1.4 How to Use This Book

The heart of this book contains chapters on the most common marketing channels in use today. You will find a chapter on how to use metrics in social media marketing, how to optimize your website using web analytics, a key topic for all companies, and how to use email marketing metrics to drive results. Whether you are new to these channels, or an advanced user from the creative or strategy side, these channel-specific chapters will give you the guidance you need on how to leverage the data generated by the tools you use.

In addition, these chapters will show how the metrics from one channel can be used in conjunction with those from other channels to drive even greater business results. For the marketing generalist, working through all of the chapters will help you understand deeply how metrics can be used to optimize all of the channels for which you are responsible. For those who specialize in one or more of the channels, the chapter on your area of expertise will provide you with a deep dive on the metrics you will want to use every day. The chapters on other channels will give you ideas on how to use cross-functional metrics to drive more results, put your own work into deeper context, and collaborate more effectively across your organization.

What if you are new to marketing? You’re taking a marketing analytics course as part of your undergraduate education and are just getting to know the field. Marketing is more data-driven than ever. Learning to see all marketing efforts through the lens of data will empower you to be more creative, more systemic in your thinking, and more effective as you emerge in this exciting field. Becoming a data-driven marketer from the beginning will give you an edge as a practitioner. This is a time of significant change in marketing, and those who are knowledgeable about data will be at an advantage in hiring and at work.

If you are an experienced practitioner, you will find the case studies will both validate what you already know and provide fresh ideas for your own work. The citations at the end of each chapter will provide you with additional reading, and the questions will allow you to reflect both on the text and on ways you can optimize your own work with data. Visualizations and the Do the Math feature will give you useful materials to inspire presentations to management, shortcuts to making critical calculations, and a focus for discussions with your team. Use the chapters on channels outside your main area of interest to be able to ask better questions of colleagues who are responsible for other marketing channels in your organization.

If you are new to marketing, pay close attention to the main text in each chapter. These contain all the key concepts, terms, and information you need to understand the subject. Read each case study a couple of times and discuss it with classmates. They bring the concepts to life and provide a “sneak peek” at what the day-to-day of a data-driven marketer is all about. Remember to reflect on the questions, so that you solidify the concepts. They may come up as interview questions for your next job—companies increasingly want to see that any marketer, even those in creative roles, are able to think effectively with data. The channel-by-channel chapters will also help you better understand the roles within a marketing organization. You’ll get a sense not just of analytics, but of the whole workflow of an effective modern digital marketing program.

Each chapter includes several fictionalized vignettes based on common analytics activities, called A Closer Look. Throughout the book, you will also find case studies that look at how one organization drove impressive results using analytics in their marketing. The case studies are in-depth stories of real-world marketers. They are designed to be as inclusive as possible, showing the range of organizations that are doing digital marketing. You will find case studies from Fortune 1000 companies and cutting-edge startups, nonprofits, and small businesses. You’ll learn about analytics from the perspective of the solo marketing practitioner wearing multiple hats in a “department of one,” as well as the work of dedicated marketing analytics departments that span hundreds of locations in a global enterprise.

Look at these stories as both an inspiration and a look at the practicalities of work in an emerging field. There is currently no one right way to deploy marketing analytics. Instead, companies are adapting best practices to the norms of their industries, their growth goals, and the resources they have available. The pathfinding marketers featured in the cases are creating new best practices from which other professionals can learn. But by no means are theirs the only perspectives. As you read them, think about how your own experiences align with what is said—and how you approach similar activities. If you’re new to marketing, understand that taking a critical approach to case studies is key to learning. Each chapter concludes with a list of questions, including some on the case studies. Classes can use each case as a starting point for debate and further exploration of how to solve marketing challenges with data. The cases present an opportunity to apply the concepts from the chapter to real-world scenarios. They also present a resource of approaches to common data analytics needs faced by many organizations, providing practical, inspiring advice.

Within each chapter, you’ll find one or more Do the Math sections. These quick introductions to basic formulas used in marketing analytics will guide you step-by-step through the most common calculations marketers need to know, such as how to determine the return on advertising spend. You do not need to be an expert in statistics to do marketing analytics, and you do not need a statistics background to do any of the exercises in this book.

The Do the Math sections simplify business math for marketers, breaking down the details of all the major statistics discussed in the book. In clear, simple terms, illustrated by examples, they show you how to figure fundamental numbers that will show you the results of your promotional campaigns and demonstrate the value of marketing to your organization. 

Questions for discussion at the end of every book provide you, your classmates, and your instructor an opportunity to go deeper in exploring all the key concepts in a chapter. Questions may be assigned as discussion questions in class. Going through the questions provides you with the opportunity to solidify what you have learned, taking the applications further into real-world, modern uses of marketing analytics. You can use the questions as study aides, to help you apply the concepts to your work, and as a path to conducting your own readings on the subject. Activities provide an opportunity to analyze specific issues in depth. They allow you to apply your learning to real-world scenarios.

Activities are all based on real activities and challenges in marketing today and provide you with insights on how the concepts from each chapter apply in today’s business world.