Category Archives: Consulting

September 1, 2015 · 11:00 am

CMO – uh oh…

I find research interesting. Maybe it’s my basic, curious nature or maybe I’m just nosy, but I enjoy reading studies of how businesses and consumers behave. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised. More often than not, I’m a little shocked. Today is one of those times. The folks at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business have been conducting a survey of top U.S. marketers since 2008. You can read the latest CMO Study here. They released this year’s data and I found one section – the one on marketing analytics – particularly interesting. Let’s see what you think.

There are the headlines, as summed up in this analysis:

Just 31% of projects use available or requested marketing analytics, well within the 29-37% range seen over the past 3-and-a-half years, according to US CMOs responding to the latest edition of The CMO Survey. B2C product companies appear to be leading the pack in usage of marketing analytics, however, at twice the rate of their B2B product counterparts (45.6% vs. 22.8%). B2B product companies also give the highest rating to marketing analytics’ contributions to their firms’ performance. Overall, marketing analytics are most apt to be used for customer acquisition, customer retention, social media and segmentation, per the report.

Frankly, I’m not surprised but I am a little disappointed.  Two-thirds of the marketing work is still seat of the pants, basically, and it’s even worse when you’re marketing to other businesses.  I can sort of understand this last point – it’s hard to tell when a website or social visitor is a business target or just a random consumer that’s wandered on to your digital presence.  You B2C marketers, however, have no excuse.

What it really means is that companies lack quantitative metrics to demonstrate the impact of marketing spending.  That is a recipe for budget suicide.  It’s not just that they’re generally not using analytics.  The survey also asked about what data is being used.  Only 15% of firms able to prove the impact of social media quantitatively and four metrics dominate how companies show social media impact:  likes, general traffic, click-through rates, and hits/visits/page views.  In other words, the really broad, pretty useless measures.  I spend quite a bit of time with clients trying to get beyond those measures into data than can translate into actionable business decisions.  These generally can’t.

Any of us engaged in marketing need to become comfortable with analytics of all sorts.  They’re what’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Fail to eat them and you’ll starve.  Are you coming to the table?

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August 28, 2015 · 8:46 am

Substitutions

This Foodie Friday I’d like to talk about something I hope you have handy in your kitchen: a table of substitutes. There is nothing worse than doing your mise en place and realizing that you’re out of something you need for what you’re making. Maybe it’s sour cream for a dip you decided to whip up to watch TV (use plain yogurt – Greek if you have it!). Maybe you need some buttermilk but only have regular (combine a tablespoon of an acid – lemon juice, vinegar – and enough milk to make a cup). How many large eggs can I substitute in when the recipe calls for jumbo?  Even understanding how to substitute dried herbs for fresh is important (use 1/3 as much dried as fresh). Having a list of things which can serve as alternatives is very handy and can often save a dish.  

We need to do that in business too. When we don’t have the proper things for what we’re trying to accomplish, we need to figure out substitutes. Maybe the higher-ups aren’t giving us the resources we need or maybe the budget isn’t big enough to cover the project at hand. We need to think about alternatives and reframe the problem. Maybe there are exceptions to what we perceive as the norm – organizations who have faced a similar challenge. Can those exceptions point us in another direction?

There are some things for which there are no substitutes.  Good people, for one, and smart, out of the box thinking for another.  I realize that you can’t cook a piece of chicken and call it beef.  Then again, you can substitute turkey for veal in some dishes so maybe chicken for beef isn’t so far-fetched.  That sort of thinking is something in which every organization needs to engage.  What business model can we substitute for our own if things begin to fall apart?

My table of substitutions is tucked away in a kitchen drawer and I rarely need to use it.  I used to have one for my business tucked in a desk drawer – people I might want to hire, companies to replace current partnerships if they fell apart.   Where is yours?

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August 20, 2015 · 12:08 pm

Coleridge And Your Data

Someone probably made you read Samuel Coleridge‘s Rime Of The Ancient Mariner along your educational way. It contains a couplet that got me thinking about data:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

We spend so much time collecting and attempting to analyze data and yet it seems difficult to “drink” from the overwhelming amount we have.  I wonder if we keep an eye on the reasons why we gather data in the first place.  In my mind, there are  two main reasons to collect data:

    • To form actionable business questions
    • To measure how where we are today is different from where we were yesterday

Let me take a second to discuss them.  When we gather information from a customer or potential customer, we should always have a reason for doing so.  Otherwise we’re just filling up our data storage with bits we’ve got no need to store.  A recent IDG Connect study found that the biggest hurdles facing companies in terms of data were poor data quality and excessive data, so we need to think before we gather.  Some of the information they will give you (name, email, maybe a physical address); other information you’ll take yourself (usage patterns on the web and/or mobile, information our of social profiles, etc).

We ought to be using some of that data to educate our fans about our brand and industry.  That falls under the “actionable” category.  What results do we want from them?  How can we tell if we’re moving the needle?  One big day of traffic might be an aberration but trends tend not to lie over time.  I like this quote from the report:

The true value of Big Data is in the ability to leverage it for development of an informed strategy. Organizations need to move beyond a focus on just managing data to extracting trends and insights that will drive business outcomes.

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information you have, you probably have too much.  It’s probably not properly focused.  We need to collect as little data as possible – it’s much easier to drink a glass of water than an ocean.  It should be just enough to generate insight and not enough to foster confusion.  Which are you doing?

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