You Ask, I Answer: Adopting Data-Driven Marketing Strategy?

In today's episode, Kate asks, how do you suggest to go about creating a data-driven strategy standard and breaking the because we've always done it this way mentality? So the mentality of we've always done it this way is one of comfort and security, of predictability. We've always done it this way. Means that yes, you'll always get what you've always gotten, but if things have been good, um there is it's difficult to sell that change. The greatest challenge to data-driven strategy is that people do not understand uh the data or the value of the data and thus don't see a reason to change their decision-making process.

And it's understandable why people feel that way. A lot of the time when you have people who are not skilled at analytics working with data, um, you get a lot of what uh Avanash Kashik talls calls data puking, where you just you know pour a pile of data on somebody's desk and say, here, here's the data. And they're like, what am I supposed to do with this? This is not helpful. Um part of the reason why it takes so long to change people's minds is they don't see that the decisions that you make from data are any better than the decisions that you made without the data, right?

If especially in cases where the data is confirmatory, where it says, Yeah, you know what? You made the right choice all along. And people go, well, why do we spend you know X months and X dollars doing this exercise? You're gonna tell me what I already knew. That's where you have to take a step back and say, okay, is being data-driven a good fit for the organization?

And there are organizations where it is not. Um, for good or ill, there are situations where it's an uphill battle and you won't realize any benefit. Particularly if you have people who are not just hesitant but outright hostile. That is a boulder, uh, there's a hill you don't want to push a boulder up. So being data driven means making decisions with data, and as with everything, uh, the easiest way to get people to change how they do things is to show some wins, show some early easy wins that can help you build momentum for strategy, especially if it's something that uh requires very little effort on your part, and can show somebody, oh, this is really cool.

Like, I didn't know that. Um simple example. You fire up Google Trends, right? And you can show just some basic search volume changes in something that a person cares about and go, oh, huh, I didn't know that people searched more for you know my product or service in June. I thought they were searching more for in August when we typically see them in our CRM, and you can say, No, that's true.

Um, people are searching up for our product or service or whatever, uh, two months before they contact us, so we can market to them earlier. Think, oh, that's a decision I understand. We're gonna market to them when they're looking for it, and they'll be more likely to buy it. So it's looking for those early easy wins as best as you possibly can to build momentum for data-driven strategy. Strategy in general, but data driven strategy in particular, is a sale.

There's a reason why when we we talk about getting agreement on something, it's called buy-in, right? Somebody is buying our strategy, and what is being exchanged is their time, uh, their resources, uh, possibly the people, certainly their patience, uh, are all currencies of buy-in to a new strategy. And yet, we do not approach uh strategy as a sale, right? We'll talk about oh this this is you know the uh the the trend that the industry's going in, or this is best for the organization, right? How well does that work when someone's trying to convince you to buy something?

It doesn't. There's there's no compelling value there to you. So when we have to approach data-driven marketing, a data-driven strategy, we've got to approach it from the perspective of a sale. Not what's best for the company, not what's best for the analytics department or the IT department or the marketing department, but what is best for the person that has to buy in. What's in it for them?

Right? Every sale has to answer the question, what's in it for me for the buyer. Are we going to give the buyer of our data-driven marketing strategy better results? Are they going to make more revenue? Are they gonna hit their numbers more easily?

Um, are they gonna look better in front of the boss? What is for sale? What what is it that they say, you know what? I want that. That looks good, I want that.

Um, and a lot of the things that we put in front of somebody for a data-driven strategy aren't all that appealing. Right? Oh, it's uh it's the way the technology's moving. Great. That that's not a compelling reason to buy something, right?

Just because a company comes out with a new smartphone and it's like minuscule differences from the model you have, is that a reason to buy it? No. Right? You have to have some compelling emotional reason for the person to buy in to data-driven strategy. So because we've always done it this way, is a position of security, is a position of comfort.

The buy-in, therefore, is discomfort. Someone is buying in with their discomfort. What do you have to sell that makes the discomfort worth it? So early wins, easy wins. Look at things that don't require their data.

Look at search data, look at social media data, look at um media data in general, look at uh data from your existing systems, and what can you say? Like, hey, this is a decision that we would make better if we had this information. Or, hey, I looked at the data, and have you tried doing it this way? And instead of being a hard pressure salesperson, right? Which nobody loves those, be a consultative salesperson, right?

Think about it as how can I counsel and advise this person to make the right choice for them to show them that the value of what they're buying is worth it, is worth more than the investment they're making, and present your data-driven strategy that way as a trusted advisor rather than you know using role power in an organization, use relationship power. That's how you get buy-in. That's how you get someone to adopt a data-driven strategy is to say that I I clearly see what's in it for me, I want to buy that. I'm I'm comfortable enough to be uncomfortable because I see the benefits of what's in it for me. And that requires a lot of hand holding.

Right? Because anytime you're going to make a major system change, for example, switching from Google Analytics 3 to Google Analytics 4 because it it offers you more flexibility. Flexibility in this case is kind of intangible. Um, and there's a lot of pain associated with that change. So, what is the thing that you can show that says, oh wow, that's really valuable.

Uh we we gotta make that change because I want more of that. Right. So, uh that's the way that I would approach getting someone to make a change for uh adopting a data-driven strategy uh standard is to say when you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. If you're happy with what you've gotten, okay, but what if you could get this instead? What if you could get you know 20% better results?

Would you want to be able to show your boss 20% growth or whatever the number is based on your own research that you've done? That's how you get by it. So, if you have follow up questions, leave them in the comments box below. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and the newsletter. I'll talk to you soon.

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