Student Voices | Commercial Analytics and Latest Industry Trends
Graduate | Jun 17, 2024 | Gabelli School of Business
During the Fall 2023 semester, the Marketing Area invited Analytic Partners customer engagement team director, Billy Fitzpatrick, to speak to students during an event titled “Commercial Analytics and Latest Industry Trends,” which was part of its Industry Speaker Series.
Billy Fitzpatrick is a Fordham Gabelli School of Business alumnus, who graduated with a B.S. in Business Administration and concentrations in marketing, finance, and sports business. His roles at Analytic Partners have allowed him to tap into his passion for helping Fortune 500 companies grow their businesses.
As an industry expert in commercial analytics, Fitzpatrick shared many valuable insights about what a role in analytics looks like and the impact data analytics has on company success and growth within the scope of global business.
During the talk, Fitzpatrick shared five insights to unlock overall growth:
Unleash the power of buy-in by building relationships with organizations outside of marketing;
Don’t get drowned in data quality over quantity
Measure your business holistically;
Find opportunities through simulating outcomes —assess risks and opportunities with scenario planning; and
Don’t react, adapt—stay flexible and work with customers.
At Analytic Partners, Fitzpatrick has helped to transform data into expertise that enables stronger brand-customer connections, drives competitive advantage, and delivers growth. He emphasized a focus on Analytic Partners’ commercial analytics to approach businesses holistically and to capture marketing and media impacts that provide value for the overall business. At the same time, he stressed not forgetting the importance of prioritizing the customers’ needs to provide actionable insights and beneficial solutions.
Fitzpatrick explained how “data doesn’t lie, but metrics can mislead.” For example, user-level metrics, such as last click, fail to account for full touchpoints in a customer journey that lead to KPIs such as sales. Fitzpatrick’s key point was “marketing does not happen in a silo” and he warned against the risk of making decisions based upon siloed metrics, as this can lead to misleading insights. Instead, he highlighted how a customer-centric focus can solve this common mistake.
Another trend he highlighted was a shift from performance marketing to brand marketing. Performance marketing is short-term and product-focused, while brand marketing is about building a long-term brand through multiple initiatives. Brand marketing is important because it has higher media ROIs and outperforms performance marketing in most cases—especially through video and social channels.
Fitzpatrick also shared how omnichannel marketing is a competitive marketing strategy with an evolving landscape. Specifically, he shared five important considerations for maximizing omnichannel performance:
1) Embrace emerging media such as streaming video and digital audio
2) Leverage channel synergies
3) Connect short- and long-term brand impacts on marketing
4) Layer and stack marketing activities (the more media channels, the higher the ROI)
5) Build pricing power with advertising. While traditional marketing channels like cinema, print, radio, tv, and out-of-home are on the decline, it is still important to have a mix of tactics.
Overall, Fitzpatrick shared important insights on how to leverage commercial analytics in a dynamic business marketplace to create company value and overall success. As he continues his career journey, we are so excited to share that Fitzpatrick is being promoted from director to chief of staff to the CEO at Analytic Partners.
Written by: Amelia Semler ‘24 – M.S. in Marketing Intelligence
