Speaker 1: And we're live. Hi everyone. Happy December and welcome to today's digital lunchbox. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving today. We're going to be discussing creating actionable insights from your marketing data. So I am joined by Seth, Tyler, and Josh, and we're just going to start plowing through these questions. So first things first, Tyler, I'm going to start with you. We have clients that come to us all the time and they're either lacking quality marking data or they're drowning in it. And all of them eventually ask how to make sense of all of this data. So where should they begin?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So the place that we like to start is establishing KPIs. With any of our engagements, that's, that's where we begin. We have a KPI document that maps out broad strategy, but then dives into usually three to four separate focus areas that allow us to identify macro and micro conversions across the site that we know are really driving value for the business or the organization. When, when we begin with those that allows us to then make sure that everything we're doing after that point is aligning back to, and driving you know, those, those KPIs. So right from the start it's identifying what's really most important there as far as driving value and bringing that to the forefront.

Speaker 3: Absolutely. I think it's easy, you know, if we're not aligned to get sidetracked or, you know, it's really about group accountability. We all want to be on the same page as to what is most important. What are the key KPIs? And it's just so helpful when, when clients share that with us and we can team up with them on these shared visions.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So, so if they're on the side where they're, they're lacking that quality data identifying those KPIs right at the start allows us to then set out to really setting up the tooling and the infrastructure that are required to capture the data behind those KPIs. And if they're drowning in it, chances are they're trying to track and pay attention to all the things, which would be crazy, like just dizzying. So establishing those KPIs really helps to shine a light on the things that are most important within that organization so that they're not getting distracted by all that noise, like Seth, you're saying.

Speaker 1: So I imagine that when you're going through this process of putting together potential KPIs, it could easily turn into, like you said, a lot, kind of maddening and dizzying, Tyler. So Josh, how do you decide which data is important to avoid that data paralysis?

Speaker 4: I think the first thing is, is kind of referencing back to that, that KPA document. So that with that first step completion, you've kind of understood now what are all those KPIs that we're tracking and, and how are we tracking all that? It's, it's understanding there's, there's different levels of information that are needed for different parts of the organization. So a, a C-suite or a board or an executive, may need a very top level information. It's, it's total cost. It's total traffic, total conversions, things like that. And that's, that's really all they want. And they don't want to dive much further than that. The next level down might be a marketing manager. And they're really looking at information at the campaign level. Like how has our recruiting campaign going? Or how has our lead gen campaign campaign going? And that, that has different metrics that are associated with it. Whereas if you're working with an agency or you have a digital marketing specialist, for instance, within your team, they're going to want very detailed information about how very specific parts of the campaign are performing, how many impressions are being generated? How many, what percentage of the actual impression share are they getting? Quality scores, that type of thing that really impact how they optimize a campaign. So if you do a good job of documenting out all of those KPIs that matter to different parts of your organization, you can then turn that information organization for the various roles. And I think one example, you know, I, I've, I've heard views before is this idea of all the, all the panels, all the instruments that you have in the panel of your car, you've got your speedometer, you've got your, your check oil light, you've got all these different things that are, that are in front of you when you're driving your car. But when you're driving the car, you're not looking at all of those. There's, there's maybe one or two that you focus on. It's your, how fast am I going? That's, that's typically one. And maybe the radio channel that you're, that you're focused on. And, and once you've, once you've kind of gotten a handle for your business, that's how easy data tracking had become because you've got all this stuff happening in the background and you know it and you trust it. But you don't need to spend time worrying about that. You just worry about the one or two things that are important to you and your role.

Speaker 2: Yeah. The way that we've structured our KPI document aligns directly with this idea. Uh, we, we have those big macro conversions, the things that, you know, the C-suite, uh, really those top level folks are going to want to pay attention to. Um, underneath that we have kind of the, that next level down. Um, and below that, we, uh, identify all kinds of diagnostic metrics, uh, what we call them that allow us to really dive in and have kind of some, some reports and things already preset so that if say our, our speedometer gauge, we're, we're, we're pressing it to the floor, but we're only going 40 miles an hour. Um, we, we know right which reports we can dive down into to help us diagnose that issue. Uh, and then, you know, pull some actionable insights from that diagnostic level.

