Trying to build or expand your marketing analytics team? Your MVP may end up being someone in your C-suite who doesn’t really work with marketing data at all.
This is someone we call an influencer. They’re a C-suite executive or senior leader who can act as an advocate for marketing analytics and secure the resources necessary to produce insights and reporting. A lot of times, it’s a CMO, but it could also be your CEO, your CTO, even your CFO.
How Can a C-Suite Influencer Help You?
Maybe you need more budget for new technology or hiring. Your influencer can argue on your behalf during budget meetings, or even approve the request on their own.
And it’s not always a matter of money. An influencer can be useful if you need access to data from other departments or third-party vendors, either asking (or requiring) people to assist you. The influencer can help encourage other departments to use your reporting and insights in their work, too, increasing your team’s visibility and importance.
You might be wondering: Where do I find this magical, possibly mythical creature?
The good news is that your influencer already exists. You just have to get them on your side. (Heck, you might be the influencer — with a lot of the agencies we serve, the analytics team exists only because the CEO or another senior leader made it a priority.)
How to Get Your C-Suite Interested in Marketing Analytics
At Alight, we’ve noticed that successful analytics programs tend to have people in six key roles, especially if they’re spending more than $1 million on media per year. The influencer is one of those roles.
All the roles tend to fall into the world of either business or technology, on a spectrum between expertise and strategy. (If you want to learn about the six roles — and you should! — check out this blog post.)
The influencer falls into the upper right quadrant, where business strategy and expertise are a priority. These are people who have a firm grounding in the business, and they understand the organization’s overall strategy.
They probably don’t know how to build a media mix model or understand the intricacies of cross-channel reporting.
But they do care about how those capabilities can impact the business. It’s your job to help them understand what the potential benefits are. Think in terms of efficiency, value and revenue.
Show them how their investment in marketing analytics increases the efficiency and frequency of reporting. Because your team will spend less time building reports, they’ll have more time to analyze results and optimize campaigns.
Explain how analytics helps your team to ask more valuable questions, including how much new business can you expect at your current level of spend and where you should devote resources to generate better marketing ROI.
Demonstrate how analytics gives your team the insights necessary to boost the bottom line by generating more leads, sales or revenue.
Once you can draw that line — between investment and results — you’ll have influenced the influencer and won over a key ally in building a successful marketing analytics program.
Get the Insights You Need to Measure, Analyze and Predict Performance
Alight’s end-to-end solution combines our best-in-class ChannelMix analytics platform with robust services and support, enabling you to generate powerful insights and reporting. Request your demo!