Marketing Analytics, University of Virginia- Coursera

Mentor: Prof. R J Masilamani

Mentee: Tanveer Ahmed, 19DM225, PGDM-Marketing, Sec-B

Introduction:
This report basically contains the key learnings and the topics that were dealt with in the Marketing Analytics offered by
Coursera in association with the University of Virginia.

The course details are as follows:

Taught by:
Rajkumar Venkatesan, Ronald Trzcinski Professor of Business Administration
Darden School of Business

About the course:

Organizations large and small are inundated with data about consumer choices. But that wealth of information
does not always translate into better decisions. Knowing how to interpret data is the challenge -- and
marketers in particular are increasingly expected to use analytics to inform and justify their decisions.
Marketing analytics enables marketers to measure, manage and analyze marketing performance to maximize
its effectiveness and optimize return on investment (ROI). Beyond the obvious sales and lead generation
applications, marketing analytics can offer profound insights into customer preferences and trends, which can
be further utilized for future marketing and business decisions. This course gave me the tools to measure
brand and customer assets, understand regression analysis, and design experiments as a way to evaluate and
optimize marketing campaigns. I left the course with a solid understanding of how to use marketing analytics
to predict outcomes and systematically allocate resources.
Week 1:
Marketing process
Content offered: 10 Videos, 2 readings and 2 practice quizzes
Graded: Week 1 quiz, marketing process

Summary of the module:

An overview of the marketing process and the transformational role of analytics. The module also walked
through a case study of Airbnb. The module explained how Airbnb positioned themselves as the powerhouse of
the online community marketplace matching travellers to hosts. I also saw how we use analytics and the
surprising results of their analyses offered.

Key concepts:

 Describe and identify the steps in the marketing planning process

 Explained how data-driven decision-making impacts marketing
 Identify types of analytics used in marketing
 Apply lessons from how Airbnb used analytics to improve its marketing strategy to other contexts.
This module also discussed the key concepts of marketing including the 4P’s and STP. It also emphasized on
how text analytics can be used for analyzing the feedback from customers from the VUCA world of marketing.

Questions if any?
How are mental models used in marketing analytics?

Week 2:
Metrics for measuring brand assets
Content offered: 12 Videos, 2 practice quizzes
Graded: Week 2 quiz on measuring brand assets
Assignment: Building brand architecture

Summary of the module:

Firms spend millions on branding for one reason: It allows them to charge more for their products and
services. In this module, I explored on this valuable, if intangible, asset. The module also discussed how to
build and define a brand architecture and how to measure the impact of marketing efforts on brand value over
time. By the end of the module, I was also able to measure and track brand value.

Key concepts:
 To define and evaluate a brand and brand architecture
 To track the value of brands over time
 To measure the impact on brand value of marketing decisions
Questions if any?
When calculating brand equity, what is the main assumption of the revenue premium method?

Week 3:
Customer lifetime value
Content offered: 11 Videos, 1 practice quiz
Graded: Week 3 quiz on CLV

Summary of the module:

How valuable are customers? This module showed me how to answer in this module where I explored
Customer Lifetime Value, or the future net value of a customer relationship. This forward-looking measure of
the customer relationship helped me connect marketing strategies to future financial consequences and invest
marketing dollars in the right place to maximize return over a customer's lifetime. By the end of the module, I
understood how to measure customer lifetime value and evaluate strategic marketing alternatives based on
whether they improve customer retention and lifetime value.

Key concepts:

 Define (customer lifetime value) CLV and its components

 Calculate customer lifetime value (CLV)
 Evaluate marketing alternatives based on whether they improve customer retention and customer
lifetime value (CLV)
This module was explained with real time examples of Netflix and IBM and also discussed the applications of
CLV in corporate world.

Questions if any?
Why would the present value of the calculation extend up to infinity with customer lifetime value?

Week 4:
Marketing experiments
Content offered: 13 Videos, 3 readings, 3 practice quizzes
Graded: Week 4 marketing experiment quiz
Assignment: Designing a marketing experiment

Summary of the module:

This module explained how much a company need to cut prices to drive the most sales? Or which
advertisement copy is more effective in customer conversion? Do an experiment! Experiments allow you to
understand the effectiveness of different marketing strategies and forecast expected ROI. I also explored on
how to design basic experiments so that you can assess your marketing efforts and invest your marketing
dollars most effectively. It also helped me understand on how to avoid a gap between your test results and
field implementation and explore how web experiments can be implemented cheaply and quickly. By the end
of the module, I was able to design and conduct effective experiments that test your marketing campaigns--
and then use the results to make future marketing decisions.

Key concepts:

 Determine cause and effect through experiments

 Distinguish between correlation and causation
 Design and conduct experiments to test hypotheses about marketing and sales
 Calculate break even and projected lift based on experiment results

Questions if any?
Why do marketers conduct before and after experiments?

What are the fundamental differences between Control group and test group in terms of marketing campaign?

Week 5:

Regression basics
Content offered: 17 Videos, 1 practice quiz

Graded: Week 5 quiz on regression analysis

Summary of the module:

This module helped me understand how variables influence consumer behaviour in the real world, like how
weather and a price promotion affect ice cream consumption? In this module, I took a good look at regression
and how it's used to understand that relationship between dependent and independent variables influencing
decision making process. It was also discussed on how to set up regressions and interpret outputs, explore
confounding effects and biases, and distinguish between economic and statistical significance. The module was
finished off with a series of interviews with real marketing professionals who shared their experiences and
knowledge about how they use analytics on the job.

Key concepts:
 Describe what regressions are and how they are used in marketing
 Interpret regression outputs
 Account for confounding effects and biases introduced by missing variables
 Make inferences about customer behavior from regressions and connect them to business decisions

Grades secured:
Conclusion:
Doing this course, my goal was to understand how to use analytics to improve the marketing process. Now
when I am done the course, I have the understanding to connect business challenges to metrics and to sell it
and explain metrics that yield information I need. I also understood how to measure and track brand equity
and customer lifetime value, so that I can assess the impact of marketing strategies. I can also conduct basic
experiments to assess the impact of marketing.