7.2 What's next for you in marketing analytics? - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

<v ->So what's next for you in marketing analytics?</v> I got a hint, let's finish that project that you have on your way. We really need you to complete the project to solve the problem you chose in digital marketing analytics. So the last step in our strategy framework is to put together your actual plan. So we want you to ask yourself some questions, how are you gonna bring this from an idea to reality in that plan? And do you have a task identified for every gap that you've identified in the past? How about contingency plans for obstacles? And when you're putting the task together, are the estimates realistic? So let's drill down and look at what ought to be in your plan. So first, I know it's tempting to kind of blow through it, but don't skimp on the details. Here's why. Your plan is gonna be a lot more persuasive if you've got the details thought through. 'Cause anybody can cook up a spreadsheet and it looks like a success, but if your plan is detailed and it's believable, that's what's gonna cause people to approve your plan. And that's the first thing you have to do actually is when you put your plan together, you're gonna be identifying all sorts of people that need to do things. And what you need to do is to shop the plan around to every individual that is mentioned in that plan. Who are the groups that need to do things? Each one you need to be very specific about what their responsibilities are. Because when you shop this around, every group is gonna be looking for whatever their tasks are, what do they have to do? So make sure you spell them out. And you might say, "Well, I don't wanna do that. "They're just gonna object and say they can't do it." That's actually the point. What we want you to do is to go around and collect all of those objections. Find out from each group why they can't do this thing and then start asking questions. So if they can't do it because they don't have enough funding, how much funding do they need? If they need to hire and extra person, what skills does that person need to have? How much would they cost? You get the idea. The objections are actually what you need to develop your plan for, so it has the resources in it that you need approved when your plan is approved. Every team you talk to is going to have some different means of being persuaded. So the business team is mostly gonna be interested in missed opportunities, where could we have gotten more revenue? Or where could we reduce costs? If you show a credible plan and you can show them the business value, they'll be on your side. But how you get executive attention? I'll give you one guess, it's money. And so, your chief information officer, and even your chief marketing officer, might not always get it, they might not be as revenue-oriented as you need them to be. CIOs sometimes fixate on cost reductions and maybe your plan is gonna increase costs, and so you have to help them understand how increasing revenue is critically important, not just cost reductions. CMOs might have even fuzzier numbers that they're focused on, and they're not thinking that they can even measure revenue, as we've talked about earlier in the course. You need to help them understand that measuring revenue is not only important, it's critical. If you can't show why marketing is producing revenue, it's not a surprise if marketing budgets keep getting cut, because they look like an expense, rather than an investment. Now there are 10 questions that your executive might ask when you're trying to get this approval. Now, what I'll tell you is that even if your executive doesn't ask these questions, he or she is thinking about them, and they may be a problem if you don't have the answers. So don't wait for these questions to be asked, your presentation ought to show what the answers are to these questions. So the first one is basically, what is this problem you're talking about and why do I care? The second one seems pretty hard, which is how does this help me achieve my corporate goals? But it's actually not as hard as you think. In January of every year, your executive has some kind of all-hands meeting where they talk about the strategy for this year. And they talk about what the three big goals are. So instead of doing your email during that meeting, maybe pay attention, write them down, and then next time you have a proposal, make sure that you can explain how those goals are going to be impacted by your plan. What is your plan gonna do to help reach those goals? Next, where do we stand today? So you remember in our strategy framework, that we always start out by describing where we are now and we do that with numbers. This is why. You wanna be able to explain where we're starting from. Fourth one is what are our competitors doing? And you might say, "Well, you know, our competitors aren't "really doing anything in this area, "so that's not a good thing to talk about." Wrong. Here's why. Whatever executive you're talking to is a very competitive person. That's how they got to be an executive and beat out everybody else working their way up the ladder. And so they're very competitive and you want to tell them what competitors are doing. If your competitors are ahead of you, obviously that'll get their juices going, and you can say, "Hey, we need to do this to catch up." But even if your competitors are behind you, you can use their competitive juices to get them to approve your plan by explaining this is how you get even further ahead, this is how you lap them, how you'll be so far ahead of them they won't even be able to see you. So really focus on what competitors are doing, because it's a very important way to appeal to executives. Next is really start working through your plans. So what are you proposing to do? What's the business value to achieve? How much does it cost? How long will it take? These are all things that you'll have in your ROI model and in your plan. But here's a question that you might not think to answer. Why should I fund this project over current projects? Now, if you've been doing the work I suggested of running the project plan passed all the groups, you might have found out that there is a project or two that they are working on, that if they didn't have to work on it, they'd be able to do yours without any additional resources. And it could be that that project is behind, it could be that project isn't succeeding very well. Maybe this is an opportunity for the executive to cancel that project in favor of yours. And the last one, what are the risks? So you have to be very clear about what the things are that could go wrong. So think about what you talked about