Everyone Loves Some Data But…
The million dollar question is - what exactly do you want to get out of the data?
Everyone has been talking about data for a good decade or so and depending on your level of data maturity, you are either still trying to find where are all of your data sources are located or you are now trying to monetize the insights gathered from your data.
Woe to you if you’re in the former bucket but no surprise many organizations, especially non digital native ones are still sadly in this bucket. Wow to you if you’re in the latter bucket, so what can you do to monetize it?
Customer data platforms, data management platforms and customer relationship management platforms suddenly became the talk of town thanks to Google’s flippant stance on third party cookies, that kept rolling back and back. Companies realized their archaic customer data collection methods and storage methods (often just in excel spreadsheets (horrors!)) are not quite cutting it.
Some are even confusing the whole customer data terminology and what it means when we talk about cookies, first party data, third party data and personal information level data. Some have all but sitting in silos or disconnected platforms that don’t talk to each other while others have none (more horrors!).
Some used to think a good data visualization and analytical tool is the holy grail to get all the answers they need by simply plugging it onto of their so-called data sources. But they soon wonder - how to plug, what to plug, where to plug and why can’t it just be plugged and played?!
Things like:
is the data clean, updated or accurate?
is the data in the format that is even retrievable., extractable or readable?
do you even have the data sitting where you thought is sitting?
is your data even categorized in the logic, classification and format that is aligned with your decision-making algorithms?
million dollar question - what exactly do you want to get out of the data? What is the truth that you’re after?
If these were not considered before your so-called plug and play approach, then you get a ton of data yes and a ton of outputs yet but hardly any useful insights. You get more of what we call, data outputs in a format that looks like you just downloaded a gigantic excel spreadsheet or a bunch of fancy looking graphs to make you feel good about some visually appealing data formatted in a presentable manner
E.g. you might see things like:
xx customer transactions performed over xx period
xx customer spent over xx period
That is still not data insights, it’s just data outputs telling you how many transactions and spent over a certain period of time. What are you going to do with that without other insights around:
who are these customers in terms of their interests and life stage needs and what is the co-relation between this and what they are spending versus not spending on?
what did they exactly spend on and why that might be the case?
what are their other needs and what is the possibility for that?
what else have they spent on and why that might be the case?
are they spending more or less on the same products/period and why that might be the case?
The difference as you can see is in terms of the why and the co-relation between the transactional data and the rationale behind it.
We first need to know what it is that we want to see and how that will help us to better understand our customers’ behavior or potential to engage more with us. It helps to have these in mind, and then work backwards to derive what we then need to have in terms of data types and sources in order to arrive at the desired insights.
It’s equivalent to knowing what is that treasure you’re seeking for so you know which location, treasure map, equipment, skills, knowledge and coordinates to get there.
So, do you know the treasure you’re after?
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally and Advisor for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
The Case of the Misunderstood MarTech - Concept of “Power Users”
There was once a bakery who was trying to get better at creating more pastries for their increasing customer base at a more efficient manner, including pastries on demand and that can accommodate different dietary preferences. They had a head baker who is also the owner of the bakery, 2 baking assistants, a cashier, 2 servers and 1 marketing person who also oversees pop-ups at designated customer events.
One day, a baking supplier introduced them to this state of the art baking oven that seemed to be everything they have ever wanted; customized settings allowing for tailored dietary needs, self regulating temperature control to avoid burnt pastries, pre-set recipe function so they can just choose any setting easily, pop in the ingredients and get their key pastries all done without having to keep referencing the recipe list each time they bake.
The supplier said the best part of this new oven is that anyone can be a baker and everyone should learn to be a baker using this oven. However, the training comes at an additional cost though they will be accredited as professional xx oven practitioner after that, which apparently is a very prominent accolade to have in the industry.
The head baker was over the moon at this prospect that she can get everyone to chip in and bake even more pastries in a shorter time that way since they can just use the preset functions moving forward. She insisted that everyone needs to be trained, pass the test and get certified, else they will get penalized in their performance review.
However, many of them soon realized that it wasn’t that easy to be certified as it does require some baking knowledge, experience and even appreciation. This resulted in a few of them having to take up certain baking modules that were added as part of the entire “package” sold to the baker by the vendor. That’s not all, if they fail the test, they need to pay and retake the test again. The entire training, test preparation and certification took each of them 4 to 6 months at varying speed, depending on their appetite and aptitude to really learn all the modules and be able to pass the test.
During this time, things started to fall into pieces.
The head baker managed to pass the certification herself. So did her baking assistants. The cashier, servers and marketing person however struggled to cope while trying to do their current jobs as efficiently as possible.
As the baking assistants became very good with using the oven to churn out pastries, they also ran out of ingredients faster than usual but as they were so obsessed with using this new technology, they then asked the head baker to help with getting the ingredients faster so they can be loaded into the oven. Initially the head baker thought why not but soon she realizes it’s not practical as she, herself can also use the oven and she wants to be the chief designer to design new baking recipes to fully maximize the oven. Thus, she then delegated this task to the cashier, servers and marketing person to help instead, adding to their level of stress in trying to cope with yet another additional ask.
