Direct Marketing Analysis

The director of a financial services company needed a team member to help manage and increase the analytical skills of the team.  The team’s project included creating an advertising effectiveness database to understand how responsive sales and inquiries are to changes in media investment.  The project would additionally provide insight into which media had the most impact at national and regional levels and whether the level of investment was appropriate.

McKinley Marketing Partners provided a marketing consultant with over ten years of marketing analysis, database marketing and business intelligence experience.

Solution

The consultant began the project by analyzing advertising investments and responses over the previous calendar year.  He created a standardized database for the information gathered regarding media buys in a variety of formats.  The data needed specific detail to allow drill-downs by type and regional splits, often requiring requests to vendors for additional information.

All data elements were validated, cataloged and documented as to what they represented.  Once the database was built, it was analyzed to show how changes in advertising costs and various media mixes impacted consumer responses and new customer sales.

The study yielded insights into the penetration of the brand in various markets and identified areas to produce future leads and sales.  It also yielded dynamic results to warrant extending the analysis to a four-year view and the development of a model to further explain interrelationships in the data.  Overall, the project answered key questions about the appropriateness of the advertising allocation and produced unexpected results that gave further insights into the dynamics of their business.  The client is now able to confidently adjust marketing expenditures to focus on channels and regions that provide the appropriate response with increased volume.

In the end, the client has a robust database from which to conduct ad-hoc analysis as needs emerge and a documented process from which they can apply to future activities.  The client was so impressed with the consultant’s skills that they extended the length of the project and eventually hired him as a full-time employee.