in your pre-mortem. Think about what those obstacles are, what could go wrong, and how you're going to mitigate that risk, how you're going to lessen the risk, or what you're going to do if it happens. How can you show that this is a low-risk project that's going to achieve what you're promising? Finally, it's time to simplify your plan. It's tempting for you to just add more and more stuff until you've got 116 slides, but that's not actually going to work. You have to pick highlights in each area. You have to be able to have just the elevator pitch that'll get this approved. And think about how each decision maker, all the different groups along the way, your CFO, the CEO, whoever the people are that you're trying to do this for, think about what will influence them. What are the key points that'll persuade them? Now when you're actually in the meeting, of course, you're gonna close the deal by asking to approve the project, including the funding and the resources. But, you also wanna make sure that you're getting the executive to order the extended team to cooperate. In fact, you should even have the extended team in the room with you, so they can nod their heads and say, "Yes, if you do all those things, "if you give us those resources, "if you let us hire that person, "we can definitely do this." That's what you need them to say in front of the executive. And the last thing you wanna ask for might feel a little counterintuitive, but you wanna meet with that executive every week, every month, depending on how long the project is, to review your progress. And you might say, "Well, no, I don't. "I was scared enough coming into this meeting. "I really don't need to have "that kind of stress once a month." Well, yes you do, here's why. If your project starts going off the rails, the reason it's going off the rails is because some of those people on the extended team are actually not completing the tasks that they swore up and down they could do. And you need to get in front of the executive, so the executive can help you with them. There's two ways that can happen. The first way is that they might not be doing the task they were supposed to do, because some other project took priority. And so, they're finding it to be hard to do both of them at once. And what you need to do is to make sure that they understand that there's consequences for making that decision. And you can tell them, "Hey, look, "I don't wanna have to turn you in "as being the reason that this project is off schedule, "but I have my monthly meeting with Shirley on Thursday, "and I'm gonna have to show her exactly what's going on. "So if there's any way you could kind of get this caught up "by Thursday, then I won't have to tell her." So that's one way that you can do this. The other thing, though, is that it could be that people who are falling behind actually have no choice. It's nothing they can do about it. Maybe a person on their team quit, and there's a hiring freeze. They cannot rehire into that position, and so the project's falling behind, because there's no resource. Well, you can go to the executive and explain that in your monthly meeting and get the executive to approve an exception to the hiring freeze. Now when they do that, that's gonna get your project back on schedule. So even though this feels uncomfortable, it'll be a lot more comfortable than if you have to go at the end of the project and explain why it's failed. The other thing you can do is you can use scorecards to motivate teamwork. Now what do we mean by that? Well, if you're trying to get a whole bunch of folks in the organization to do something, not just one group, so for example, suppose your project is about approving search engine optimization, and you need to get all the people who own webpages to put unique titles on their page that have keywords in it. Well maybe one thing you could do is put together a scorecard. And the scorecard can actually pit the business units against each other. So this content area versus that content area versus another one, and you can color code it, red, yellow, and green, so that you're basically embarrassing the leadership every month, because they're red. They may not know what you want, but they're gonna order their team to do whatever you tell them to, so that they're not red in front of the boss the next month. Because if you show this scorecard at your review meeting every month, now you have a way of forcing all these other organizations to do what they promised to do. As you do that, you can slowly change organizational behavior. So, if your improvement was to affect SEO by changing titles, well, once everybody turns green, well now you can change it to something else. Maybe now you want better meta descriptions. And so you can continue to do this. It's kind of lather, rinse, and repeat. You follow the process over and over again and you're consistently getting the groups to do the things they need to do. Again, management by embarrassment. Embarrass them in front of the boss that they're red, suddenly they will find the resources to do the things they need to do. Hey, congratulations, you made it. And in fact, I didn't even see you break a sweat. All right, I know I didn't see you at all, but still, don't undermine my point here. I'm trying to say something nice about you. Good job! I'm glad you got through the whole thing. Here's what I wanna offer you, because guess what, it's a marketing course. So, connect with me, find me on LinkedIn, be part of my network. And you can ask me questions. If you have any questions about this course, you can email me. Look at the email address below. It says [e-mail]. Now if you put that +Pearson in, that will be my attribution method to know that you took this course. And so I will answer your questions for you. Now, you can also show me your plan. If you have specific questions about your plan, show it to me, I'll be happy to give you feedback on it. So, and I'll do that no matter how long it takes for you to complete your plan. I'll answer your questions even if it's years from now. So use that email address, [e-mail], and I will be happy to answer your questions and review your plan. Now, don't just finish your plan, execute it. The only way you get value out of this class is not because you know more, but because you actually are doing things differently. This class can be an inflection point in your marketing career, if you take the next step and actually execute your plan, you actually do things differently in the future, you start using marketing analytics as the competitive weapon that we've shown you to be. Thanks so much for taking the class. Good luck, and I wish you the best of luck in executing your plan. Thanks again.