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You can upgrade to TMAI Premium here - it comes with a money-back guarantee. All Premium revenue is donated to charity. | | TMAI #242: 2021 To-Do List: Kick it up a notch!
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| | If you are anything like me, you are making a list of things to obsess about in 2021. Usually these are comprised of things that we never got around to doing in 2020 and a handful of new things.
Since you reach the destinations you plan to get to, :), let me attempt to give you a head start.
Below are an exciting set of recommendations that’ll add immense value to your work today, the day after tomorrow, and the very near-future - if you execute with discipline.
These items are so important, we'll certainly devote premium editions to them over the course of this year.
[Note: An exciting data viz challenge for you to participate in at the end of the newsletter.]
| | 1. Shorten your surveys.
You probably have surveys in-market right now as a part of your ongoing research studies (consumer behavior, brand tracking etc.), or surveys that measure the brand lift delivered by your campaigns.
There is at least 30% unnecessary fat in those surveys.
Cut the fat.
Less (useless) data for you to analyze results. Less (useless) data for your respondents to provide. Increased response rates. Faster time to insights that matter.
What are you waiting for? | 2. Cut the long tail.
Reality: Of all your marketing strategies, campaigns, and promotions, a very few have an outsized impact on your business.
Also (heartbreaking) Reality: An unreasonably large number of marketing tactics, campaigns, promotions are still being executed by your company. :(Why? 1. you have too many employees and they need to do something, 2. there is little accountability in your organization, 3. there is a belief that tiny marginal returns are somehow worth it.
Marketers should work with the Analysts to plot profit by size of campaign. I say profit because long-tail efforts are usually unjustified when looking through the success lens, and their killer feature is extraordinary cost that is rarely accounted for.
Look at the distributions. Draw out the key points. Create a persuasive short story that will embarrass your senior leadership into cutting the long tail of marketing tactics, campaigns and promotions whose primary justification is employment for people and not business value.
Now, more soup for the few campaigns that bring the fat profits. Do them smarter. Do them bigger. Do them with intelligent algorithms. Do them with better creative. Do them with smart targeting. Do them infused with even better consumer insights. Do them with more competitive intelligence. Do them with... So. Much. More.Why don't you do this do more today? All those long-tail campaigns are sucking oxygen from the room. They need to go.
[Exception: If you can automate almost entirely long-tail execution - ex. as some can do with some digital strategies - it is ok to keep them if you notice profit by campaign size is material.] | 3. Obsess on behavior segmentation.
Of all channels in the world, digital was perhaps almost perfectly created to make this tradeoff: Exchange delightful user experience for money.
Make people happy as they shop, search for support, compare shoes, learn about your B2B competitive differentiation, etc., and they will do business with you. This is so easy to understand. Yet. So few do it well.
Don’t believe me? Checkout www.macys.com or www.schlumberger.com and let your heart break as you realize neither business seems to have invested in behavior segmentation.TMAI Premium #238 gives you ten ideas to start your quest to for smart behavior segmentation. Before Valentine’s day, execute all of my ideas and start the process of transforming your digital experience.As you get better at it, you'll find your own segments and pathways to glory.
[Bonus Recommendation: Buy from your company. Whatever you sell. Force your senior most executives to do the same. Digital. Retail store. Call center. If you do this, you’ll make your existence better. I recently had a horrendously bad experience at Best Buy. It was such an obvious fail, for an $800 order. I say with some confidence that no Best Buy employee has ever purchased from them or they would see obvious broken things.] | 4. Reject three shiny objects in H1 '21.Shiny objects are a giant waste of resources, budgets, and, in a not-unique double-whammy, they rarely result in revenue (now or in the future). Let’s use famous actor x in our ads. We need to use machine learning for our customer service. TikTok is where it is at for B2B marketing. The only marketing moment that matters each year is the Super Bowl. We need a unified global single source of the truth dashboard. Chat bots are the answer to future-proofing our business.
One big reason shiny objects exist, despite an almost lack of business value, is that in your company culture they help people get promoted to the next job level (and higher salary).Since your goal is have a big impact on your business this year, in the first half of 2021 I recommend using these strategies to get three shiny objects rejected:Use existing big revenue opportunities Use external benchmarks Use simple predictive models to forecast shiny object business impact Use estimates of customer happiness Use past failures Use… you catch my drift.
This will help your senior most executives see the light. As a result, your company's bottom line will thank you.
So will your customers who now will suffer less because a material number of people/money is focused on shiny objects that will never matter. | 5. Leap into the future with automation.
Real-time data is really useless, when humans are involved.
Giving the human real-time data means waiting for the human to understand, then clear it with three of their peers, then send it up to five boss-layers, finally make the decision, then spend another xy amount of painful time trying to get the combination of process and platforms to take action.
Not even close to real-time.
There are some metrics that do become useful in real time. Viewability. AVOC. Clicks. Conversions. Coupon Fails. Average Hold Time. Etc.
For these metrics use historical data analysis (or targets you’ve set for that metric) to identify the optimal range for these metrics.
Now, figure out with the platforms you have at your disposal how to take action if the real-time performance of the metric falls below the range or above. The action might be to pull the campaign, to send someone a small electric shock to take action, to shift more money into the advertising strategy, to eliminate a publisher, etc.
