Your leadership expects this year to be a watershed moment for digital marketing. According to a recent Forbes Insight study, 91% of senior executives agreed data-driven marketing is crucial to their company’s success.
And it’s more than just lip service. More than half of the respondents said they plan to invest from $25M to $100M in data analytics over the next two years.
How do these leaders from retail, advertising, media, and more think that money should be spent? 31% of respondents answered “technology.” That’s a broad category that covers state-of-the-art systems and tools to collect, synthesize, and interpret your data.
But executives put an even greater emphasis on people. 69% said their top priority was one of three personnel-related topics:
- Organizational structure (30%)
- Culture (20%)
- Talent (19%)
Credit: Forbes Insight
So now that you have executive expectations and budget. How exactly will you build a best-in-class data-driven digital marketing team?
- Recruit those with top-notch skills. Kellogg’s School of Business offers great tips on how to attract – and then keep – these big data experts.
- Train those you already have. Help your team grow their analytical skills with the following resources:
- Courses – The University of Illinois offers a 6-course digital marketing certification via Coursera. For a reasonable price, your team members can learn the latest digital analytics theory and practices.
- Blogs/newsletters – There are tons of great options, but try Blue Fountain Media’s The 10 Best Digital Marketing Blogs You Should be Reading.
- Books – Need something to read over the holidays (or maybe even gift ideas)? Check out Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics by Thomas H. Davenport and Jinho Kim.
- Conferences – Now’s the time to plan your budget for travel and training. Kristi Hines has compiled a list of more than 250 business and digital marketing conferences. Who knows – maybe our paths will cross at one or more of these.
- Create a Data-Driven Culture. What exactly does that mean? Chief Marketer gives suggestions on how to grow a team environment that embraces business intelligence. (Hint: It’s not about the technology.)
- Give them tools that make it easy to do the work. It’s hard to transform a marketer into a data scientist – and frankly, probably not a great idea. But give your team user-friendly analytics tools, and they can much more quickly optimize your digital marketing spend without having to wait for IT. This should make for a much happier and more profitable year
