Measure Up Marketing Blog

Customer Conversations: The Value of Adding Data & Analytical Skills

Posted on August 29, 2013

 Jamie, the VP of Marketing at one of our manufacturing companies, in a recent conversation expressed excitement  about securing someone from the finance group to support marketing data and analytics. “It took 2 years of lobbying but now we’ll be able to make better and more informed decisions,” said Jamie.  To which I replied, “Awesome!” 

Then, in my usual fashion, I asked a series of rapid-fire questions: 

• What decisions are you hoping to make and in what priority order?
• What and where is the data that they will be accessing? 
• What is the data capture and management plan?
• Is he just going to start delving into the data( A.K.A. boiling the ocean to see what treasures await) or are there specific insights about customers or the market that you want to gain? 
• How will his contribution be measured? 
• Is his role specifically digging into and analyzing data- and if so for what?
• Will he serve your team in a broader capacity a.e marketing ops, performance management and reporting? 

Well, you can see the line of questioning.

Jamie said, “Whoa, I didn’t really think about what he was going to do or how, I just knew we needed someone who was comfortable with data and analytics because this isn’t my strong suit.”  I said, “Adding this capability to your team is a great win, and demonstrating how it will prove and improve the value of marketing will create an even more important win. Now that you have this person, it might be a good idea to take some time to think about and decide function’s scope, role, purpose, etc.” 

Jamie said, “Yeah, these are good questions and getting off on the right foot and in the right direction is really important for the team and for him.  It almost took a miracle to get this person; we won’t get a second chance at it.” 

Jamie asked if we could schedule a meeting next week to discuss things further.  I said, “Of course, it would be our pleasure.  In the meantime, your person may find our Marketing Operations:  Enabling Marketing Centers of Excellence and from Intuition to Wisdom: Mastering Data, Analytics and Models white papers helpful .” As we set a date for our next call, Jamie said in closing, “ Downloading these as we speak.”