To better understand how a data-centric approach to business is impacting the marketing organization, I turned to Jennifer Zeszut, the CEO of Beckon, an enterprise-class marketing intelligence platform. The following is the conclusion of a two-part series. (See part one here.)
Kimberly Whitler: As marketers move toward a data-centric world view, what will change?
Jennifer Zeszut: In addition to the skills required of leaders and organizational design/structure (see part 1 for more detail), marketing culture and technology use will change.
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Our marketing culture and risk profile will change.
While I guess you could be data-driven once every three years, the point of data-driven marketing is agility. Try something, look at the data quickly, rev it and try something new, then look at the data again. Rapid test and learn.
Marketing organizations that have been used to “big bang” marketing—noodling for months on one big idea, prepping all the creative, then launching everything and praying for big impact—will need to reorient. Instead of measuring once at the end of a campaign, we should be measuring every day or every week of the campaign, and constantly tuning and optimizing. Instead of putting $1 million down on one ad, many brands, like Coca-Cola and Dunkin’ Brands, now put $50k into 10 marketing experiments, launch them all, and measure closely to see which ones pop. When they see customer engagement around a few clear winners, they double down on the media investment behind those winners.
Data-driven marketing goes hand in hand with a marketing culture that celebrates bite-sized, controlled risk-taking, follow-up analysis and rapid iteration. Because in today’s fragmented media landscape, big bangs are harder and harder to pull off. The successful marketing leaders will be the ones who can build a marketing machine that tests and learns quickly, increasing the upside potential and decreasing the downside risk.
The technology we use will change.
Marketers have long outsourced data analysis. We pay mix modelers huge sums to deliver the year-end binder stuffed with analysis. Finance runs our ROI calculations. We ask IT to generate reports—although because IT doesn’t understand marketing those reports are usually of extremely limited marketing value.
In an agile, data-driven marketing world, we need to build out the capabilities for data analysis and decision-making within our own teams. A technology CMO I know said it like this: “I’ve been thinking a lot about what legacy I want to leave. Do I want to be that guy who outsources thinking and analysis to a third-party vendor, and my job is just to execute the playbook? Or do I want to build, in-house, a core competency for data-driven marketing so that my entire extended marketing team knows how to view data, ask questions and optimize? The answer is clearly the latter.”
This is new for most marketing organizations. And that’s one reason why it’s so important that brands use analysis and reporting tools that are purpose-built for marketing—that deliver a marketing point of view and follow marketing best practices as part of their DNA. As opposed to complex, generic analytics tools built for advanced data analysts and engineers.
Whitler: If so much will change, is there anything that won’t change?
Zezsut: There’s one thing that being a data-driven marketer doesn’t change, and it’s incredibly important to point out. What doesn’t change is the need for intuition and creativity. Marketers who are apprehensive about data are worried it means the death of creativity. But in fact, intuition and creativity are completely independent of—and very often fueled by—data analysis.
A friend who’s a creative director said he would love to have a standard measure for how “hot” and “successful” a campaign was—if he knew the last ad campaign he ran scored an 8.5 on this imaginary “hot meter” he would throw all his creativity and energy into something that can top 8.5. Creativity doesn’t go away when we start to measure business impact, it just has targets and goals.
And in any case, data analysis is more of an exercise in intuition and storytelling than many marketers initially grasp. They think an answer—42—will pop out the other end of some analytics tool and the marketing org will be stuck with that new reality. But that’s not the way it works. Kind of like those scientists who say the more deeply they understand the science the more they believe in a higher power, the more familiar you get with data and data analysis, the more you realize that, in the end, performance reporting is storytelling. And storytelling is something marketers were born to do.
Whitler: What’s your advice for marketing leaders?
Zezsut: The changes in media and technology that consumers are embracing may be out of marketers’ control, but our response to the upheaval is up to us. Marketers have to take these shifts seriously and be ready to make far-reaching changes—from who we hire, to which partners we choose to work with, to what behaviors we reward in our teams. Doing data-driven marketing is more than just plugging in a dashboard. It may be bigger than you thought, but it’s potentially more rewarding, too. A leader who welcomes change, creates a mandate and methodically moves teams, behaviors and culture to deliver more for the business … well, guess who’s in line for the CEO opening in five years?
Join the Discussion: @KimWhitler @BeckonInc @Jenniferland