I asked a few trusted colleagues to share their perspective on the value of harnessing insights, and the cost to our ecosystems when we neglect this important work.
Insights are one of the most powerful things in marketing and yet very few of us really have access to them. Or when we do it can be so overwhelming that we don't know how to actually action something productive from them.We need the right insights at the right time and the ability to translate, understand and action them.
As a product leader I’m naturally hungry for data to ensure our teams (and offerings) are on the right path. But that hunger often feels closer to starvation. My teams have solid plans in place based on insights that are readily available, but there are unknowns that we have to explore through strategic, collaborative data-gathering projects, which are often time-consuming and feel like reinventing the wheel each time. Harnessing cross-functional insights that are operationalized would eliminate so much product legwork. Product teams would have the freedom to spend more time on strategic innovation, less on table stakes information gathering and managing collaboration with stakeholders.
Chief Product Officer, PatientNow
I have been working in global enterprise organizations for over twenty years in a discipline that is sometimes found within the engineering or product or even marketing teams. The issues are all the same. Hard working individuals that want to make great products for their user, but are siloed from the bigger picture and are making decisions without a single source of data to help them, their organization or the customer.
Companies and their employees would save so much time if these insights and data were shared in one consistent place.Many man hours are spent on trying to pull all this data into one place, but the biggest pain is felt by the customer.
Global Technology Leader
I can never get enough insights into almost real-time customer behaviours, especially the ones I didn’t know I needed. Solving for this would mean I can adapt to customer needs really quickly without having to ask them what they want.
Global Leader, Transforming Customer Service
“It takes a village to create great B2B messaging and content. As a writer I don’t just need the brief from the marketer; I need to know what the customer cares about, how they talk about work, and what makes the product or service different. I need to understand why people buy really… and why they don’t. So any insights I can get from sales, service, product development are incredibly valuable—and it’s scary how rarely they’re part of the process.”
Trainer, Advisor, Coach: Windhover B2B
One of the things that sets account-based marketing (ABM) apart is that it's based on client insight. ABM-ers play a key role in bringing together people from across the company to share what they know about an account, facilitating the development of new insights that can deliver mutual, sustainable value.
Author of 'A Practitioner's Guide to ABM' (Kogan Page, 2017) and 'Executive Engagement Strategies' (Kogan Page 2020)
More than 50 years ago, Eric Hoffer wrote that "In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." Now, in this time of accelerating volatility, uncertainty, and change - every drop of operationalized organizational mindfulness offers an opportunity for ongoing learning, compounding into meaningful competitive advantage for a business, and a sense of meaning for team members who help build it.
Editor aiTTENTION, news aggregation project tracking the field of AI.
One of the most frustrating things for me as a marketer is knowing that your business actually has the data - whether it be in someone's head, on paper, on old systems, on new systems, wherever - but not being able to access it. Or pull the insights from it. Trying to collate disparate data systems often comes at the expense of efficiency but rarely effectiveness because true insights into customer behaviour and business performance can make the difference between missing, hitting and exceeding targets.
Technology Leader, CMO at PPRO
“In a recent 2020 ITSMA survey, marketing leaders identified leveraging data and insight to optimize impact as the area in marketing that needed the greatest attention and improvement toward strengthening marketing’s role as a strategic growth driver for the next normal. More so than collaborating with sales, becoming more agile, upgrading Martech and delivering compelling thought leadership and content.”
Advisory Board, Momentum/ITSMA
"What I wouldn't give to be able to get our hands on the insights all around us that we can't action today because we often can't see them. Think about the competitive advantage we'd gain if we could capture and structure what could appear to be merely ad hoc insights and compare views with our colleagues in other functional areas. One person's junk could be another person's treasure."
Director of Marketing, EMEA, Udemy
We’re equipped with more data than ever before, but far too often we’re stifled by the need to update a PowerPoint or answer a question. Every time I’ve been able to find a data point that resonates across our organization, the initial query was fueled by curiosity. Every time I’ve been tasked with wrangling data, the outcome is restricted to just an answer. To find insights that will fuel change we must first have leaders willing to explore the unknowns.
Global Customer Marketing at Zimperium
The cost is ultimately losing your competitive edge because you can’t solve problems that the data surfaces. For leaders, it means creating unnecessary roadblocks and for teams, it can be demoralizing. You are essentially becoming your own worst enemy.
Slayer of Mediocrity, Head of Brand and Content at Tyk
“It’s said that 90% of human communication is non-verbal. This implies that we’re only able to see a tiny fragment of the whole picture through online interactions. But that’s not exactly true. There are ways to measure digital body language. Every click, share, and minute spent reading content is another clue. Instead of working in silos, every team needs to collect and share these digital footprints to build a more complete image of who they’re selling to as these insights impact every corner of the business.”
CEO and Founder of Turtl
Biased or incomplete output will eventually lead to wrongful decision-making. To achieve optimal analysis outcomes it's important to augment humans with the proper and trusted technology but it's even more important for those humans to confer with each other every step of the way.
Founder, Code4Thought
