How to Get From Analytics to Insight - Tom Cunniff

I met recently with the global director of digital for a big wellknown brand He wanted to talk about analytics and insightsOr to be more accurate the abundance of analytics and the paucity of insightsquotI39m out of ideas for what to addquot he said with a frown quotI have a feeling we39re eternally this close to the answerquot he said holding his fingers a whisker apart quotbut I just can39t imagine what we are missingquotquotCan you show me what your analytics look likequot I asked He nodded and led me into a conference room It instantly looked familiarA Beautiful Mind quotA perfection of means and confusion of aims seems to be our main problem amp8230 I fear the day technology will surpass our human interaction The world will have a generation of idiotsquot amp8213 Albert Einstein The walls of the war room were a crazy quilt of Excel reports tacked up to the wall in rows one after another after another after another I couldn39t make heads or tails of the colorcoding system but one thing was instantly clear that analytics team was working their tails offThere were reports on paid search and organic search There were reports for content marketing for email campaigns for video for banner ads There were separate reports for social amp8211 lots of Facebook ads amp8211 and another for social Data was broken out by day part by site engagement by daybyday site traffic benchmarked against yearago traffic by source traffic by content top viewed pages site performance by channel online video direct search etc top 5 exited pages monthly display overview monthly search overview social overview and conversions by channel There were white boards everywhere with lots of flow chart arrowsThe Data Crack DenI had a feeling that if I kept looking I39d eventually find 27 8amp21510 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us maybe over there by the Group W bench amp8211 not to be confused with the Group M bench but I had to stop I was literally getting dizzyLuckily it was right at the moment that I saw the first thing on that wall that was truly revealing a threepage list of objectives and subobjectives segments and subsegmentsamp8230 and extensive notes about potential new data sourcesI realized I had stumbled into a data crack den This wasn39t about information any more The team had rounded the corner into addictionAs gently as I could I asked quotwould you be willing to look at this another wayquotHe said quotof course everything39s on the tablequotI explained that in my experience we almost never get to insight by starting with data It39s like looking through the wrong end of the telescope Data often has intriguing pieces of the answer but at the outset we don39t need answersThe first and most important step of any analytics process is figuring out what the right questions areThat39s why when I think about analytics I always start with questions firstCunniff39s quotThree Thingsquot MethodologyI have a simple 5step methodology for wringing insights out of data Don39t worry if you39re not a data geek everything I39m about to say is in plain EnglishStep 1 Set aside all previous reports and all previous data Instead ask quotif I could wave a magic wand and instantly know anything in the universe about my customer what are the Three Things I39d Like To Knowquot Note that this question is not quotwhat data would I like to havequot quotwhat data is availablequot or what are the 8924081 things I39d like to knowquotIt39s quotWhat are the Three Things I39d Like To KnowquotStep 2 Are my Three Things I39d Like To Know actionable For example if I knew exactly how many haircuts each of my customers would have in 2017 what actions would I take for my brand today If I don39t instantly know what I would do or why I would do it amp8211 that is a clear signal that my quotWhat I39d Like To Knowquot question will not lead to an actionable insightIf you know exactly what you39d do if you had the answer then you know you39re asking the right kind of questionStep 3 Looking at my refined list of Three Things I39d Like To Know I ask three diagnostic questions Can the answers be known How precise must the answers be What is the minimal directional answer that is usefulStep 4 NOW we move to data Here again the are three diagnostic questions What data do we already have that might answer the Three Things I39d Like To Know Look online AND offline amp8211 sometimes you39re lucky and you39ll find you had the answer to one of those questions all along What additional data might add useful dimension to those answers Will paying in dollars or staff time to obtain this extra data improve our results enough to pay for the effort If the team is less than 50 certain that it will wait six months before deciding to invest in additional dataStep 5 Now let39s build a dashboardThe secret to a good dashboard Smaller is better More lights on the dashboard are only a good thing if your business sells light bulbs for dashboardsHow do you keep a dashboard focused Report ONLY on the data that relates to the Three Things I39d Like To Know Do NOT include data that is unrelated Capture it store it for later but do NOT report it Do NOT include data that you wouldn39t know how to act on eg if you have no clue what would you do if you learned that people hovered over a button for 10 seconds or 1 second do not report itDeep Analytics Require You To Take A Deep BreathIf you want more and better insights you can get them All you really need is the ability to take a deep breath a willingness to ask simple questions and a little bit of courageIf I can help with any of that just let me know Tom Cunniff is the founder of Cunniff Consulting an integrated marketing consultancy that helps consumer brands and leading companies in Big Data Social Media and Mobile succeed Frequent speaker and panelist Chairman of the Association Of National Advertisers Digital Committee He can be reached at tomtomcunniffcomRead all Tom39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Radical Common SenseCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentariesImage courtesy of cooldesignFreeDigitalPhotosnet

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