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Understanding Marketing Matrix – a conversation with Christina Inge.
28 Plays3 months ago
Christina Inge is a Technologist for Good. Christina is the founder of Thoughtlight a Digital Agency, in Boston Massachusetts; the author of two bestselling books a b and a and an Instructor, in Professional & Executive Development, for Harvard University Division of Continuing Education.
In this interesting episode, of the Independent Minds Christina explains to host Michael Millward why marketers need to listen to the data.
We have never had as much information about how our customers and potential customers interact with us as their suppliers. Christina explains the different types of data that marketers must have access to and how understanding the different types of data helps marketers to map the customer journey with confidence.
The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr.
Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform, on which you can create your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, and Google. It really does make creating content so easy.
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr visit zencastr.com/pricing and use our offer code ABECEDER.
Find out more about both Michael Millward and Christina Inge at Abeceder.co.uk
Travel
Christina Inge is based in Boston Massachusetts, USA.
If you would like to travel the worlds the best place to make your travel arrangements is The Ultimate Travel Club, which is where you can access trade prices for flights, hotels and holidays. Use my offer code ABEC79 to receive a discount on your membership fee.
Matchmaker.fm
Thank you to the team at Matchmaker.fm the introduction to Christina.
If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests or if like John, you have something very interesting to say Matchmaker.fm is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made. Use our offer code MILW10 for a discount on membership.
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Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencaster.
Introduction to 'Independent Minds' Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abbasid and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone. I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abecedah.
About Zencastr Platform
00:00:27
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, the independent minds is made on zencastr Zencaster. Zencaster is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and YouTube Music.
00:00:50
Speaker
It really does make making content so easy.
Zencastr Offer Code
00:00:54
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencaster, visit zencaster dot.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code ABACEDA. All the details are in the description.
Guest Introduction: Christina Inge
00:01:08
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Sankastra is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to. Today, I am joined by Christina Inge, the founder and CEO of Thoughtlight, a digital marketing agency in Boston, Massachusetts.
Christina's Background in Digital Marketing
00:01:34
Speaker
Christina also lectures on business and marketing at Harvard and Northeastern universities, and is the author of two books on marketing analytics. Hello, Christina. Hello, Michael. It's really exciting to be here. I'm excited to have you here. It's like learning more about marketing, I think, is something that everybody can benefit from. But please, could we start by you telling us a bit more about the work that you do, and also these books that you've written as well, please?
Educational Focus in Marketing
00:02:04
Speaker
Yes. so i I believe marketing essentially is a form of education. That's when it works best. so We do digital marketing and we follow what are called inbound principles where we create materials that help companies explain who they are, what they do, and why it matters to their stakeholders. We work mostly with mission-driven organizations, that is companies that want to do well by doing good.
00:02:33
Speaker
and We've been doing that since 2014 when I founded this company.
Marketing Metrics and Analytics
00:02:38
Speaker
Very proud of some of the work we've done. We've worked with everybody from Ernst & Young to small individual startups here in the Boston area. And as you mentioned before, I am the author of two books. One is a textbook, Marketing Analytics, a comprehensive guide from Flat World. And the other book is Marketing Metrics, Leverage Analytics and Data to Optimize Marketing Strategies. from Kogan Page. I'm a really big passionate believer that marketing can and should be measurable and is a a quantifiable and logical, rational discipline, just like anything else in business.
00:03:22
Speaker
Right. I'm a big fan of logic. The name Abbacida means in Latin to put into logical order. So we're on the same him sheet already. A bit of logic into business helps remove a lot of the stresses of business, regardless of which area of business that you're in. But this interest in the analytics, I know from working in lots of different types of organizations with marketing people is like a lot of them, the focus is very much on I'm the creative person, but you believe that Marc Tiers to be successful also needs to be masters of the
Listening in Marketing
00:03:59
Speaker
data.
00:03:59
Speaker
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, otherwise, I wouldn't have written two books on that. I'm a really big believer that marketing is measurable. And not only that, but in order to be educational and useful in it and a force for for good within business and society, it has to be centered on consumers. It has to be centered on the target audience. And when I say consumers, we work with a lot of companies that are nonprofits and universities. So I'd rather say stakeholders. And that could be anybody from ah potential employees you're trying to recruit to donors and supporters of your cause. In order for you to meet the needs of society, you need to listen. And data to me is simply listening. It's it's listening with numbers, but it's listening and looking at the data to understand
00:04:53
Speaker
what conditions are societally and within your industry or your sector that you need to be responsive to. And more importantly, it's about listening to your stakeholders. Yes, this is something that you're obviously very passionate about. You have to be passionate about something to write one book. To write two books, you've got to be extra especially passionate. But your passion takes a very practical approach as well.
