The new world Marketing

Today's marketing executives are witnessing a watershed moment, the convergence of unprecented access to customer data and the emergence of highly empowered customers who demand highly personalized offers and service.

And 'Analytics' is the new game that virtually all marketers must eventually embrace if they're going to be successful. Analytics was once just the province of a few direct marketers and market researchers, but now the entire field of marketing is being transformed by this capability. Whether the focus is consumer or industrial marketing, and whether the customer channel involves a sales call, contact with a call center, a web click, or an e-mail; marketing is becoming increasingly analytical. There is no longer any excuse for not knowing whether your advertising or your promotions are working. It is possible to test and analyze any campaign or any change in how you go to market with analytics.

This is of course a major change in culture for many marketers. Many marketers will therefore need considerable reorientation and may be even retraining for this new world. It isn't that the old creative and intuitive capabilities will go away, but they will have to be supplemented by a new set of analytical skill sets. Of course the best marketers will continue to be those that have an intuitive and emphatic understanding of customers, but that cannot be the only perspective. It must be complemented by empirical, quantitative analyses of the behaviours customers actually exhibit and the impact of marketing activities on those behaviours.

It is an exciting time for the field, and one in which careers and reputationsof marketers will be rebuilt or newly established. In other words, it's a great time to be in marketing, but only if you embrace analytics.

Jaydeep Deshpande