Cracking the Code of Data-Driven Marketing

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(00:52): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Christina Inge. Just two decades of experience leading digital strategy and management and managing complex marketing technology projects. She specializes in articulating effective, efficient digital strategies for organizations using the latest channels to drive results. She’s the founder of Sleek Marketing, which offers hands-on education on digital marketing in the Boston area, and she’s also the author of a book we’re gonna talk about today, Marketing Metrics: Leverage Analytics and Data to Optimize Marketing Strategies. So Christina, welcome to the show.

Christina Inge (01:34): Thank you John for having me here.

John Jantsch (01:36): So here’s my first question. When you use metrics and strategies in the same subtitle title, most businesses I end up running up against don’t have a strategy, let alone a data-driven strategy. So, so how when you’re talking to somebody about this idea of a data-driven strategy, how do you bridge that gap if they really aren’t working from a strategic framework anyway?

Christina Inge (01:59): I think most people, even if they’re not working from a strategic framework, either believe that they are, yeah, , or know that they are not and wish to do so. I have yet to meet anybody who says, you know what? I hate strategy. I wanna just fly by the seat of my pants day in and day out. I’m sure they’re out there, but mercifully or unmercifully, I have not met them. . So the first thing is, there’s really not a lot of resistance to the idea of having a strategy. People don’t have one, but that’s all the more reason why they want to have a strategy and why they turn to data. Because if you don’t have a strategy right now, half the time, if not 70% of the time, you believe, rightfully so in most cases, that the reason you don’t have a strategy is because you don’t have enough. And data is really just information. Yeah. So most of the time people are like, yeah, I absolutely need a strategy and I need the data to develop that strategy. And datadriven strategy is like the buzzword of the moment. Sure. So people are for the most part on board with it, especially if they don’t currently have any kind of strategy at all.

John Jantsch (03:11): So, so you know, well, a lot of times when you work, what I hear you saying, I shouldn’t put words in your mouth, I’m gonna ask the question, is that a lot of people figure out what they’re gonna do and then say, let’s figure out how to measure it. And what you’re in some ways saying is, let’s look at what the data tells us to figure out what to do.

Christina Inge (03:29): Yes and no. So you should be always making data driven decisions. You should probably not be making decisions just based on gut feel or the mood of the moment. And I’m just, uh, swinging around here to be slightly less backlit, although I have that angelic look here going on. So you should be looking at the data to have it help you decide what to do. But you should also be conducting experiments. You should be doing ABM multivariate testing to test out hypotheses about what you should be doing. I’ll give you an example. So you can look at the data for what worked six months ago in a space like consumer, I don’t know, health and beauty, right? But what was on trend six months ago, what was on trend three months ago is not necessarily what’s on trend now. So if you go at that, go and look at that data and say, well, these particular influencers were really productive for us, or this kind of subject line in our emails or our marketing automation was very productive. It is not necessarily going to be the case right now. So I say, yeah, look at the data, but don’t just retroactively look at the data and then proactively predict forward. Well, predicting is a forward looking thing. Pride forward what you’re going to do, use that as a guide. But the past is only one of the many guides to what you should be doing. You should also be actively experimenting.

John Jantsch (04:55): One of the complaints of course, that I think people, uh, have today is there, you know, 20 years ago there was only so much you could measure today, lots of data, lots to be analyzed. So I mean, probably too much, right? In some cases. So how do we kind of get to what’s the important stuff?

Christina Inge (05:16): Anything that’s related to ROI is what you should focus on. I’m gonna say there’s three things you should be focusing on. One is anything related to roi, because at the end of the day, you’re either in the business of making money or if you’re a nonprofit, you’re in the business of serving a particular mission. And then your roi, it may not be monetary, but it’s gonna be there in elephants saved or disease cured or what have you. So you need to first and foremost say, am I doing things that help us meet our mission? Whether it’s shareholder value or saving elephants? Is this email campaign? Is this social media campaign, ad campaign, this combination of things, this customer, are any of these things helping us actually achieve that mission? And for that unique KPIs, key performance indicators that tell you, well, how will I know that we’re succeeding?

(06:07): So that’s the first thing, and I’ll get back to the issue of KPIs in a moment, but I wanted to also talk about, all right, what are the other two things that are help you narrow down to the metrics that matter? Not everything is gonna be a direct driver or even a quantifiable driver of roi. So for instance, if you have an outstanding, if you do a rebranding the way Campbell Soup recently did a rebranding, maybe more soup’s gonna fly off the shelves, maybe not. Maybe it’s gonna give them a little bit of a bump. But rebranding, people often don’t do it with the view towards all this is in and of itself, right? Going to cost people to stamped and buy my product. So you also want to measure consumer perception, your own positioning in the marketplace. And that takes it a step above ROI to the overall health of your branding your company.

(06:54): And then finally, if you wanna think about it as a Venn diagram where ROI is here, well may encompassing mo that mostly your brand health is here. Then the biggest circle of things you need to be measuring is your industry. You want to think about looking ahead to trends. Don’t forget, when you think about building a blue ocean strategy, one of the ways in which you can carve out a blue ocean for yourself. And if that’s not a mixed metaphor, I have no idea what, so we’re carving out an ocean and leveraging the ROI and running it up the flag pole. Oh my word. That’s way George jargon for a Monday afternoon is, which is when we’re recording this, but one of the ways in which you can create a blue ocean for yourself is by anticipating trends, right? Being ahead of the curve. Now, of course, the idea that there’s always a first mover advantage has been thoroughly debunked. In fact, that paper got retracted and cringe whenever anyone says first mover advantage. Cuz it’s not that simple. Sometimes there isn’t, sometimes there isn’t. But what you can’t afford to do in this world is be utterly oblivious to emerging trends. And instead simply being reactive or trying to be proactive, but only being proactive with a narrow time horizon. So time horizon A, look at your ROI of what you’re currently doing, time horizon B, look at the health of your brand and then the big time horizon start metricating overall industry trends.

John Jantsch (08:25): So on top of too much data, another thing that I hear quite often is this idea of attribution. How do I know exactly what did what, because the customer journey’s a little all over the place, . So are there some best practices in even assigning attribution or guessing or dividing attribution amongst channels?

Christina Inge (08:51): There’s again, three things there that I tell people to focus on. One is, on a tactical level, you want to have a tagging system in place. Mm-hmm. Scroll back to top