By Reed Meyer, VP Professional Services
It’s become fashionable for marketing leaders to say that their organizations are “data driven.”
However, I’ve found that this description isn’t very helpful. It usually means that the team has implemented analytics across many if not all digital channels – web and mobile – and that key team members have their own “dashboards”. Often, staff meetings involve reviewing reports and talking about the past. The meetings frequently become focused on one or two data points to the exclusion of other topics.
I call this the mechanic’s approach to being data driven. It has its place, but it is inherently limited in its ability to move organizations forward. The mechanic model is reactive and focuses on fixing broken things. It works like most of us maintain our cars. We assume that everything is running optimally until a warning light turns on. When that happens, we take the car to the mechanic to make the light go away.
The better model is the Indy Car team.
This model is proactive. Racing teams are optimizers. The car can ALWAYS get better. It could be lighter, the tires could last longer, it can always get better gas mileage, etc. They constantly work to squeeze every last advantage out of the vehicle. They are driven by testing, tinkering and gaining advantage over a fast field of equally driven competitors.
Both types of organizations claim to be data driven, but only one is in a position to move the organization forward. To be a proactive racing-focused marketing team, here are two changes you can make right away:
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should drive the collection, presentation, and discussion of data. These are the handful of metrics that are the true indicators of your strategic contribution to your organizations. Typically, these KPIs are going to be cost or revenue indicators – cost per transaction, average order value, total revenue. Staying focused on KPIs keeps conversations from being dominated by lower level metrics that fluctuate frequently, like conversion. Start the KPI conversation with your team, and start measuring your true value.
Put in a place a testing culture. Organizations that move forward believe in learning fast, which means tinkering and testing. Analytics tells you what has happened – the rear view mirror – but testing is how you learn. Try new things, even things you don’t think will work. Use your analytics to measure the outcomes. Within 6 weeks, you’ll have transformed your team into testers and tinkerers.
In the world of web analytics and data centric organization, I find that most companies are mechanics. They spend valuable analyst time trying to explain the warning lights, rather than using that time to systematically improve future results. These organizations spend most of their time delivering lots of reports but few insights. They think they are data-driven, but without KPIs and a testing culture, they are actually avoiding being data-driven. They are also missing out on the ability to drive top line and bottom line results.
If you want to know more about how Numeric can help organizations develop KPI’s, testing and optimization plans, contact us.
