Data, collaboration and singing off the same song sheet

I often hear "data-driven decision making" cited as a desired tenet of a company's culture. And we all also know that every person on today's marketing teams need to know their way around a spreadsheet (What kind of marketer are you?).

But how do you make being data driven a reality? First, everyone needs to be singing off the same song sheet. Literally.

One song sheet builds a common vocabulary
Ok, I don't mean the team is literally singing, but I do mean using one common dashboard. At minimum, a weekly document tracking the critical business metrics plus the associated driver metrics. And where all sources are clearly articulated and calculated or derived values are clearly defined.

Having one "song sheet" that everyone uses insures that a common vocabulary is used across the business. This is essential for needed alignment across cross functional teams comprising finance, marketing, product, sales and support team members.

Whenever I start a new assignment, this is one of the first things I tackle. And having done this a number of times now, I am no longer surprised when the effort inevitably uncovers a misalignment. It can be as small as a misunderstanding over the definition of a conversion rate or as large as inaccurate source data. In my experience, it has even highlighted executive dissonance around what precisely is the most important business metric: new sales growth, profitability, revenue or acquisition costs?

And, always, there are team members who privately admit to me that they had not previously known what the critical business metrics were nor understood how metrics were sourced, calculated or forecast. Employee engagement increases when individuals understand and can articulate how what they do contributes to the overall success of the business. Creating a common metric dashboard is worth the effort just for the impact to increased engagement alone.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? practice, practice, practice
It's not enough to simply have a common song sheet, everyone has to know how to sing off it. And that takes practice. It will take multiple repetitions and review before your entire team is consistently fluent with the data, its trends and how this knowledge and insight applies to the work they do and decisions they make each day.

I like to establish a regular time each week with the team to review the metrics, current trends, share insights and any planned actions. The regularity and repetition helps the entire team start to understand and internalize the rhythm of the business. And as programs and products launch and/or optimizations are tested, the impact is seen in the metrics. And through regular conversations around this cause and effect, the team learns the activities that positively impact the critical metrics and begin to apply that knowledge in their day-to-day prioritization and decision making.

It's a process, not an event
Create a "song sheet" and "sing" off it doesn't sound like rocket science and it isn't. But you may be surprised about how many organizations say they want to be data driven, but don't take the steps to enable team leads and team members with the tools they need. And a key element of success is repetition and creating a routine around the review of the metrics. Building a data driven competency is process, not an event. And it's well worth the time invested.

Process is Not a Dirty Word

I am unabashedly a Harvard Business Review (HBR) blog fan and a recent HBR blog post from Sarah Green called Making Process Planning Cool Again really struck a chord.

As Green mentions, just the simple utterance of the word 'process' tends to elicit shudders of horror from Millenials and paints the speaker as an out of touch, anal retentive school-marmish librarian -- ouch!

While Green's post focuses on the work of the Toyota Production System Support Center (TSSC) - a non-profit within the auto company, process isn't just beneficial for manufacturing.  It's also necessary for effective marketing.

As any marketing leader will tell you, it's the execution of that amazing, integrated marketing strategy that moves your business metrics! And that execution means keeping many different balls in the air - from brand management, to search keyword optimization, to banner and/or print creative development, to social media posts, to media planning, to event planning, to promotions, to website A/B testing, to metric dashboard development - and the list goes on and on.

Each ball with its own discipline, specializations, tools, strengths and weaknesses.  Each element needing to pull its weight driving cost effective awareness, adoption, trial, purchase and retention while also consistently reinforcing the brand and addressing customer needs and pain points. If this juggling act doesn't scream for process, I do not know what does.

Here's why I believe process is cool. It's because for my marketing teams, process doesn't constrain, it liberates.  Process allows the blocking and tackling of coordination and optimization to be part of the "routine" -- daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly -- thus allowing us the mental freedom to invest time/energy in exploring new ideas and new tests.  It is the fact that there is a process that allows us to be creative and out of the box while also not dropping any of the many balls in the air.

So, to 'borrow' a sentiment from A Few Good Men (let's say it together with your best Nicholson impression), "somewhere, deep down inside in a place you don't talk about at parties, you want a good process, you need a good process!"