Eventually, it led to chaos as everyone was in the kitchen trying to prepare ingredients, use the oven and essentially be a baker, which was the vision sold by the supplier; no one was serving, taking orders, getting payment or promoting the bakery. Customers started complaining about this lack of attention as queues started forming not for pastries to be ready as they were all piling up in the kitchen but for them to be ready, packaged, displayed, served and to even make payment. Some of the bakes also became quite inconsistent in taste as it depended on the non bakers to prepare the original ingredient list when the assistant bakers were too held up baking. This led to bad reviews of the bakery for its service, poor maintenance of the shop front and inconsistent quality.
Yet, the head baker was still trying to recover the cost of investment on the oven and training modules as well as test modules to be able to hire more people to help. Worse, business became impacted and sales were dipping, which then led to unconsumed ingredients and pastries going bad. Frustrated, the bakery owner blamed the oven and decided to sell it; the supplier agreed but persuaded her to go for another newer model that has an added function of doing ingredient quantity forecasting to solve her problems instead. She was tempted yet again as she thought that was the cause of her problems.
This is not a piece about ovens, the baking industry or even pastries. It essentially is an observation I made while helping companies to review their MarTech stacks and/or implement their MarTech adoption process.
Just as not everyone is a Baker and should be a Baker in that story, not everyone should be required to use the tool in the exact same manner and level. There are job roles and expertise for a reason and a good one. Whoever is designated to maximize the use of it to benefit the rest of the company, should be your power users, your expert users and your most certified users. There should be different levels of users who should then be trained to use the tool differently so they can reap the most benefit out of the tool to in turn, benefit the rest of the company and your customers.
Remember, before you blame the tool, look instead at your original purpose, objectives and what you were trying to solve for with the tool.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally or Advisor for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
The Case of the Misunderstood MarTech and more…
Has marketing technology, content marketing and need for customer driven insights changed all that much in the last 4 years since I first wrote this post in 2020?
In 2020, I observed that companies were moving into Adobe experience management as their go-to content management platform. Come 2024, I am still experiencing some late bloomer companies especially in the content marketing game, now only moving into Adobe experience management or AEM for their content management platform in a bid to get ahead of the game in personalization of the customer experience and engagement.
They will soon be in for a surprise as AEM alone will not differentiate them from their competitors who are doing the exact same thing or have done the exact same thing as it’s after all a technology and a platform. It is merely an enabler but not the solution itself.
It doesn’t negate the need and the fact that it still boils down to having insightful and forward looking content that is useful to their customers. It certainly doesn’t negate the need for them to first have a close connection with their new and existing customers in order to know what kind of content matters to them above all the noise in the market. It certainly doesn’t remove the fact that you need a robust content pipeline to feed the hungry beast of a machine to fully maximize its capabilities especially in organic SEO and to supplement your SEM strategy.
That unfortunately is still a missing piece in lots of companies. Why is it so hard to get that thought provoking viewpoint? Why do so many so-called subject matter experts still behave and think they know it all when the truth is, they are merely regurgitating facts and what others are already saying or just passing the content strategy buck to their agencies? Why are companies who claimed to know their customers, not asking them the right questions in order to help them get the right answers?
Another common mistake is when companies don’t really know the full potential of a particular technology, including MarTech or marketing technology that they have and what they are investing in next.
What then happens is they start shopping for the next latest technology without first reviewing and fully understanding what they already have, how it’s being used, who has been using it and how it else it should actually be used. Often times, you’ll find the technology is perfectly fit for purpose but being used either by the wrong people or the wrong way. In addition, the existing organizational structure and culture might also not provide an ideal process of supporting its use.
But instead of changing that first, they start looking at the next big thing, adding to the mess of integration, implementation, adoption and usage problems that their employees and sometimes customers need to deal with. This leads to stack bloat.
4 years on and stack bloat is still a problem; in fact it has worsen and will continue to as even more MarTech tools get added to the market.
Therefore, instead of blindly investing in all sorts of MarTech tools and platforms, companies should also make sure they have the right objectives, people, processes and plans in place to fully maximize the capabilities of the MarTech. Else, they will end up with yet another white elephant and a misconception that it wasn’t a good enough technology. A case of the blind leading the blind is anything but fine.
Same goes for having the right expertise in who they hire to be thought leaders, spokespeople and making an effort to invest in getting consistent feedback and sentiments from both customers and prospects alike. This is to avoid an echo chamber situation, which is common in hierarchical organizations.
Ultimately, companies who wish to embark on their MarTech journey especially to better support their content marketing efforts need to look at it holistically and not cut corners on doing the needful. Start with your customers, then be clear with your objectives and then plan with a view to buffer for the what, who, where and how in terms of tools, processes and people in your organization.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.