Companies are prioritizing resources and expecting departments to accomplish more with less. Marketing initiatives and budgets are being scrutinized more now then ever. Being able to successfully utilize data to support the decision making process, measure results and justify further investment has become essential.
I have been involved in 100s of marketing programs, and developed metrics and dashboards used by executive teams to access overall business performance, monitor billion dollar markets, and drive strategic business decisions and have found a few essential keys to successfully using data to support and drive decisions.
Establish consensus upfront
By this I mean make sure all affected departments/groups (sales, marketing, finance, C-Suite, manufacturing, etc.) are on board at the beginning with what data will be used to decide on a marketing program or to monitor a marketing initiative. Additionally, and probably more importantly, everyone needs to agree with how the data will be collected and how any calculations will be made.
Outline assumptions
Regardless of the data used to monitor marketing programs or make decisions assumptions always have to be made. During the consensus making portion capture what assumptions (i.e. market growth, projected impact of competitive response, etc.) will be used and make sure those assumptions are clearly shown on any report or dashboard.
Align with overall business strategy and objectives
Make sure the data being used aligns with the overall business strategy and objectives. For example, if one of the business objectives is to improve margin then you probably don’t want to focus on revenue growth. Another example is if the company is trying to penetrate a certain segment of the market then data set being reported needs to capture that instead of how a program will or has performed in the entire market.
Make sure the data is valid and relevant
Data is everywhere. What can be measured is virtually endless. I have found one of the biggest challenges of establishing metrics is deciding which ones to use. I have sat in meetings where people have come up with literally pages of metrics they collectively want captured to measure marketing effectiveness. Although all of the items were valid only a few were truly relevant to helping identify effectiveness of initiatives or aid in making further business decisions.
Leverage both internal and external sources
More often than not I have seen groups and companies limit the metrics used to internally generated data sources. In some cases this maybe all that is necessary. However, there are numerous external resources for data that may prove extremely useful and may help show the bigger picture.
Keep it simple
I previously said data is everywhere so capturing it should not be an issue. I am not saying stay away from data that is hard to capture or a considerable length of time to evaluate. However, when deciding on what will be used and how people need to consider the amount of time and resources needed to get that information. If it takes a group a week to process through the information to get to a specific data point make sure the value of having that data point out weighs the effort needed to get it.
Operate with integrity
I know integrity is a pillar or guiding principle for most organizations. However, I also know all data can be manipulated to tell or support a story. There is generally tremendous pressure to show how well a program did or to justify an investment. I have sat in numerous meeting at a variety of companies where this has occurred and the long-term outcome is never good. Presenting the whole story, good or bad, not only builds creditability and allows for more accurate business, sales, and marketing decisions to be made.
Effectively utilizing data to make marketing decisions and measuring the effectiveness of marketing initiatives is more essential than ever. If you are looking to incorporate data driven marketing into your marketing program for your company or would like to discuss other marketing initiatives please contact me.
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