Key Marketing Metrics Overview
00:05:17
Speaker
You've ah created eight top metrics that marketeers and business people in general should examine.
00:05:24
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when it comes to their marketing activities. I'd like, if we can, in the time available to explore all eight, but if we're going to do that, I really have to, I should like, let's start. What's the first metrics that people should consider? um Well, I can break it down a little bit more detail because in in my book, Marketing Metrics, I talk about what I call the core four, and those are four big categories of metrics, and I'll break it down into two metrics per category. How about that?
00:05:56
Speaker
Please. Yes. Awesome. All right. Well, um the core four are the four major types of metrics that any organization should be looking at. And these are revenue-based metrics, conversion metrics, communications data, and customer loyalty, value, and retention data. And again, if you are in HR, you might look at these slightly differently. It could be employee loyalty and retention data. It could be, instead of revenue, maybe the volume with which you're able to attract good candidates, but the core four are essentially centered around how productive are you, that's the revenue-based metrics, how effectively are you getting your message out there in a way that gets people to take action, whether that's applying for a job,
00:06:48
Speaker
supporting your cause or making a purchase, that's your conversions, communications data, how broadly is your message getting disseminated out there and how interesting do people find it, and then finally loyalty value and retention data. Once you have engaged your stakeholders, how effective are you at serving them? That's all those really are. They get to the heart of business and so oftentimes people are afraid of analytics because they think that It's not applicable to their work. Their work is, you know, it's about something else. But data is applicable to literally everything. So in terms of revenue-based metrics, one of the top of these eight, you know, looking at the core four, breaking it down into two each is ROAS, or often pronounced ROAS, and that's return on ad spend.
Critical Revenue Metrics
00:07:42
Speaker
And that's simply for every dollar or euro that you invest in advertising, how much of that comes back to you? you know dode Do you just break even? In which case, clearly, you're not doing well. Heaven for Fend if you're losing, um losing any kind of income. But are you making it back double, triple, quadruple, quintuple? Looking at that, that's really important. So that's return on ad spend. And that's something that I recommend that people measure for every advertising campaign. So if you're advertising a job, how many applicants do you get back? You may not be able to put a dollar amount on that or a URL amount on that. But
00:08:21
Speaker
Do you feel like it's yielding a good amount? So that's the first revenue-based metric. The second revenue-based metric, and I'm going to come back to this also as a loyalty value and retention metric, but the second revenue-based metric is customer lifetime value. which is how much do people spend with your organization over the course of the time that they are a customer and how profitable is that spending. A lot of times we measure that just off of revenue versus profit because we simply don't as marketers, you know, running an agency necessarily know the profitability, but when you can get at the profitability of customers, you want to look at that.
00:09:08
Speaker
So those are the two revenue-based metrics I would recommend that you track.
Conversion and Click-Through Rates
00:09:12
Speaker
Then there's conversion metrics. and And that's honestly, literally, the number one thing there is your conversion rate. So if you put social media promotions out there for and a job that you're recruiting for, what percentage of people who see that end up applying for the job? That's one of the number one conversion rates. Yes, speaking of my HR hat on the conversion rate, I want good candidates to apply for the job. I want quality applicants, not just a quantity of applicants. So there has to be something in that that is also quality related as well. I suppose that if you are selling something to an organization or selling something that is a product or a service,
00:09:58
Speaker
to the general public, to a consumer or a stakeholder, then you're also looking for that high value consumer, the person who's going to buy big or buy regularly and frequently rather than just the one-off purchase. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that that that type of conversion metric, that's something you really, really want to look at. um Well, that actually that being more of a of a revenue metric. So conversion metric number one is literally the conversion rate. People should also, however, be looking at the click-through rate of anything they put
00:10:34
Speaker
out there. And that's simply maybe not necessarily conversion, but just people's response, how many people click through on an ad or a social media post. And so that is also incredibly important. Yes, for communications data.
