From mining to meaning: How B2B marketers can leverage text to inform strategy

Today's marketers are increasingly faced with the need to collect and interpret data to aid firm strategic decision making. At the same time, there has been an explosion of text-based data and numerous advances in big data that enable marketers to mine the collection and aggregation of text. However, for many marketers there is a need to better understand how textual data can go beyond mere descriptive metrics to instead help solve real marketing problems. With this paper, we take a step in this direction. We first review key concepts and terms that are relevant to understanding how text analysis operates, as well as a new development in custom dictionary creation that expands the topics possible with text analysis. Next, we develop the FTTA grid, a new framework that enables text-derived metrics to inform actionable strategies for marketers. We present two real cases demonstrating how the FTTA grid can be employed in action. Finally, we discuss implications for both academics and marketing practitioners. • Current software makes mining text relatively easy to do. • However, understanding how to use text metrics to guide strategy is challenging. • New methods for custom dictionary creation open up analysis possibilities. • We develop the FTTA grid, a new framework for using text metrics to guide strategy. • Two real cases (Salesforce and Shopify) are used to demonstrate the framework.