In short, providing the key numbers for Marketing contribution to the business is what many business leaders look for. But shedding more light on the work and the people that lead to these numbers is important to building cultures that attract and retain great talent. Documenting monetary values associated with tactics, learnings and actions are essential building blocks to not only telling that deeper story, but also to building that culture.
When a myriad of tasks are being done amidst an ever-evolving backdrop of external factors that can influence minds, traffic volumes and engagement levels, it’s no easy feat to pinpoint what each of your Marketing tactics are yielding in terms of concrete business value. But piecing together data-backed estimates by documenting the values of actions that are being taken on specific learnings is important.
Why? How does taking the time to document actions and associated values help?
1 – More clarity on the best levers to success
Winning data-informed Marketing organizations have more clarity on what activities and tasks to prioritize when the estimated monetary values that are associated with specific quant and qual insights are documented. These insight-driven actions and associated values can be recorded in platforms like Datatinga™ or other general workflow and collaboration platforms. Values can be added when actions are taken and/or when the implementations have been analyzed over time. The more discreet actions that are taken – e.g. when learnings are implemented in different user flows or campaigns – the more value can be added to that particular insight.
2 – Better illustration of Marketing work that contributes to the business
Often times, the C-suite is focused on the big picture and what the numbers look like in terms of contributions to the various milestones in the sales pipeline. Fair enough. But what does peeling off the shiny veneer do in terms of understanding contributions to the business?
Understanding the work that contributes to the numbers not only helps to prioritize what resources focus on in the future, but it reveals a level of detail that can help Marketing leadership reveal more concrete examples of what their team is doing to enable the numbers in the executive dashboards.
3 – Illuminate the people behind the work
Digging behind the executive scoreboard also reveals the rock star people behind the Marketing contribution numbers.
What tactics were really valuable? Who surfaced those ideas? Who created those customer experiences? Who is documenting those tactics and how were those tactics proven to be successful? Who is taking action on the learnings so that more business value can be extracted from them?
When these answers are recorded and – just even more important – revealed across people and teams, this becomes more than a numbers story. It becomes a people story. With people stories, come recognition, celebration – and yes, motivation. Because let’s face it – who does not want to be recognized and celebrated for great work. When we see colleagues praised and celebrated, it normal to rev up our own internal motors.
4 – Build a cultures that everyone wants to be around
The recognition of great work fuels the very behaviors that, in turn, build prevailing mindsets. This is what forms cultures. Adding monetary value to actions that are being taken on data and insights helps to build a culture focused on outcomes. Future ideas and actions can and should more naturally start with the question of how can this idea translate into more sales, leads, subscriptions, engagement? – whatever those key activities are that drive your organization forward.
To take this one step further, people gravitate to positive, winning cultures. Companies that exhibit these cultures retain top talent more easily. As the pandemic has put people in mental spaces that cater to “looking around” more, these “culture” attributes of organizations are becoming more important than ever before.
Conclusion
These simple pauses in day-to-day work execution to record what is being done, what is being proven through hard data – and last but definitely not least, what is being done based on that data – has profound consequences.
The people and culture impact has a stronger chance to take hold, when the values that are expressed from the work are in monetary terms. This is what engages the C-suite, and conversely, the C-suite is central to the development of loyal people and a lasting culture.
When it comes to documenting great tactics, work and the people behind it all, put your money where your mouth is.