Understanding Audience Interests
00:10:54
Speaker
One of the things I like to look at is just on your website, what articles are people looking at? Which what are your most popular topics? And that can tell you some things about what people find most appealing of those who are coming to your website. So for instance, if you're recruiting for a job and you see that candidates are more likely to read articles about your mission on your blog before applying than your vacation policy, that's a good sign. That tells you that of the communications you're putting out there, it's your mission that's resonating with applicants and people are applying
00:11:30
Speaker
who believe in your mission. Going a step above that, so looking at top content, one of my top communications metrics, the other would be the keywords that people are searching on that are bringing you to bringing them to your website, because that tells you what they're interested in, what they go out seeking when they engage with your brand. and give you an example ah within HR, if somebody is looking for product management jobs, and that's what brings them to there your website, but most of your jobs in product management have some other job title,
00:12:09
Speaker
There's a misalignment there between job titles and what job seekers are looking for. You might need to reconsider your job titles if that keyword product manager job is how your potential candidates are defining the roles that they consider to be ideal. And so that's your communications data, understanding the language that your customers or applicants are using and the parts of your message that resonate with them. I suppose the language that you have inside the organization can be different to the language that you use when you communicate outside the organization so that you are tapping into or aligning yourself with the way in which people who aren't part of your internal community actually speak. Absolutely. And there's that's an area where I think HR, marketing, product, every function within an organization that has
00:13:00
Speaker
any interactions with the outside world with stakeholders often struggles. And so looking at your communications data, looking at most of your data is a wonderful way to understand the language that your customers use versus the language that you use and how you can bridge that gap to better connect with them. Thank you. And the loyalty.
Loyalty Indicators
00:13:22
Speaker
Loyalty. Well, that goes back again to customer lifetime value because it's not just an indicator on your side of how much money you're making from a customer, but also how much they care about your brand, how much they like what you're doing. The more money people spend with you, unless you have a monopoly, the more likely it is that they they like what you're doing. So a lot of times metrics actually, it's the same metric, but people are
00:13:49
Speaker
looking at it just from the company standpoint versus from the customer standpoint. So you want to look at these metrics from both standpoints and that's customer lifetime value as well. And then you can simply break that down further into things and I'll give you just one more and then we have done our eight is retention rate. At the beginning of the year versus the end of the the year, how many of your customers have stayed loyal? How many of the customers you have at the end of the year are the same customers you have at the beginning of the year? And that very much does apply to employees. How long are you retaining employees? And where are your best employees coming from? Is it referrals? Is it
00:14:30
Speaker
recruitment ads, how are you finding those best customers? So you want to trace it back to the source as well and that's when you get to see the true value of your recruitment efforts. Yes, I'm thinking it's very interesting but also very straightforward. It's like you say there is logic to all of these various different metrics. They fit together and follow a life, a lifespan of a relationship that you have with your customer regardless of what what it is that you're selling from the point at which you you first make contact with them or they first hear about you how much did it cost for you to actually raise your profile with them so then through each action that they take you are identifying as best you can what people are doing and then having some sort of measure against that which doesn't always need to be a financial one
00:15:28
Speaker
Does it? No, no, not at all.
Metrics for Non-Profits and Universities
00:15:30
Speaker
um We work with so many nonprofits and universities where the measure is not financial. I'll give you an example. We work with Brandeis University's Office of Technology Licensing and its Innovation Center. And its mission is to help students, faculty and staff who have invented a great technology or want to start a social mission driven organization get that off the ground. get the support that they need to make that a viable concern. Our measure of success is how many people are attracted into the program and what satisfaction they get out of being the program. you know Do they find that that that they're able to get their startup off the ground or they simply feel that they've learned more about innovation? Are they satisfied with the level of training or education or support they've gotten? And so there's so many measures of success. A nonprofit may simply need people to vote
00:16:23
Speaker
for a particular cause or support a particular need within the community. All of those are measures of success. Because and what you're talking about there, I suppose, is actions. yeah When you market something to a person, ah you have to almost identify who it is that you're going who it is that will be the most advantageous for you to market to, and then target your marketing activities.
00:16:57
Speaker
but and the locations at the times when your ideal customer is most likely to become aware of your marketing activities.
Tools for Effective Metrics
00:17:06
Speaker
Absolutely, absolutely. Once you do that then it becomes your metrics are measures of activity of those people towards getting to the point where those people stop being someone who is finding out more about you, finding out more about what other people say about you. They're getting to the point, there is there must be a a path that people go on to to the point where they become a customer and actually hand over cash by purchasing something or hand over cash by way of a donation or an action.
00:17:42
Speaker
How easy is it to devise the metrics that you will use to track the success of your marketing activities? It's easier than it ever has been. so by Like somebody who does it all the time, it's easier than it ever has been. you because You're the person who's written two books about it, Christina.
00:18:04
Speaker
I guess we should qualify that. So it's easier than it ever has been in the sense that we now have the tools necessary in order to gather this data with a greater degree of accuracy and with a greater degree of efficiency than ever before. So there were times when, for instance, some of these tools that we can now get for free or cheap were tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars and only available to enterprise companies. So in that sense, the toolset is there now for all of us.
