Burning money on marketing? Here’s what experts at Mckinsey & Co. recommend

Most companies use some sort of data to forecast their annual sales revenues and allocate marketing resources to strengthen their reach in a certain geographical area. But, is there a particular strategy to follow that gives the best ROI?

We reviewed a Mckinsey report titled, ‘’Marketing & Sales Big Data, Analytics, and the Future of Marketing & Sales’’ and found some interesting insights worth your time. (The full report can be accessed here.)

Exploring Micro markets for sales using Big Data

In a case study by Mckinsey, a chemical manufacturer in the United States, focused on its market share by counties, instead of looking at historical sales by regions.This analysis revealed, ‘’although the company had 20% of the overall market share, it had upto 60% market share in some places and as little as 10% in others – including in some of the fastest growing customer segments’’.

The study went on to add, ‘’one sales rep had been spending more than half her time 200 miles from her home office, even though only a quarter of her region’s opportunity lay there.

This was purely because sales territories had been assigned according to historical performance rather than growth prospects. Now, she spends 75 percent of her time in an area where 75 percent of the opportunity exists—within 50 miles of her office. Changes like these increased the firm’s growth rate of new accounts from 15 percent to 25 percent in just one year’’.

By deploying Big Data to understand their sales numbers at the granular level, the company was able to explore micro markets, redeploy resources to under-served, high potential areas and create new avenues for growth.

Less is more when spending on marketing using Big Data

Executives have to often wrestle and justify the enormous marketing budgets they require to run their marketing campaigns on TV and print – often without consistent clarity on the ROI they receive from the different marketing channels.

But here’s the important part: If you can accurately track your ROI, for every penny spent on marketing (using Big Data), you can fine-tune your investments to get the best bang for the buck.

The Mckinsey report explored the relationship between greater revenue generation in relation to a well-optimised marketing campaign informed by use of Big Data.

The study revealed, ‘’Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies face a unique problem in that unlike telecom, insurance or car brands, where consumers invest significant time in researching before buying, consumers are less prone to surfing the web for items like toothpaste, diapers or yoghurt. So how can consumer brands participate in the digital revolution?

A consumer food brand decided to use Facebook to connect with customers. The plan involved using Facebook advertising plus contests, relevant sponsored blogs, photo sharing incentives, and shopping list apps that plugged into the sharing nature of the Web and had good viral potential.

The approach paid off, delivering sales results similar to traditional marketing (which included heavy TV advertising and significant print), at a fraction of the cost. The reason? Better targeting. Given the overwhelmingly positive effects of this Facebook effort, the brand considered making massive marketing budget cuts to TV and print advertising in favor of more spend on social media channels.

Data Analysis suggested that digital marketing (online display, Facebook advertising and Facebook viral) would deliver the same impact as traditional marketing (TV and print) but at only 15 percent of the cost’’.