Marketing and Sales Analytics: Proven Techniques and Powerful Applications from Industry Leaders

4. People and Organization—Cultivate “Analytic Marketers”

The dominant tendency in marketing organizations is to draw charts first and then define and hire narrow roles into them. This is because the range of functions to be encompassed in a marketing organization is broad, and the knowledge required to execute each can be somewhat specialized. Inevitably, this leads to a situation where marketing analysts are uniquely defined and functionally segregated from other marketing roles. What follows is a too-common pattern: More numerate marketing analysts generate reports that less numerate marketers often don’t use. In short, Venusians and Martians remain on their respective planets, without communicating effectively.

The advent of digital channels ...