Consumer data has exploded but while the amount of data may have grown, in many ways our understanding hasn’t. With multiple touchpoints and a fragmented landscape, it’s difficult to get a single version of the truth. Attribution and tracking have given us a solid understanding on how customers are interacting with our own brands, but not how they interact with our competitors or in the category itself. This leaves the full customer journey fuzzy and indistinct.
If you are worried that the gaps in your data are leading to a lack of strategic action, then what can you do?
It’s amazing how many brands actually have the answers they need in front of them but don’t know it! That crucial nugget of information might be sitting on another system or with another team and be hidden away. In order to fill in the gaps in your knowledge, you first need to map out where it all is. Think about the different channels and systems in play and where all the information is stored. As an example if you run an event then you might have attendees come through on email, on a linkedin event page, through a form on your website and then these would need to be collated into a CRM. If you had thousands of sign ups its not unreasonable to think some of the people may slip between the cracks or their records may fall foul of human error. Create a document of all the places and people who touch your customer journey, how and where is it being stored and be sure to look out for spreadsheets and personal folders where customer interactions may be recorded but not put into a central system.
Once you’ve mapped out where all your data sits, you have to think about what you’re going to do with it. Sometimes we can be blinded by the sheer amount of data we might have. Think about the practical ways in which your teams will use customer data and if you really need it all. Ideally you would serve up relevant data to relevant people. As an example if you knew that Jacob was a Guardian reader, this info might be useless to 99% of your organisation or operation BUT it would be very useful to your advertising department. You can always store additional data on a repository or data lake.
"Matching your data to different departments is a great way to get them interested and excited about the role that Insight can play." Kirk Stevens, Agile Delivery Lead
If you want your data to become insight and that insight to lead to game-changing strategy…you’ll need to consolidate, store, and share that insight from one central place. You need one platform in which to understand your consumer behaviour from your CRM, ERP, social media, website, loyalty cards and market research. Set user permissions as to who can access that data and be sure to use dashboards to serve up the right information to the right people. We always encourage our clients to integrate their existing data with our ex-plor platform for maximum effect.
With your data mapped out and consolidated, it should be a lot easier to understand where you have gaps. It’s no good just writing up a big shopping lists of areas you’d like to understand. There needs to be a goal and plan. What decisions will the insight influence? What decisions do you need some reassurance on? What do you expect to discover? Without this you can spend a lot of time collecting more insight for the sake of it.
With your plan in place, its time to go and get that missing data. Use trusted sources. Use established providers. Don’t muddy your waters to save a few quid! Make sure that data collected can fit easily into your platform and that all of your terminology/profile points are carried over.
