Integrating Metrics Across the Marketing Curriculum

Abstract

is attributed with the quote, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half." This well-known sentiment remains widely felt among marketers who recognize the value of assessment in guiding strategic marketing decisions. Today's marketers have an advantage Wannamaker did not haveaccess to relevant data and the tools to analyze it. The marketing landscape is changing, and unlike decades ago, today's marketing activities produce a plethora of metrics that can be measured and analyzed to produce significant strategic insight. The question is whether or not marketing students are adequately prepared to tackle the goldmine of data that are now available to them. Pilling, Rigdon, and Brightman (2012) provided evidence that marketing students generally lack this preparedness in quantitative skills. Equally important is whether or not marketing students can properly analyze the available data in such a fashion as to transform it into useable knowledge to drive strategy. Students must possess sufficient critical thinking capabilities to capitalize on the data-rich marketing activities and media formats available in today's business world. Modern digital and social media formats have revolutionized marketing measurement, producing an abundance of meaningful metrics, new tools, and methodologies. In fact, many organizations have gone from being starved for data to being overwhelmed by it. However, all the available data will not help marketers to do their job more effectively without a heavy dose of analysis. The fact remains that marketers still rely on solid critical thinking skills to make sense of all these data. This increased emphasis on metrics in the marketing industry signifies the need for increased quantitative and critical thinking content in our marketing coursework if we are to adequately prepare our students for today's and tomorrow's work world. This article discusses this trend and phenomenon, reviews the metrics currently available with digital and social media formats, provides real-world examples of how organizations are using digital and social media metrics to drive strategic marketing decisions (especially integrated marketing communication decisions), and offers both suggestions for how to weave more digital and social media quantitative analysis and critical thinking skills into our marketing courses and examples of student work using social media tools. Marketing Metrics and the Digital Advantage Marketing metrics has been defined as the tools which help companies quantify, compare, and interpret their own performance from marketing activities (Kotler & Keller, 2007). Measuring the impact of marketing activities has been on the rise as more marketers realize the strategic value the data conveys. As a discipline, marketers historically have been 587103J MDXXX10.

The role of social media marketing in consumer behaviour

“…According to L.Spiller, social media marketing is the use of technologies, channels and software for social networks, which consists in creating, exchanging, delivering and exchanging offers that have value for the stakeholders of the organization [10].…”

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“…Although working in teams may improve the quality of the final product by enabling students to leverage the skillsets of their team members (Oh & Polidan, ), a valuable learning opportunity will be wasted if students merely divide and complete the tasks according to their expertise (Glenn, ; Spiller & Tuten, ). Therefore, students were required to present on their nonexpert areas during the final project presentations.…”

“…For example, providing an opportunity to interact with analytically proficient peers (i.e., ISDS students) while working on an assignment together can motivate marketing students to learn analytics skills while feeling less intimidated than learning it through a formal lecture from a professor. Although working in teams may improve the quality of the final product by enabling students to leverage the skillsets of their team members (Oh & Polidan, 2018), a valuable learning opportunity will be wasted if students merely divide and complete the tasks according to their expertise (Glenn, 2011;Spiller & Tuten, 2015). Therefore, students were required to present on their nonexpert areas during the final project presentations.…”