When you can react automatically to real-time data - sans human involvement -, real-time data is magnificently useful. Even a competitive advantage. 2021 is the year to figure this out. This is going to remain important for the next decade. | 6. Unlock the magic of Machine Learning.
Yes. I did make fun of people trying to apply machine learning to everything (AI fruit juicers anyone?).
Yet. Machine learning, for Analysts, holds such immense potential.
The days of you being able to construct a regression equation or even identify all relevant variables at play are so far behind us. We have massive sets of data, they have complex relationships and dependencies, and it is almost impossible for a human to begin to understand how to answer even seemingly simple questions.
Our team has had a lot of success using large datasets of algorithms that learn what’s important and what’s not from the underlying data structures, infer conditional dependencies, and help us identify performance in a way that was impossible even a couple years ago.
Invest in the right people in your team to unlock this potential in your company (across departments, not just Marketing or Analytics).
To get some beginner ideas, see how Google Analytics 4 is using ML for smarter insights. | | 7. In 2021, hire someone who challenges you.
(I was originally going to say: Hire someone smarter than you. Do this also. :)
I’ve written in the past about the value of “troublemakers” in the team. The square pegs in round holes. The people who are perpetually unhappy about the current marketing strategies. The ones that point out things the team is not doing that it should be doing. The people who tell you to your face things you do poorly as a manager. The people who are smart enough to see through your (rare) B.S.
These people are responsible for the destruction of group think. They ensure that you, and the team, never rest on your laurels. They will tell the Emperor he is not wearing any clothes.
If you don’t already have someone (or three) like this in your team, then make it a priority to hire this person into your team this year. You won’t regret it (just bring an open heart and an open mind).
In two years time, almost everything you’ll be intensely proud of will be sourced back to this new person you hired. | 8. Create an inspiring projects list.
In November when we started to think of our 2021 “projects” list, I wanted to challenge the team to do something new and different and bring divergent thinking.
I was guilty in the past of having a couple of new things, but also for having a lot of stuff on our plate. A bunch of it was just a new dimension of what we’d done already.
I gave the team three categories into which we’ll pour our ideas:
Scale. Which projects will cause us to have an impact outside our team on a whole lot of new people/teams we otherwise might not engage?
Crazy Sh1t. What projects can we undertake to fundamentally change the game? The really hard stuff we are likely to fail at?
It is such a small thing. It changed how we thought about what we should work on. It unlocked new ideas. It pushed us to think harder about stuff we do today, the problems our business faces, and even the lame stuff we do today that needs to die.
So. Does your team’s 2021 project list have items that would be worthy of fitting in each of the above categories? Why not?
If you are a team of under 25, here are your goals for 2021:* Two things for Scale
* Three for Incremental Innovation
* One or two for Crazy Sh1t.
Guess what? You are ready to rock 2021 bigly! Pandemic or no pandemic. :)
[To make it palatable to senior executives, we renamed Crazy Sh1t to Transformational Innovation. So much less sexy, but this will sound better in my McKinsey interview!] | 9. 2021: The 7th “Year of Incrementality.”
Seven times before you’ve declared the coming year to be the year to finally nail incrementality, let 2021 be the year you finally solve Marketing’s holy grail.
It is the answer to this question:
What would we lose if we released all Marketing employees and stopped all Marketing?
It is not an easy question to answer, but it is an absolutely critical question to answer (if not for your CMO, than your CFO).
It can seem to be a scary question to answer as Marketers worry the answer will be zero impact from Marketing. Let me assure that zero is rare. (Sadly, your Marketing's incrementality is also not 100%. The usual range is between 6 - 22%.)
In TMAI Premium #233,
I’d shared a bunch of strategies you can use to identify Channel Silo Incrementality (start here), xStack Incrementality (do this next, as you build robust people skills and methodologies), and Portfolio Incrementality (the hardest, leave for last).
In H1 2021, aim to have a robust functioning program to measure Channel Silo Incrementality for every single major channel you spend money on.
The results will surprise you. The results will cause you to rethink your investments. The results will deliver higher Marketing ROI in H2 2021 - and move on to xStack incrementality. | | 10. Pick a big problem unique to your company.
As an outsider, I probably don’t understand the unique nuances of your business reality. Hence, I leave the choice of item #10 to you.
Pick something big. Something important. Something that has been a wound in the psyche of your marketing team. Something that will rejuvenate the souls of your Analysts.
Pick a problem only you are facing.
Add it to your list to resolve by Aug 15th 2021.
[Do write back and let me know what you choose. Thank you.] | | Bottom line.
2020 has been such a difficult year. Things will take a bit longer to get back to normal as we have a road ahead of us to get humanity vaccinated. In a difficult business environment, I hope you, your team, your senior leadership, chooses to rise to that challenge with a set of solutions that ensure your company not just survives what’s ahead of us, it thrives.
If you choose, and deliver, just five of the ten recommendations above, you’ll have a fabulous 2021. I promise.
Much love and luck to you and yours.
-Avinash.
PS: A challenge for you, grab a Post-It or Excel.
I'd bumped into below graphic on NFL.com. I was surprised. In next week's TMAI Premium I'll share the infographic's flaws, and three versions I made in my journey to make it simpler and more effective.
Since we learn by doing, I encourage you to create a version you think is better. Next week we'll compare and learn from each other. #smartertogether
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