A lot of people won’t admit that they’re swayed by savvy marketing and creative placement, but they are. Simply put: Personalized information that you receive via your digital platform of choice is usually convincing. And because consumers themselves are doing more than ever to help businesses sell more (or, in some cases, fewer) products, smart business leaders know that they need to understand consumer interests and preferences if they’re going to survive—and thrive.
A new free resource, Be a Big Data Marketing Hero, can help you get up to speed on the benefits of internal collaboration and the basics of big data analytics so you can forge alliances and get the right consumer data to improve your most profitable relationships. Here are three first steps to accessing information and resources from other teams within your company.
Getting back to basics
Collaboration requires focused effort, yet you may be wondering, who has time to deal with other people’s needs when you (and everyone else in your company) is covering what used to be multiple positions? If you relate, stop and imagine what work would be like if your team’s needs actually were in lock-step with the needs of other groups in your organization?
If you’re rolling your eyes because just getting ahold of basic information from other teams is a Herculean task, then it may be well past time for you to start talking about the potential competitive advantages of making friends and sharing toys at work—or, in grown-up language, aligning resources and developing unified business strategies.
Start by familiarizing yourself with the possible gains you can make with an integrated strategy. Here are three examples:
- Accurate budget analysis for integrated programs companywide
- Cohesive self-service marketing at geographically dispersed locations
- Contact optimization that reaches customers appropriately
C-ing other points of view
Working with other teams can be especially difficult if you’re approaching your work in vastly different ways. You need to make sure that collaboration follows a logical process, particularly when it comes to data collection, analysis and applications.
Here are three C’s for collaborating with other groups:
- Consider: Carefully assess the performance metrics of your messaging and outreach.
- Communicate: Meet with a few members of other teams to identify what data is being gathered and why.
- Change: Make adjustments as needed to ensure that performance data provides actionable information that gets you closer to customers and improves profitability.
Speaking the same language
One of the first steps to bridging the knowledge divide in your company is to start speaking the same language. Here are five common terms related to big data:
- Volume: The 24/7 real-time digital marketplace generates a potentially crippling amount of consumer information. Filtering vital insights from the pool of available data requires well-defined goals, meaningful metrics and action items.
- Velocity: Consumer data is now available almost instantaneously, and the expectation for immediate responses and transactions—around the clock—is standard. Delivering on this expectation is a matter of survival for many businesses.
- Variety: Data from different sources comes in many different formats, making it necessary for companies to store and synthesize various types of data in order to leverage the information in hand.
- Veracity: Trusting the accuracy of information typically centers on knowing where data is coming from and how and why it was collected.
- Value: To ensure that your data helps you get closer to customers and boosts profitability, be sure to stay focused on what you really need to know.