Speaker 1: So you, after you get the KPIs kind of identified and prioritized, what would be next, Tyler?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh, so within all of these different KPIs, uh, most of, most of the time we're going to have different segments that we're wanting to look at, uh, within each of these key, uh, key metrics. And so what we do with our clients is we set to, uh, identifying, getting all of those potential segments, um, whether that's by, uh, customer type or, uh, you know, your, your, uh, profiles or, uh, region, maybe even device types, especially when we're looking at e-commerce that can have a big impact on, uh, you know, time on site and conversion rates. Um, so getting all those potential segments out on the board and then from there prioritizing, uh, again, what's going to be most important and aligning those with, with each of those layers that we've talked about. So what are the segments that C-suite is going to care about the most, uh, and that they need to really have eyes on, um, and, and just kind of work our way down there. Uh, there are again, a million different potential options here, and you can really spend a lot of time and money in trying to set up and monitor all those segments. Um, but really just ensuring that, that they're properly aligned, uh, right from the start is really going to be super important at this phase.

Speaker 1: Seth speaking as a C-suite, what would you have to add to that? Like what type of data do you want to see in your role?

Speaker 3: Yeah. So of course I'm a technical marketing person. So I understand, I want to see actually all of it. Um, but a lot of C-suite folks are not, you know, uh, CEOs especially are, they just want to see the revenue numbers and what's going to make my revenue go up. Um, so I guess, uh, maybe it's also important to note that there is a bit of an education component when it comes to the marketing team, speaking with the C-level team or in whatever the structure is that, Hey, you know, some of these things are long-term games, you know, our direct actions aren't going to lead to dollars in the bank tomorrow, but, um, some of these smaller metrics, lower level metrics actually do matter. Uh, even though this, the C-level folks don't want to hear about it. Uh, hopefully that's helpful.

Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. So there's still a lot of data to sort through. Josh, do you kind of have maybe any recommendations on how to best visualize or display this marketing data?

Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a, it really depends on the marketing, the, the, the tech stack that the client is using or the company is using. They might have some different tools. One that will, I'm personally a big fan of, and we use quite a bit here at O-8, um, is a, is a tool called Google Data Studio. Uh, and there's a couple of reasons. I'm a fan of it. One, um, it's got a lot of people using it. And so there's a lot of crowdsourcing of information and templates and things like that, that go into it. Um, but also it's a Google product. So it integrates very well with a lot of the big advertising tools that companies might be using. Um, and so taking, finding a place to take all this information and, and dump it into one place so that whether they're the implementation person, the marketing director, or the C-suite, uh, you can have all that information in one place. And in fact, I think kind of piggybacking on what, what Seth was saying, um, we've had certainly lots of examples in the past where there is a C-suite or an executive board member that, that wants to be able to, to click, to double click, to triple click on data and, and go deeper. And, and a tool like Data Studio allows you to have various different pages within a dashboard report, um, where you can go from an executive level scorecard with just a few metrics to another page where it's talking about, uh, you know, more campaign related information and then triple click down into another page where it's talking about those very specific optimized optimization level type of type of data points. So, uh, using a tool like Data Studio is one that we, that I certainly highly recommend that we use for a lot of our clients. Um, and it really allows you the ability to customize exactly what you want to see or what that role wants to see within the organization with, uh, with cool visualizations. You can do campaigns over time. You can pull in information from things like Facebook advertising and Google ads and, and email campaigns, all that into one spot, um, so that you have it all there to look at and, and, uh, consume.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And another factor with, uh, Google Data Studio and really any, any kind of similar platform, uh, is going to be the fact that it allows you to, to get those live dashboards, um, versus, you know, some of the more scheduled reports that execs may, um, expect. You can set up to do both, uh, to serve both of those needs. Um, and again, you can really target. So if you only want your C-suite or your, your board to get there, you know, biweekly or quarterly update, you can just set it up to send that specific that specific page, uh, to those folks on a regular basis. Um, but that, that live dashboard then allows us to, again, um, with kind of one tool and one data pool, uh, target those visualizations to the different sets of needs. Um, so for example, uh, when we're thinking about like board updates, um, what's going to be most actionable there at the board level? Well, we want to be looking at, you know, some broader trends, usually quarterly. And so we'll set up, um, you know, some visualizations that are going to show, um, especially when we're talking about newer, uh, newer acquisitions within say, um, uh, uh, a larger set of firms, um, they're really looking at growing, uh, new users, new site traffic, things like that. And so we're going to set up that, that quarterly, uh, dashboard for the board members to show that attraction trend. Uh, we're going to then break it down in a line, a section of that report to, to really be showcasing the engagement metrics, um, across the quarters and kind of do a, uh, a review back to the previous period as well. Um, so that at the board level, if they're seeing issues, they can, they can begin to take a corrective action, um, at a very broad level. But when we zoom down to say that that implementation level, uh, we want to see, uh, this really beautiful chart. That's going to show, um, across the, the months, um, some of these, uh, monthly sessions by channel, which is really going to help to showcase what, uh, what efforts are working at a high level and what that mix is, uh, in our, in the larger, uh, scheme of things. Uh, Josh, you had mentioned a recruitment example earlier. And, uh, so when we're thinking about that recruitment team and the team who's, who's not only, um, receiving those potential applications, but also then, uh, driving the ads behind those efforts, um, we're going to want to provide a much more granular level where we're talking about not only, um, individual, uh, join our, Oh, this is perfect. Thanks. Um, individual, uh, key, uh, micro conversions on that, that application path around clicking that join our team or around viewing a broad scale, the career page. Those are going to help us to show at each step of the funnel, how things are going, uh, identify any potential red flags there and translate that using those diagnostic metrics into direct actionable insights. If we see for instance, that we've got an average time on page that's dropping a pretty significantly from the past month, we want to take a look back and say, what changed? Uh, it seems like our traffic is up, but our time on page is down. So do we have a mismatch in the traffic that we're sending or did we potentially say drop a video or something, uh, from, from this landing page that's causing a decrease, uh, in the time on page. So that's where these diagnostic metrics really come in, uh, clutch to translating all of this data into actionable insights that we can then send to our dev team, send to our content team, uh, to make those improvements to help see a lift over the next, uh, over the next reporting period.

Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, this is super helpful. So as everyone starts getting ready for 2021 and putting together their KPIs, the strategy, um, if you need help setting up dashboards, if you just need some helpful, uh, tips and hints, feel free to reach out and we're happy to walk you through it, or you can join us at our next digital lunchbox.

Speaker 3: Thanks everyone. Hadley, did you have more questions for me?

Speaker 2: I think we have some more questions, Hadley.

Speaker 1: Oh, I do. I'm still on holiday brain. Um, okay. So looking at those dashboards, Seth, it looks like there might be some danger to sharing these dashboards or reports without any context. So when, when certain people are looking at them, obviously context is key. Can you walk us through that?

Speaker 3: Yeah. So, um, you know, for example, a common example that gets used as the site-wide bounce rate, you know, it might not be a helpful metric for everyone, uh, to look at. It could be, you know, I've got a relevant traffic or, you know, some, something, but it's not necessarily a, a S a clear sign of a problem or not a helpful sign of a problem with the website itself. So, you know, um, you want to align the data with proper, you know, titles and, um, you know, uh, ideally what we're getting to as a narrative, like every, every data story or report should have some sort of narrative behind it. If you are the person that can tell the narrative and you can read that for yourself. Great. But, um, just willy nilly sharing dashboards around the company without context and without a proper narrative, um, leads people to have cognitive models of, uh, things that don't represent reality, right? So it's easy to take a data point, uh, and not understand it. Whereas our brains are designed to process stories. So having that context, that narrative behind the data and the dashboards is really important. Um, and, and that might involve just taking this dashboard. If you're presenting it to someone else, screenshotting putting in some texts or having a meeting about it, whatever is useful for your organization. Um, and then of course, at the micro level, there's, you know, what, what is underlying this data, the user journey, a specific page goals, et cetera. And that can all be discussed in the narrative. Um, yeah, I guess that's all I have to say on that.

