Numbers in Action

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye from our community, our podcast and our street knowledge blog.

Hello there!

If you are playing along at marketing buzzword bingo, “data-driven” seems to be the ball being pulled out by almost anyone describing anything in marketing. So, on this week’s podcast, Jeff and I discussed what it really means to be a data-driven marketing organization.

As a proper former analyst, he called them “5 characteristics of a data-driven organization.” But as data-driven is being consigned to the bin of meaningless corporate language bullshit, I think of this more like; data-driven or BS? 5 ways to tell the difference.

And it boils down to seeing “numbers in action,” which fortunately is a tune by Wiley (video below) that enables me to be on point with the subject line for a change. As you know, the subject line for this newsletter is always a song title.

I’d love for you to listen to the full discussion, but I’ll summarize the characteristics we identified:

1. Defined, Measurable Targets

A data-driven approach (like many of my discussions with Jeff) starts with clear, measurable goals—your KPIs, OKRs, or whatever technique you use to measure success.

If you follow me, you know I bang on about the goal of marketing is to create ART (Awareness, Revenue, and Trust), but whatever goal structure you have, everyone needs to be on the same page to build a performance culture.

2. Curated Data for the Right Questions

Today, marketers have access to data everywhere, little bits of it across all our tools and shiny reports we can share (just because we can). A true data-driven approach curates data around real business questions.

Not everything needs to be reported just because it can be, and we should resist the urge to drown our teams in dashboards. Ask, “What will this data actually help us do?” what action or activity would it drive?

3. The Right Tools for the Right Data

Next, we need tools that make the relevant data easy to access. From CRMs to data lakes, the tech landscape is full of options, but we need to surface what’s relevant and ignore what’s not. I recommend deciding on what you want to report on and working backward.

Maybe it’ll be a bit kludgey with spreadsheets and duct tape, but it's better to start with the right metrics, what’s valuable to your organization, and build the solution, not just expose what you have systemized just because you can.

4. Skilled Data Managers

If we decide to be data-driven and depend on it, then the data needs someone (or a team) with expertise to manage it. Skilled data managers ensure the information is accurate, up-to-date, and meaningful that everyone can use, creating insights instead of a data dump.

5. Empowerment Across the Team

Finally, it’s probably bloody obvious, but the last characteristic we identified of a data-driven organization is the “organization” bit.

You can’t be a bit data-driven to claim to be a data-driven organization, or if “the data” is just the opinion of the highest-paid person or their son-in-law. You need to enable every team member to work with data to build a culture where numbers drive decisions, not guesses.

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So, those are our 5 characteristics of a data-driven organization. I’d love to hear from you if you agree or disagree, and if you listen to the song this week, I reckon it’s a bit of an earworm, and you’ll definitely “wanna see numbers in action”.

Thanks for reading this far :-)

Have a great week.

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

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This Monday, I wanna see numbers in action…. numbers in action….