Maths for Marketing – Not a sexy title?

All human activity that requires quantifiable knowledge uses mathematical tools to generate understanding. Marketing is no different.

Increasingly, data is available that can be analysed for marketing purposes and used for business applications, to help in areas like market research, brand sentiment and customer profiling.

Market Research

Market research has always involved mathematics in terms of collecting data and analysing for trends, characteristics and shares and forecasting. Modern technology, however, makes this both easier and more complicated.

On the one hand, we can monitor our Twitter stream and subscribe to Google Alerts easily enough. It will give us a lot of information, though we may not get a full picture. On the other, analytics can give us chapter and verse, but it is increasingly complicated and specialist and requires a more mathematical focus.

Below is a link to an example of measuring sentiment between Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda on the run up to Christmas. Churnbar, a Bristol based Social Media Monitoring company, used their specialist modelling system in an experiment to show what can be achieved.

Churnbar Social Media Monitoring – Supermarket Comparative

Statistics in Marketing

Mark Schaeffer, a marketing and social media consultant, believes ‘We are entering the era of big data where marketing…will be ruled by math’. In his article, ‘Three careers that will dominate Social Media…’ he states that ‘Marketing success will come to those who will be able to tease the most insight from data…

Mark Schaeffer – Three careers that will dominate social media

When we start looking at Google Analytics, PPC, SEO, website ranking, etc., what we are seeing are programmes interpreting vast amounts of data and providing numbers, times, activity and behaviour.

This is the commodity the web deals in. This is the information that Google and Facebook use to sell their advertising. And this is what leads to you being better informed about your market, your customers and, ultimately, your business.

So, this is online media. It is not enough to have a profile and engage. You need to understand the effect you have on your market and vice versa. ‘Maths for Marketing’ may not be sexy… but it is the future.

Seminar

It just so happens that Churnbar is running a seminar at the Colston Office Centre on this very subject: Maths for Marketing – click on the link to find out what the numbers mean to your business.