Idea for the topic, fleshed out as much as possible - this can also include all the questions you have about the topic at this point. Use the blog as a brainstorming session for yourself to get your ideas out there and make this a first attempt at organizing your thoughts around the topic.

- Why is this topic interesting to you? Remember: this is a big goal for the assignment!

- What is the connection to the gathering and identification of customer insights and/or the design of valuable customer experiences? (at least, as you see it right now)

- Cite and briefly describe at least one article that is related to your topic (this can be either an academic article or trade article, at this point). Do your best to find an article that might be a central source or guidepost for your paper.

Do not forget the minimum length guidelines. Also, try NOT to write in sentence fragments, although a list here and there is fine.

I will be reading all of these posts so that I can provide feedback on what you have thus far.

Have fun with it!

Thoughts on Social Media

Social media has emerged as one of the hottest marketing trends of the past ten years, dominating marketing conversations and often times leaving marketers scratching their heads.  While social media is clearly an imperative part of one's marketing strategy, it is not the end-all be-all holy grail solution to marketing.  Social media is an effective means of communicating to the world, but marketers must utilize social media as a two-way street in order to gain the most benefit.

Today, social media comes in nearly countless forms. Popular platforms include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, FlickR, Pinterest, Google Places, Yelp, and FourSquare... just to name a few. New platforms are born every day, and marketers must scrutinize the platform to ensure it fits into the marketing strategy of the company.

Marketers use social media to accomplish a number of goals.  I believe the most common goal is to raise awareness about a company through a cheap, easy, and instant channel.  Social media content serves a number of purposes through this goal - it helps keep top of mind mentality in a customer's mind while catering that mentality with particular messages.  Social media is also used for publicity and also is put in place for the coolness factor.  Consumers look to social media to get more information about a company or product, and they usually make judgements about a company based on the amount of participation within certain platforms.  One of the most important goals for social media is to drive conversations with customers.  Social media should engage customers and be relationships focused in order to be lasting and successful. Customers certainly view interactions as a relationships, so marketers must be diligent to keep that relationship strong and relevant.   Social media is also a measure of a company's performance and often a great source of feedback.  Yet another goal of social media is to increase a company's SEO (search engine optimization.) The more places a company shows up on the internet will often lead to higher rankings in searches.

Depending on the size and needs of a company, social media teams can be hired or outsourced. Their roles are to manage the company reputation, respond to posts/comments/feedback, demonstrate a pro-activeness in engaging with customers, and creating a relationship with customers.

As a marketer, I want to know the "who/what/when/where/why/how" about my customer. To be specific, I will use my own business as an example. I can gather this through traditional means such as focus groups, observation, purchase behaviors, feedback forms, etc... Or I can gather it pretty quickly via social media.  By "who," I mean who are the people that are connecting with my company.  I want to know demographics of people interested in my company: where are they from, what do they do, do they typically buy my type of product, how old are they, what hobbies do they have, etc. This information is important when I think about segmenting, targeting, and positioning my products.  Next is the "what," meaning what messages are they saying through social media.  The what is particularly important when I am looking for feedback, response, insights, and opinions.  The "when" of when are potential customers interacting with my company is also important. Are they frequently interacting, or did they do it in response to something else. "Where" is also important - are social media users interacting while they are at work, at home during more leisurely time, while waiting in line at the grocery store, etc. I believe the "where" component not only connects places and influences with my company, but also shows how truly engaged they are with my social media content. "Why" is one of the most important pieces of information I want to know, as it shows a deeper insight into the reason someone is connecting with my company.  Finally, "how" answers the questions of what platforms they are using, the means in which they found my company, and any additional behavioral insights that help me better understand the potential customer.

When I consider the information about my customers that I want to gather from social media, the most important things are customer interactions and customer feedback.  Customer interactions show how engaged individual people are with my company over social media - this is important because it demonstrates how relevant my company is in the scheme of their online attention and shows whether or not they care enough about my company to be engaged.  Customer feedback helps me determine a number of things. Some feedback can help demonstrate where I am efficient and inefficient along the value chain. For instance "you guys take forever to ship" and "you never have my size" are good operational indicators.  Obviously, I prefer the more positive feedback, but I think the former is more productive.  I also use customer feedback to learn things about my product I didn't know, such as different uses and applications.  For instance, I learned that my cleaning wipes are great to clean oven grease.  The customer interactions and feedback are great indicators of engagement and activity.

One of the hardest parts of utilizing social media is collecting and analyzing the desired information from users.  In order to gather data in a way that is insightful and meaningful, marketers should incorporate metrics into their social media marketing plan.  Without them, there is often too much data to analyze and the process can be overwhelming. There are actually a number of tools that can help, such as Google Analytics, Google Reader, Facebook Analytics, Bazaarvoice, Spredfast, etc.  These tools help aggregate data and help a marketer search for trends and gain insights. 

Social media is a powerful marketing tool, and it can do amazing things for a company.  However, marketers must be cognizant that social media is a two-way conversation in which the response from users and customers is and equally important part to the content sent out by a company.

Blog Post 2 Assignment - February 15

Blog 2 - Qualitative Research of Online Social Behavior - Due 15-Feb

Well, this one might be a challenge, but I'm really curious to see what you do with this and I hope you have fun with it.

One of the big areas of insights right now for marketers is the whole social media scene.  We will try to spend some time in class talking about and checking into some of the quantitative data that can be pulled.  So, I'd like you to think about you might get at interesting insights about social media use (or interesting insights about people that you extract from their social media use, if that distinction makes sense), using a more qualitative approach.

What information would you try to elicit?

How would you get at that information in a way that would be most accurate and telling?

You can do this for yourself as the targeted research participant, the person you created a persona for on your blog, or the persona for your Nordstrom project.

I know this is vague and lacks direction, but that is kind of the point on this one.  I'll try to talk about this a little more on Monday, but I want you to the thinking about it before then, if you can.

Again, remember the guidelines for blogs (which you can find towards the top of this site) and have fun with it.  Really push yourself to think and write as much as you can on this one.