Cookies help us display personalized product recommendations and ensure you have great shopping experience.

By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
  • Analytics
    AnalyticsShow More
    sales and data analytics
    How Data Analytics Improves Lead Management and Sales Results
    9 Min Read
    data analytics and truck accident claims
    How Data Analytics Reduces Truck Accidents and Speeds Up Claims
    7 Min Read
    predictive analytics for interior designers
    Interior Designers Boost Profits with Predictive Analytics
    8 Min Read
    image fx (67)
    Improving LinkedIn Ad Strategies with Data Analytics
    9 Min Read
    big data and remote work
    Data Helps Speech-Language Pathologists Deliver Better Results
    6 Min Read
  • Big Data
  • BI
  • Exclusive
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Software
Search
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: The Moneyball-itzation of Marketing
Share
Notification
Font ResizerAa
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
SmartData Collective > Analytics > Predictive Analytics > The Moneyball-itzation of Marketing
Predictive Analytics

The Moneyball-itzation of Marketing

PaulBarsch1
PaulBarsch1
7 Min Read
SHARE

moneyball_3Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane started the “Moneyball Revolution,” where analytics replaced intuition as the primary method of evaluating talent and assembling a professional baseball team. And while Beane’s critics entertain some self-satisfaction from the recent mediocrity of the A’s, there’s no doubt that quantitative analysis has changed baseball forever.

Similarly in the marketing discipline, while practitioners often debate whether marketing is more “art than science”—a trend towards analytics is afoot.

Tradition and convention are certainly hallmarks of Major League Baseball. And for many years, the status quo reigned—especially in the processes used to construct a baseball team.

Using knowledge, intuition and experience to evaluate talent, field managers and scouts would scour high schools, practice fields and colleges looking for the missing pieces that could potentially elevate them to a championship. Gut decision making ruled—until Billy Beane and the Moneyball analytics revolution started.

An ESPN Magazine article shows how based on geographical location, Oakland was forced to compete in a smaller market with revenues far lower than teams like Boston or …

moneyball_3Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane started the “Moneyball Revolution,” where analytics replaced intuition as the primary method of evaluating talent and assembling a professional baseball team. And while Beane’s critics entertain some self-satisfaction from the recent mediocrity of the A’s, there’s no doubt that quantitative analysis has changed baseball forever.

Similarly in the marketing discipline, while practitioners often debate whether marketing is more “art than science”—a trend towards analytics is afoot.

Tradition and convention are certainly hallmarks of Major League Baseball. And for many years, the status quo reigned—especially in the processes used to construct a baseball team.

Using knowledge, intuition and experience to evaluate talent, field managers and scouts would scour high schools, practice fields and colleges looking for the missing pieces that could potentially elevate them to a championship. Gut decision making ruled—until Billy Beane and the Moneyball analytics revolution started.

An ESPN Magazine article shows how based on geographical location, Oakland was forced to compete in a smaller market with revenues far lower than teams like Boston or New York. Attempting to level the playing field, Billy Beane took a different approach to baseball resourcing. Instead of trying to sign big name players with the best batting average, Beane used statistical analysis to discover indicators that he believed would have a better correlation with offensive success.

Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball—a book on Billy Beane’s methods, writes:

“By analyzing baseball statistics you could see through a lot of baseball nonsense. For instance, when baseball managers talked about scoring runs, they tended to focus on team batting average, but if you ran the analysis you could see that the number of runs a team scored bore little relation to that team’s batting average. It correlated much more exactly with a team’s on-base and slugging percentage.”

And for awhile, Moneyball worked. In the early years of Moneyball, the Oakland A’s were competitive with payrolls in the $50 million range whereas larger market teams were spending $100 million plus. It wasn’t that Oakland was choosing to pocket the $50 million annual difference—they simply didn’t have that kind of money to spend. Oakland needed a way to compete and they chose analytics.

Unfortunately for Billy Beane, his competitive advantage didn’t last very long. Other baseball teams adopted statistical analysis and General Managers like Boston’s Theo Epstein quickly combined analytical prowess with the advantage of a major revenue market to assemble a perennial powerhouse. Like it or not (and some GMs still don’t), the adoption of analytics drastically changed baseball and now the use of analytics to help build a ball club is a standard process.

Similar to the adoption of Moneyball, marketing is in the throes of an analytical revolution.

Specifically, practitioners of marketing know they need fresh and accurate data for advanced marketing functions such as better segmentation, devising more effective campaigns and offers, and creating relevant interactions with the customer across multiple touch points. This data must be clean, modeled and managed—a large undertaking that involves marketers working closely with IT.

Marketers also are realizing that some understanding of analytical applications and business intelligence know-how is necessary to help analyze and translate data into actionable information that can be used to create better customer experiences. Hundreds of case studies in business publications and books have emerged over the past five to seven years as a testimony to these trends.

Analytics helped a small market team like the Oakland A’s compete with clubs that had much larger budgets. Indeed, Oakland enjoyed a period of success before larger teams “caught on” to Beane’s analytical approach.

In the same vein, the window of opportunity for marketers to adopt business analytics—before their competitors—is closing rapidly.

  • With the early success of Moneyball, Billy Beane parlayed himself an ownership stake in the Oakland A’s. For marketers, how valuable will analytical skills be in the near future?
  • Are you competing with companies that have much larger budgets and personnel resources? If so, what strategies are you using to win?
  • Critics of Moneyball say that one cannot run a major league baseball team with a computer. Going forward—in marketing—will knowledge and intuition win out over analytics?

Link to original post

More Read

So You Want to be a Data Analyst
Data Mining Fundamentals: Khabaza’s 9 Laws of Data Mining
SeeWhy enables you to build real time metrics, and generate real…
2020: US Banks Are Betting Big on Analytics
Here’s how decisions and rules relate (and how to manage them)
Share This Article
Facebook Pinterest LinkedIn
Share

Follow us on Facebook

Latest News

sales and data analytics
How Data Analytics Improves Lead Management and Sales Results
Analytics Big Data Exclusive
ai in marketing
How AI and Smart Platforms Improve Email Marketing
Artificial Intelligence Exclusive Marketing
AI Document Verification for Legal Firms: Importance & Top Tools
AI Document Verification for Legal Firms: Importance & Top Tools
Artificial Intelligence Exclusive
AI supply chain
AI Tools Are Strengthening Global Supply Chains
Artificial Intelligence Exclusive

Stay Connected

1.2kFollowersLike
33.7kFollowersFollow
222FollowersPin

You Might also Like

Cloud
AnalyticsBest PracticesBusiness IntelligenceCloud ComputingData VisualizationDecision ManagementPredictive AnalyticsWeb Analytics

4 Questions to Ask Before You Define Your Cloud BI Strategy

5 Min Read

5 Ways Predictive Analytics Cuts Enterprise Risk

5 Min Read

Social Search Engines: Radian6 vs. Google?

4 Min Read
Image
AnalyticsBig DataPredictive Analytics

Can You Predict Crowd Behavior? Big Data Can

7 Min Read

SmartData Collective is one of the largest & trusted community covering technical content about Big Data, BI, Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, IoT & more.

ai is improving the safety of cars
From Bolts to Bots: How AI Is Fortifying the Automotive Industry
Artificial Intelligence
AI and chatbots
Chatbots and SEO: How Can Chatbots Improve Your SEO Ranking?
Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Exclusive

Quick Link

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Go to mobile version
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?