Speaker 4: Funny example about, about that. We had a client who was a marketing director and we have all these status means we go through all these reports and things like that. And then she would take and create her own executive level team report that she did internally. Um, and when it comes to context, it was very interesting because they had this very large scale branding brand campaign where they had a whole lot of digital marketing support, including paid search and social programmatic ads and audio ads, et cetera, all this stuff while the campaign ended. And so the next month there, uh, all their numbers dropped pretty drastically and she did not include that to her board. And so she got some very panicky messages back from, from the C-suites that caused her a lot of stress and basically took up a half a day because she simply didn't say, Hey, this campaign ended. So you're going to see this happening in this next month. So our context is definitely.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Such a big part of, of context is education. Um, making sure that in that case, exactly folks know what's going on within the larger mix. Um, and even when we're, especially when we're talking about sending these reports up very often, do we need this down? But often up, um, especially when we're talking about like boards, for instance, uh, just educating them on what a bounce rate is and in what context it's appropriate to look at, uh, the bounce rate can be really, really important context when looking at these, these dashboards, uh, and reports. So that that's, Oh, that's such a bummer, Josh. Yeah.

Speaker 1: So Seth, you mentioned making things useful for your organization. So how would you, or how do you operate operationalized sort of data analysis and making sure that you're creating a reliable feedback loop into business processes?

Speaker 3: Yeah. So, um, here at 08, we have weekly marketing and strategy meetings, uh, including a growth meeting, which is focused on just learning from more recent or short-term data. And I think one of the important things is, okay, we it's not effective to take a whole meeting and review the dashboard together, right? We, we want to have a subset of people or maybe the team review it beforehand and just use the meeting time to review key takeaways, like changes in the narrative, changes in the story from the data, um, and, and discuss learnings from that. And so how do we learn and grow from that? Uh, so then we also have a weekly traction meeting, which is an organizational operating system essentially. And we have a scorecard that we track, um, metrics for that. And also we'll raise issues surrounding the data, you know, maybe it's okay. We want to work on SEO, um, because over the last month we saw this trend or maybe at the quarterly traction meeting, we want to make a theme about, um, social or whatever it is, uh, that aligns with where the data have been and where we want to see them going. So making sure you have that cadence, um, that, that is focused around learnings from the data around the narrative, rather than of course, having everyone look at the data altogether. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And coming out of those meetings, uh, every single one, we walk away with a whole list of action items translated into our project management tool, uh, that are taking those learnings and saying, okay, team, let's execute on these. Uh, so it really is literally just translating that, that the data to the narrative, like, like Seth saying, and then putting that into your prioritizing that, putting that into your teamwork, uh, uh, portal or, you know, project management portal and start, start doing it. That's right. Exactly.

Speaker 1: Josh, do you have anything to add or anybody else with any final thoughts?

Speaker 4: Well, I was just going to say now is a great time to be thinking about data, uh, and specifically quality of data. Uh, as you're going into the next year, you're going to be, you know, all of 2020, you're going to be doing year to date reports. And then in, or sorry, in 2021, uh, thankfully 2020 is almost over. And then in 2022, you're going to be looking back at 2021 and comparing. And so if your January data isn't right, uh, you're going to have an Asterix next to that for a long time. So December is a great time to think about getting everything in order, get your KPIs, uh, solidified. Um, you know, your dashboard doesn't necessarily have to be perfect yet, but just make sure that data is up, is the right quality and that you're tracking the right stuff.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. So moving back to what I said earlier, now that we are actually at a close, my apologies, you guys definitely still have holiday brain, but like Josh said, we are ready for 2021 and we're also ready to help all of you get ready for it. So reach out to us if we can help in any way and continue to tune in to our digital lunchboxes, check in on our podcast. Um, and we also have a great marketing group called Marketing Leaders Connect. So reach out if you want to join. Thanks everyone.