Are you an executive who works at a large advertiser? Are you responsible for managing relationships with marketing & communication agencies? Are you looking for new ways to optimize those relationships? You’ve come to the right place.
In this ultimate guide, we look at the red-hot area of Business Intelligence and Data Analytics, and specifically how data can be applied to marketing procurement decisions.
Feel free to jump ahead to any section at any time:
“One picture is worth ten thousand words.” –Chinese proverb
Over millions of years, the human visual system has developed to become our dominant mode of understanding the world. It is estimated that around 50% of our cognitive ability is focused through our eyes.
Our ability to survive was predicated on us being able to distinguish visual elements such as position, size, angles, and color, in order to look for patterns in our environment. Having the ability to distinguish between a large lion and a small cat was literally a case of life-and-death, as was the ability to determine the color of the berry that was about to be eaten or the shape of the rock you were about to stand on in order to cross the river.
To help you understand how powerful our visual cognitive system is, here is a simple test. Take 15 seconds on each part of the quiz – at the end of part 3, you will have a good idea of why visual analytics are so important!
In this Part 1 image, it’s pretty hard to quickly tell where the 3s are. You can do it, but it takes longer than you wish it did.
Now that the 3s are distinguishable, it’s much easier to count how many there are.
When we’re able to visualize the numbers we’re searching for, we can start to make predictions about what will happen next. I bet you can make an educated guess as to where the next “1” will be on this example!
This ability to utilize our visual system to rapidly estimate size, identify color differences and detect patterns is known as preattentive processing.
Unfortunately, we are not provided with the same natural ability to process numbers. We need to learn techniques to understand and manipulate them. As a result, it is generally far more difficult for us to find patterns and to extrapolate from them as to what might happen in the future.
To address this – and take advantage of the “neural super-highway” that we are provided through preattentive processing – a new breed of data visualization software has emerged.
It allows us to take large numeric data sets, apply statistical analysis, and use appropriate visuals to represent those in a way we can easily understand. From the insights these provide us, we can make decisions and ultimately take action.
We can use length and width, color and shade, and even shapes to help us better visualize data in marketing procurement.
Through bar charts, heat maps, and different shapes for different categories, it suddenly becomes much easier to see what the data is trying to tell us. It’s the same concept as using color-coded sticky notes in your planner – it’s simply on a much larger scale with more complex data sets to analyze.
One of the areas that our marketing colleagues have long been aware of is how powerful “telling stories” can be in order to motivate people to undertake change.
Stories allow us to rapidly share new ideas, create a dynamic sense of purpose and understand the world by giving us insights into new areas. The best stories leverage our innate enjoyment of blending both fact and emotion. They not only describe who is involved, what is happening, but also set them into a context that helps you understand why they happened.
We can use this narrative technique in looking at the way that we need to interact with data in order to make better decisions.
To tell a meaningful analytical story we need three main elements:
The following case studies illustrate real-life examples of how combining analytical stories, visualization and data can be combined to achieve improved agency management understanding.
This first example is a Marketing Procurement Manager who wants to know if the proper resources are being used for each project.
Let’s look at our three main elements of who, what, and why.
Who is the intended audience?
Marketing Procurement Manager
What do they want to know?
Why is the data useful?
Now that we know our who, what, and why, it’s time to gather the data and visualize it. Here is an example of how that can be done:
Our second example is an Agency Management Director who wants to know if their agencies are performing well.
Let’s look at our three main elements of who, what, and why.
Who is the intended audience?
Agency Management Director
What do they want to know?
Why is the data useful?
Now that we know our who, what, and why, it’s time to gather the data and visualize it. Here is an example of how that can be done:
Our third example is a Marketing Finance Manager who wants to know if the budget needs any adjustments.
Let’s look at our three main elements of who, what, and why.
Who is the intended audience?
Marketing Finance Manager
What do they want to know?
Why is the data useful?
Now that we know our who, what, and why, it’s time to gather the data and visualize it. Here is an example of how that can be done:
Our final example is a Marketing Director who wants to know if the agencies being used are performing well for fees involved.
Let’s look at our three main elements of who, what, and why.
Who is the intended audience?
Marketing Director
What do they want to know?
Why is the data useful?
Now that we know our who, what, and why, it’s time to gather the data and visualize it. Here is an example of how that can be done:
Throughout the course of this ultimate guide, we’ve essentially gone through 10 key steps to improving your marketing procurement Business Intelligence program. That is, adopting a better process for gathering and understanding analytics and data.
In order to make this entire data application and visualization process easier, Decideware can help.
Decideware provides major advertisers with the world’s best Agency Lifecycle Management Platform.
Decideware’s Agency Lifecycle Management Platform offers advertisers an unrivaled opportunity to:
As a marketing procurement professional, trust us when we say you will want to access the power of analysis and reporting with Decideware.
Decideware Business Intelligence (BI) was created to help advertisers make complex data simple. Decideware BI uses data visualization technology and provides expert services, consulting to build dashboards that answer important questions about advertisers’ agency spend, relationships, and performance.
Marketing & Procurement teams now have the power to quickly understand where and how they should focus their efforts to produce significant gains.
