As a customer insights / analytics / digital measurement pro, do you experience any of these challenges?  And what can you do right now to make progress with them?

  •  I can’t keep up with requests from my stakeholders for analysis and insights.  Does the volume of requests and your team’s capacity seem increasingly out of whack in your organization?
  • Our customer data isn’t where we need it to be – we can’t get a comprehensive view of our customer.   You’re not alone.  Marketing and technology teams struggle to align objectives, roles, budget, projects and process, and timelines to maximize value from customer data.  Marketing decision-makers report several reasons they are failing: too many data sources (44%), lack of access to technology to manage data source integration (38%), lack of budget (35%), lack of skills to support integration (34%), organizational silos (27%), and lack of an executive sponsor (23%).
  • We’re leaving money on the table because our different analytics and insights teams work in silos.  Here’s a simple digital measurement example of this:  one digital team is responsible for driving visits to the website.  Other teams are responsible for maximizing on-site conversions.  They work in their own separate silos.  A more efficient and effective approach: work together to identify the characteristics of customers most likely to convert, and work on driving that group to the site.   That type of silo breakdown needs to happen more.

It might seem counterintuitive, but to make progress with any of these challenges, you must become a communications pro inside your organization – a messaging master.  When I talk to customer insights pros about this, many say, “Yes, I don’t do enough of that.”  Understandable. Given stretched resources, you probably don’t view this as a priority. But that’s backward thinking – actually, you must prioritize this work.    You want as many people as possible to feel the urgency – via terms they can relate to – to drive customer obsession through more actionable insights from data.  And that’s the key:  like any effective marketing, you must define and prioritize your objectives and develop your “who, what, when, why, how, and where” plan – and know how you’ll measure results.  Let me know if you want to bounce some of your ideas around.