Data Driven Marketing: You Must Market Your Change … to Change Marketing

Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from Cultivating Your Customers, the M Squared Group blog.
Pride, ownership, past efforts, comfort — there are lots of reasons why employees work so hard to shut down new ideas. But the biggest driver is fear — fear of the unknown, fear of losing their importance, fear of even losing their jobs. Add on top the fear of embarrassment, of being irrelevant, and you can see how deep rooted the barriers to change are.
Changes driven by digital marketing present their own challenges.
We have found four key steps are necessary to avoid being stonewalled. These steps are not optional; we have seen no marketer succeed in changing without them:
Map out your destination and the route on the way: What does data-driven marketing look like in digital marketing? Simply put, the revolution focuses on measurement, fact-based decision-making and continual test and improvement. Take a case — a sample e-mail marketing program — and lay out a test grid to show how tests provide new learnings which equals improved open, click and conversion rates. Repeat the case approach to show how to improve site conversion rates using web path analysis.
Network and evangelize: Who are the stakeholders will be threatened with such an approach? Is it the director of creative who will have a much greater and more complex workload? Is it the CIO who will need to provide performance results faster and also provide business intelligence tools to help analyze results? Make the networking part of your daily tasks. Propose a limited pilot program so that you don’t scare anyone.
Make the case for change: Use benchmarks from other companies in your industry to sketch out how much revenue digital marketing could provide to the company in two to three years. Make the case visually with two to three charts and then begin to "walk the halls." Put the visual change onto a big easel in your office and invite anyone and everyone who comes by to see what you are envisioning.
Create your "internal marketing campaign: As the first pilot results come in, create custom versions of a presentation for each of the stakeholders and spend the time to share the results and discuss learnings and implications. Make sure that the stakeholders include your CFO and CEO, by the way. The more you market your results, the more you build understanding and buy-in.
What steps should be taken to encourage adoption of new ideas around digital marketing? What are the particular hurdles to new digital driven approaches? What would you add to the suggestions offered in the article?
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13 Comments on "Data Driven Marketing: You Must Market Your Change … to Change Marketing"
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Ask employees for input. Frequently they are more up to date on customer technology use, and more technology savvy, than management.
Once a decision has been made, listen to line employee feedback. Make them active participants in implementation.
Share results. Tout when something works and share what didn’t work.
Love the title of the article!
Change does happen over time … but meaningful strategic change must be both managed and cultivated. Mark Price does a great job of laying four critical components of change management.
While all four of Mark’s principles are critical to launch change, I would add a 5th principle that is essential for sustaining change. Ongoing measurement of results is critical for sustaining momentum, support, and resources.
The good news about data-driven marketing- digital in particular – is that the results speak for themselves. But too often, practitioners point to the results and wonder why the rest of the organization fails to “get it.”
The problem lies within the organization itself, a fact identified by the author. This makes point #2, “Network and evangelize,” the most important step.
To be effective, change leaders need to recognize resistance may come from silos like IT, but it almost always comes from middle management. Senior management gravitate to strategic innovation, front line employees are energized by the “new” and lack old habits. But middle managers are most threatened by change and have the most to lose when innovation creates risks to the plan.
The antidote is to (1) evangelize senior leaders on the vision, (2) put middle managers in charge of objectives, (3) tap the passion of the front line to measure and iterate.
Make it clear to every stakeholder how the new “tools” – digital or otherwise – are going to be a valuable addition to THEIR arsenal and not something that is going to replace THEM.
The most rapidly accepted and notable changes of the past few decades have been those that either a) replaced people (think “self-scan,” robotics and automated warehousing) or b) caused new people to come to power, relegating the “current occupant” to irrelevance.
No wonder most people fear change.
I am not sure that the type or number of charts make a difference. Employees do need to know why, how and what. Why is the change being made? How does it impact individuals’ jobs? What is involved? And what is the expected benefit?
The biggest hurdle is that the answers to these questions will be constantly changing as the digital marketplace changes. This change does not involve moving from one stable system to another stable system. It involves moving from a stable system to a constantly changing system. As a result, managing change becomes a permanent activity.
Ben is right. People don’t fear change, they fear becoming obsolete and losing their job. The former is an undifferentiated paranoia. The latter, a reality of life in the 21st Century.
And, the fact is not everyone makes it across the new Digital Divide – a divide this time defined by skills at tool use rather than access.
The real hurdle to data driven marketing is that most companies don’t don it or, if they do, they do it poorly.
Ben Ball has it correct. Before we make it too difficult or complex – answer “WIIFM” for each constituency (and it will NOT be the same for all). Change is NOT feared (we all make changes daily – the difference being that we choose it, not having it foisted upon us) when we feel empowered, in control, and aligned with it. Change raises resistance when people’s involvement in the decision to change is violated.
“Awareness” is one word that can summarize the challenges as well as the approach to this. Creating awareness internally is the first step. As the article states, creating a business case justification and building an internal groundswell of support helps create awareness of the need for change. Citing external successes then build trust in the idea.
Culture though is what drives this evolution on a consistent basis. If there is not an encouraging climate for the constant flow of new ideas, then innovation will struggle to take hold. Fear of failure is definitely one obstacle. However there needs to be a team in the company that drives a continuous pipeline of ideas, some of which will fail and some of which will succeed.
I agree with Ralph of IBM that the right culture is essential for change and innovation. Also, speaking at the PLMA private label trade show in November, the ex-president of Trader Joe’s gave a related piece of advice: “Culture eats strategy.”
Nice article, but everything in it assumes that all customers want to be “champions.” The problem is, not everyone has the personal characteristics to pull this off. It’s a rare person that actually becomes the “champion” who is out there “championing” new ideas and justifying it. These people have to get their regular job done and still make time to “sell” their ideas internally. At any company, there are “Champions,” “Influencers,” “Decision Makers,” and “Gatekeepers.”
As a consultant who preaches the benefits of business intelligence every day, I think it would be great if EVERYONE had the type of personality to follow through with the advice given in this article. Unfortunately, these people are few and far between.