Front-end analytics means using the data you have, to drive decisions when planning. It’s about predicting the areas of marketing with the highest potential. You have access to the data, but how do you make it actionable? Jan-Eric Anderson, president at Callahan, and Zack Pike, head of data at Callahan, explain three important components a marketer must have to make data actionable, and discuss the benefits to implementing front-end analytics.

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Welcome to Callahan’s Uncovering Aha! podcast. We talk about a range of topics for marketing decision-makers, with a special focus on how to uncover insights in data to drive brand strategy and inspire creativity. Featuring Zack Pike and Jan-Eric Anderson.

 

Jan-Eric:

Hi, I’m Jan-Eric Anderson, president of Callahan.

Zack:

And I’m Zack Pike, head of data at Callahan.

Jan-Eric:

Hey, Zack. It’s good to see you.

Jan-Eric:

Hey, I was reading an article the other day and it made me recall some conversations we’ve had here on the podcast. And I actually thought it might be good to revisit a topic that we’ve talked about in various forms here on this podcast.

Zack:

Okay.

Jan-Eric:

So, the basis of the article I was reading was talking about how one of the biggest challenges facing CMOs and marketing leaders today is how to make data actionable. It was a recurring theme here that CMOs and marketing leaders, they don’t have a problem with access to data. There’s plenty of data that they have at their fingertips, but they don’t really know what to do with it. That becomes a recurring challenge or a recurring problem, is what do we do to make this data actionable?

Zack:

Right.

Jan-Eric:

And it definitely reminded me of so many conversations that we’ve been having here on the podcast as it relates to data and that very issue. And so, I thought it might be a good time to revisit the topic of front-end data analytics and what it means and why it matters and how it’s helpful. So, if you’re up for it, maybe we can just start with a definition. When we talk about front-end data analytics in the marketing analytics world, what do you mean by that when you say that?

Zack:

Well, if we think about a new objective a company has, so we’re planning for 2021, or we are getting ready to launch this new product, or we’re going to start spending more marketing dollars that we’ve spent in the past, some type of decision point where there’s a planning exercise happening and if we just talk about that in terms of marketing, since that’s what we do, a company could hire us. And with our background and our smart people and our history, we could probably put together a pretty smart plan just kind of off the cuff for them. Right? We’d have some conversations about what they’re trying to accomplish and what they’ve done in the past and we can put together a reasonable plan. And most business people could do that. So, that’s one way to do it.

Zack:

The second way, which is this front-end analytics piece is we have been collecting all of this data for so long, right? Every company has years and years of data sitting in all types of different places that they’ve either used a little bit or maybe have never used. So, front-end analytics, really, at its core, is just grabbing all that data and using it to drive decisions. And really, the decision we’re going for with the way we talk about front-end analytics is we’re trying to predict the areas of highest potential. So, it doesn’t matter how big your marketing budget is, it’s probably not big enough to do everything that you want it to do. So, you have to make decisions about what you’re going to do and what you’re not going to do.

Zack:

And we believe that aligning those decisions to my areas where I have the most opportunity to impact results… There’s lots of ways to define that, client by client. But if we can align our dollars and our effort and our resources to those areas, we’re going to have a bigger impact on the business versus taking kind of a shotgun approach or a peanut butter spread approach, which is what happens most of the time, because it’s sometimes really difficult to use data to plan on the front-end. Usually we use data to measure on the back-end. Our approach is to use it before we ever spend a dollar.

Jan-Eric:

Yeah. So, I was going to ask you about that. You coined the term front-end analytics that suggests that maybe there’s a back-end analytics. So, the back-end analytics, as I understand it, is a little bit more of, maybe, the more common version of analytics in the marketing world, which is post-mortem. And now that we’ve done a bunch of stuff or spent a bunch of money, what happened?

Zack:

Yep.

Jan-Eric:

Right? And that becomes the rear end view, if you will, on the back-end of it, to where it’s an opportunity to say, “We did this, and here’s what happened.” But it’s all after the fact. Right?

Zack:

Yeah. The other thing I’ll mention about front-end analytics is we’re often using data that you wouldn’t expect to use, right? So, if we talk about traditional back-end analytics, if I run a media campaign or a media test, I’m usually using the data I would expect, I’m using all my media data, maybe a little bit of sales data. On the front-end side, the more creative you are with your selection of data, the better your results is going to be. So, it’s going to include all your marketing history and sales history, but it’s also going to include other things that impact the business. The whole point is to figure out what levers impact the business so I can figure out what I think I can control and then align my budget to that opportunity.

Zack:

So, we could include even data that’s not yours. So, if your business is impacted by weather, we want to include all of that. If your business is impacted by certain economic trends that are changing week-to-week or month-to-month, we want to include that type of stuff as well. So, the front-end side is typically much more involved than the back-end. And it takes a more creative mind to think through what all we should be including, and frankly, a better analyst to be able to think critically about the business.

Jan-Eric:

So, let’s talk a little bit about that. What are the requirements to do front-end analytics? What does it take? What do you have to have? Is it just about access to data? Is it people? Is it technology or tools that do the math? What do you have to have? What are the requirements?

Zack:

Yeah. So, you kind of touched on, there’s three chunks of requirements, there’s technology, data and people. On the technology… Well, let me talk about data first. So, we kind of touched on that, the whole creativity around data. What often is paired with being creative with data is lots of data. Okay. So, you’ll have a lot of data coming from a lot of different sources, sales data, economic information, stuff that government puts out, all of your sales and marketing data, all needs to be included, which will, and if you’re doing it right, be way more than Excel can handle. Okay.

Zack:

So, the first step is data, but it’s going to create this set of data that’s too large for basic tools that someone might be using. So, that’s where we get to technology. You’re going to need some type of, I’ll just say, big data technology to be able to handle this stuff. That’s going to be some form of database, some form of analysis tool, or some form of visualization tool so you can communicate the results to the people who are going to make the decisions on this stuff. On our end, we’ve taken several different pieces of technology and stitched them together. Usually that’s what’s going to happen in this scenario. There are a lot of pieces of technology that will say they can handle everything, start to finish, but none of them really do it that great. So, the best thing to do is pick specific technologies for what you’re trying to accomplish and then stitch all those together into one kind of cohesive package, which is what we’ve done with the intelligence platform three and a half years ago or whatever.

Zack:

And then, the last piece. So, once I’ve got my data, I’ve got it all in a spot where I can ask a lot of questions of it quickly, it’s clean, it’s organized, now it’s on to the people. And this is the most critical portion of this equation is… So, if you start exploring this stuff, there are people who will try to sell you that machines can make all the decisions