Being a useful marketer has many foundations, most of them untouched in the course of a marketing degree.
One of the ‘must have’ but seemingly rare skills amongst most so called marketers I see, is a relationship with numbers.
In a seeming paradox, I do not like numbers, the piles of them I often see squeezed onto dense spreadsheets, with little thought or imagination beyond getting as much data as possible assembled in the one place. This drives me nuts.
On the other hand, I love numbers for what they can tell me. Once that data has been cleaned and organised in a way that enables smart, and curious questions to be asked, then answered. Data that moves towards knowledge, then to the source of insight is essential to success. It also clearly demonstrates the parameters of holes in the data, and your ability to address the challenges presented.
Analytical skill is a foundation of successful marketing.
Typically, marketing is seen as a creative exercise. I think this is why many marketers appear almost innumerate, and why the accountants and engineers who run many organisations have little time for those supposed to be running marketing. They love numbers, and assume anyone who does not is an idiot.
Well used, numbers tell a story, and marketing is all about stories. However, stories that do not have some sort of quantitative foundation are commonly called fairy tales. Children love fairy tales, but the accountant in the corner office making the resource allocation decisions, thinks they are for his grandchildren only.
Being analytical is way more than just having the numbers. It requires that they are turned from just the numbers into actionable insights, which generate further numbers to be understood and used to gain leverage for the investments being made. It does not matter if the investment is one on brand building, or buying a new machine, they are both investments, upon which a return should be expected.
We are not generally taught to have this sort of intimacy with numbers. We are not taught that they are key enablers of critical thinking, curiosity, and creativity.
A hypothesis without the means to test and validate it is at best, a nice idea.
I managed to pass (just) a reasonably high level of maths at the HSC, almost 50 years ago. I passed purely because I worked at remembering the formulas and circumstances where they worked. I never had the slightest idea of where this gobbledy-gook stuff might be useful, so by the time I had recovered from the post exam hangover I had forgotten everything. The absence of that key item, understanding, is why many of us shy away from numbers, we were never taught where and why they might be useful. We had formulas jammed down our young throats, and hated it, a dislike that coloured the rest of our lives.
Get over it, and allow numbers to speak to you, to help you understand the stories they are hiding.
- Look for, and identify the trends, and patterns in the data, and when there is an anomaly, be able to ask and find the answer to the simple question: Why?
- Find the gems of truth hidden amongst the averages we always seem to be fed.
- Understand what ‘normal’ looks like, so you can see the bits sticking out, and again find out the ‘why’
- Find the boundaries of an idea, circumstance, impact, and potential.
- Discover variances, and use the boundaries of those variances to improve performance over time. This is the core technique of continuous improvement in factories, engineers love it, and I have found it just as useful in many other circumstances.
- Numbers enable some sort of quantitative boundary to be thrown around uncertainty, particularly useful at the moment. By testing the numbers, then revising and retesting, you can progressively increase the level of certainty, reducing risk.
- Enable yourself to use perhaps the oldest and most useful tool in the marketers arsenal, the 80/20 rule, courtesy of Italian mathematician Vilfredo Pareto. In 45 years of commercial life, this simple technique has been used over, and over, and over again to uncover many ‘Why’s’
- Understanding the data enables you to be ‘numerically ambidextrous’. You can zoom out to see the whole picture, and then zoom in to see the details of anything that for one reason or another looks different, interesting, or just a hole in the data that might lead to an insight.
All these skills are just as useful to a marketer as they are to an accountant or engineer. When you have them, your credibility with those in the corner office will soar.