Mind Pops and Marketing

The science and discipline of psychology is very much aligned with Marketing, and recently I read this great PsyBlog post about "Mind Pops". Mind Pops is the author's term for those images and/or ideas that to pop into your mind seemingly out of the blue and apropos of nothing.

Researchers learned that "mind pops" happen to everyone, on average, once per day. They have learned that these "pops" are not at all random.  

People unconsciously process much more of the stimulus around than they are aware of. The images and ideas in "mind pops" can even be from triggers experienced weeks, or even months, in the past.

Think about that...images and ideas that you were exposed to, and may not even consciously "remember" are actively simmering in your brain. These ideas stay in the background of your brain, generating more synapse connections until one day, when the context is right, it "pops". 

What does this have to do with marketing?  Everything!

In a previous post, Attribution is Not Marketing,  I talked about Google's Zero Moment of Truth and how there needs to be "something" that triggers a person to go and search and that the "something" is marketing.  

This Mind Pops research supports my point about it being good marketing strategy: you need to be where your customers are, with compelling and relevant messaging, ads and content. While an action may not come out of each touch your content and messaging and brand is making an impression that may subsequently trigger a "mind pop" in them to take that desired action.

Attribution is Not Marketing

Today I read a TechCrunch article by Josh Costine relating the news that Twitter and Facebook were attributed tiny percentages of Black Friday sales (source: IBM's Black Friday report).

McKinsey recently released a report called The Social Economy saying that up to 1/3 of consumer spending is likely impacted by social shopping.

So what gives?  All my good marketers out there reading this are nodding knowingly. We all live this every day.

Attribution isn't "real" and there are many challenges with it (learn more here). It doesn't tell the buyers' actual behavior taking them from  awareness to purchase. It just shows their last click before purchase. It is definitely an important thing to know, but it's also not the whole story and it can't be the sole driver of your marketing strategy.

I like Google's Zero-Moment-of-Truth (ZMOT) construct because it clearly articulates that "something" needs to triggers buyers to go and search. It has to be on the person's mind for them to actively go and visit a search engine. And, you know a person must be fairly far down the funnel once they type in your product's or brand's name into that search box.

What is this mythical, mystical "something" that triggers a buyers to go and search? It's not a mystery - it's your integrated marketing strategy and programs. It isn't magic, it's just marketing.

You know need to be where your customers are, with compelling messaging and ads and content relevant and engaging enough to persuade them to take the next step. And their 'steps' aren't linear. It can take many touches as the buyer researches, compares, asks his social network, views it in a store, etc. ZMOT study the average number of touches at over 10! That may not be true for every brand and every product - but it's never just one.

At this time, it is hard (perhaps impossible) to know "precisely" the sales impact of your social channels. Yes, it makes our job as marketing leaders tougher, but that's why you're there!  If marketing were simply a numbers game, an engineer would have automated it by now.

So continue to set your marketing strategy and allocate your (always too limited) resources - optimizing appropriately where you can, but always keep in mind that attribution is just a tool - it's not marketing.

Facebook is Changing

Today's TechCrunch article from Robin Grant confirms what all of us marketers have been talking about for awhile...that fewer and fewer people are actually seeing our Facebook posts! For all those people who were engaged enough to "like" our page?  Too bad, because our posts are not showing up in their feed anymore....

But I'm not wringing my hands, or gnashing my teeth.  I get it.  I get why Facebook is doing this.

From a consumer experience perspective, the content in the user's stream needs to be compelling and relevant. But, perhaps more importantly, this provides Facebook increased opportunities for monetization.

As a marketer and business executive, I can't get mad at Facebook for this.  Facebook is a public company - it needs to be showing its investors regular, "up and to the right" movement of its top line revenue each and every quarter.  

So now it means I will likely need to pay to insure my content is seen by my target audience on Facebook.  And I ask myself - is my target audience there?  Do I want my content there? Do I want my target audience to see and engage with and share my content there?   Yes, of course I do!  So, yes, I will invest to accomplish this.

How much will I invest?  Like everything else, that is determined by the business goals and the performance of the investment. Since social marketing has always been an integral part of the marketing strategy I plan to approach it the same way I would with any new idea - start with testing and increase investment as we learn what works.

So please, don't waste any more time or energy bemoaning how Facebook is changing.  Start with the fact that you know your target audience is there and you want to reach them there.  And then do what you do with every other media: allocate a test budget, review the results, optimize and repeat.