00:18:46
Speaker
What the actual challenge now is that because we now have access to all of this data, people are overwhelmed by it and they have so much data that they need, um but they have even more data that they're collecting that they don't actually need or don't
Core Four Approach to Analytics
00:19:03
Speaker
even understand. So the challenge now is figuring out A, how to use all of these tools that are newly accessible. And I'm i'm not going to minimize that for most organizations, they just don't have the staffing because it's very hard to hire talent in these areas. There's a real shortage of it.
00:19:22
Speaker
But also, on an organizational level, it's about being able to figure out what your priorities are. And that's part of the reason why I came up with the core four, because it allows people to think, OK, what is the most important thing for us? Are we struggling to attract customers, in which case we need to look at our conversion metrics? Or do we have enough customers, but they're just not sticking around, in which case we need to look at our loyalty retention metrics, et cetera. and so Wrapping your head around, well, what direction do we start our analytics in and setting those effective priorities? That's where the challenge
Data Overload Challenges
00:20:00
Speaker
now is. So it's no longer around the data collection, which is, I think, where we are blessed and it is a little easier. Now we just need to have enough people trained so that every company can hire the talent that they need. On the other hand, for those of us who are the talent, it's a good time to be in this space because we are in a great deal of demand.
00:20:22
Speaker
I can see it, yes. And the more that you talk about it, the more I'm starting to understand just how complex an issue it is. But also, one of the things that you're saying there also makes me think that the information, the data that is collected as part of this process, as part of these core four metrics, It's not necessarily information that is purely for the benefit of marketing. it your If you're not retaining your customers, then you have to look at your customer care. If you're losing people part of the way through your marketing education
00:21:02
Speaker
process to the point where they become customers. You've got to look at the individual stages of the processing in more detail. And I'm i'm thinking that an awful, you started this by saying it's about listening and listening to the data. But the data is about behaviors and you've got to, you've got to think like your
Mapping Customer Journeys
00:21:23
Speaker
customer, haven't you? You've got to think like your potential customer. You've really got to walk in their shoes to understand how they're going to interact with you as an organization and all your marketing activities? You absolutely do. And in the book and in our practice as well, as well as in my classes that I, in my lectures, we focus consistently on one thing in its customer journey mapping.
00:21:52
Speaker
Customer journey mapping is simply taking the data and organizing it in your best guess of what is the sequence and nature of the touch points a customer. And you can do this with applicants as well. It's called applicant journey mapping. What is the sequence of interactions they have with you? And I'll give you an example. For instance, let's say an applicant hears about you through word of mouth. Maybe not from an existing employee, so you can't really trace it back to a referral, but they hear about you as a wonderful employer, maybe at an event. That's touch point number one. They then maybe see that you're hiring on LinkedIn.
00:22:30
Speaker
And they take a look, but they're not ready to apply. That might be touch point number two. And you can map the second of these very readily because that engagement happens on LinkedIn. It's in your LinkedIn analytics going back to the point that we have access to more data and more precise data than ever before. You know, there was a time when this was harder to measure. But then let's say they meet you at a career fair and then they apply. That's touch point number three. But if you're only looking at when they apply, you would think the career fair had done all of the heavy lifting. When the reality is
00:23:08
Speaker
the industry buzz about you as a good employer and your social media efforts played an equal role in getting that applicant interested. You would miss that if you were not doing applicant journey mapping. Similarly, if you are selling a product and people need to hear about it three or four times, maybe they see an ad and then they hear about it from their friend and then they buy, you need to be able to understand all of that. or else you're not getting the full picture of what you need to be doing in order to attract people into your pipeline. I think that's a big mistake people make and it's the journey mapping that helps people get that full picture. Yes, I'm getting the feeling that it is a very complex picture and it is worth investing the time and energy in learning more about it regardless of whether
00:23:58
Speaker
You are a marketing person or a business owner ah or a manager inside an organization.
Importance of Digital Data Understanding
00:24:03
Speaker
It is worth investing the time in finding out more about digital data and how that data can be used in marketing and in other activities as well. But we've only really scratched the surface in in our time together today, Christina. But thank you very much. I've really enjoyed it and I've learnt an awful lot from our conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. It's been wonderful talking to you. Thank you. And thank you to you for listening to the Independent Minds.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:24:33
Speaker
I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abecedah, and I have been having a conversation with the Independent Mind, Christina Inge. Thought right.
00:24:45
Speaker
Right. The CEO of Thoughtlight dot.net, a marketing agency in Boston, Massachusetts. You can find out more about both of us at abocida.co.uk. If you have liked this edition of The Independent Minds, please give it a like. And to make sure you don't miss out on future editions, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abisida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. Thank you.