Data for Marketers: A guest post by @mbaconsultant
In sharing a home with the latest addition to the Infochimps team, it’s no wonder I have data on my mind. I’ve been thinking about how marketing groups at startups to CPG multinationals alike are allocating more mindshare and budget to data-centric intelligence in the form of new partners, reports and employees. This signals a call to action for me that applies to brands as well: to stay ahead of the pack, we must get our hands dirty in creating and interpreting relevant data. Being a savvy listener who can translate qualitative customer insights into product recommendations is only half of the equation.
Partners
It is not just traditional and digital advertising agencies, PR firms, research houses or even more specialized web analytics and search optimization firms that are in the business of collaborating with marketers anymore. Social business design consultancies, E- and M-commerce providers and DaaS destinations are coming of age to support established agencies and their clients today. In addition to APIs, many offer one-stop shopping for everything off-the-rack to highly customizable reports. I was never exposed to this group of resources in my marketing training in business school over the past two years. I know my colleagues will benefit from this information since we all convinced soon-to-be employers during interviews that we’re pros at making sense of minimal and ambiguous information.
Takeaway: Agencies of record no longer always trump or control other a company’s partner relationships. Take the time to get to know emerging likeminded partners and update your company’s preferred vendor list in advance of needing to contract services.
Reports
There are thousands of sales and marketing dashboards, models and automation tools available today. Many that I have seen at the 5+ companies I’ve worked and interned for are wildly complicated and take days to weeks of training to begin to understand. This past fall, I was fortunate to be part of a SaaS marketing team that took the time to create a framework for choosing which automation product it would invest in. By the time the business case for the chosen system was made, a culture around the product was already developing, employees were embracing its reporting language and it was clear how the system’s metrics would inform KPIs.
Takeaway: Having more reports does not equal having more insight into what channel and content levers optimize various marketing outcomes. Experiment and iterate with multiple tools and formats to ensure you have the simplest and clearest tools for your purposes.
Jobs
Just two years ago (when I left the workforce for business school), marketing jobs were centered on brand management, strategy and planning. Today, most openings I come across are of a new breed. The modern marketing manager is now an Online Marketing Manager, Marketing Analytics Manager or Customer Acquisition and Retention Manager. The visionary marketers from the past decade anticipated these changing roles and morphed as soon as they could. Others found roles outside the marketing organization, often in Community Management, where they could utilize their strategy and customer relationship skills.
Takeaway: Having the ability to improve ROI metrics is now often a requirement for marketing jobs. Craft your resume and prior work experience stories around these successes, and jockey to work for an employer that is participating in the marketing metrics dialogue and providing digital marketing training.
