INBOX INSIGHTS, September 22, 2021: New Website, Accountability, Personal Branding Lessons - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

INBOX INSIGHTS: New Website, Accountability, Personal Branding Lessons (9/22)

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Accountability

We launched a new website.

Let me say that with more enthusiasm.

This is a project that we started working on last year and we’re seeing our vision come to light. It’s very exciting.

So let’s get to the point. Who gets credit if you like it? The whole team. Who gets yelled at if you hate it? Well, me.

The rebranding of Trust Insights has been 100% a team effort. Chris and John have participated in all decisions. They have expressed what they wanted to see and have chosen much of the direction we moved in. That’s why when I tell you that there is a new website, I say, “We launched a new website” because it was not a solo effort.

Now, at the end of the day, there needs to be a “head on the chopping block” as Chris likes to say. As the majority owner and CEO, I’m the final decisions maker, the tiebreaker, the “head on the chopping block”. I own that role. I take the good with the bad.

Why is this important to know? Because I could say “my designer didn’t execute my vision”, or “my team and I were not aligned” (none of which is true by the way). What actually happened in that example? I didn’t articulate what I wanted. I didn’t collaborate with the team to make sure everyone had a voice, myself included. That’s on me. Not them.

When you’re at an organization where “shit rolls downhill” is the mantra, you know that there is a lack of accountability from the decision-makers. Leaders need to own the decisions they make and do better to communicate what they want.

All too often I hear stories from clients about trying to complete tasks with their team and the conversation generally goes like this:

Marketer: What do you want? Stakeholder: I don’t know, figure it out. Marketer: How’s this? Stakeholder: That’s not what I want at all. You did it wrong. Do it again. Marketer: What’s wrong with it so I can make edits. Stakeholder: I don’t have time, go figure it out.

Sound familiar? I’ve been there, too.

How do we fix this problem?

Well, you can’t control someone else’s actions, only your own. I would recommend utilizing a persona statement.

As a [persona] I want to [take an action] so that [I get this outcome].

You don’t need to say “fill out this persona statement”. Instead, you could try this approach with your indecisive decision-maker:

“So, as the decision-maker, you want me to create a report of our website traffic so that you know where our audience comes from? Does that sound correct?”

It’s an opportunity to test the waters before you dive in headfirst and spend a lot of time on the project. My suggestion is to keep at it. Keep offering up different persona statements until you feel like you’ve gotten closer to what your stakeholder wants. For those of us that sometimes struggle to articulate what we’re thinking, this exercise is incredibly simple and helpful.

In the meantime, tell us what you think of the new site in our Free Slack Group Analytics for Marketers!

– Katie Robbert, CEO

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In this episode, Katie and Chris take a stroll down memory lane to look at old reports the company did in 2018. What lessons have we learned that apply to marketing, analytics, and communicating results today? Learn about lessons for professional development and how personal branding can apply to your marketing. Tune in to find out!

Watch/listen to this episode of In-Ear Insights here »

Last week on So What? The Marketing Analytics and Insights Live Show, we reviewed our lessons learned after a year of live streaming.

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This Thursday at 1 PM Eastern, we’re going to take a look at how to analyze sponsored content.

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Data Diaries - Interesting Data We Found

In this week’s Data Diaries, we just finished up having a great time at the autumn MarTech Conference, where we presented about both predictive analytics and attribution analysis. One of the hallmarks of the MarTech Conference is Scott Brinker’s MarTech Landscape, the massive, super-dense chart of marketing technology companies.

click for a full size version

We had a question: what marketing technologies do MarTech companies use? After all, we would expect these companies to be on the cutting edge of marketing technology. To answer this question, we extracted the list of all 8,000 companies from the MarTech Landscape and then appended firmographic and technology data using Hubspot Insights to compile a list of every publicly-visible marketing technology used by these companies.

What did we find? Among this cohort of companies, the most popular marketing technology by a substantial margin is…

click for a full size version

… Google Analytics. Followed by Google Tag Manager. In the #3 spot is Google Suite, followed by WordPress, then Facebook ad technology. Cloudflare, AWS Route 53, Salesforce.com, Nginx, and Microsoft Office 365 round out the top 10.

What should we take away from this? Even on the cutting edge, some technologies are tried and true. Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager being free certainly doesn’t hurt, either; many of the MarTech 5000 are new or relatively new companies, and they brought technologies like WordPress and Google Analytics with them in their growth.

When you’re being pitched by marketing technology vendors, take note of the different companies topping the rankings of the MarTech 5000. Using tried and true technologies – as long as they’re a good fit and an appropriate choice for your needs – isn’t a bad thing because it means talent is much easier to find. Finding someone with expertise in Google Analytics or WordPress is far easier than a new technology no one’s ever heard of.

Want to see the full list of technologies by count? Join our free Slack group, Analytics for Marketers. We’ll share the data there.

Methodology: Trust Insights extracted 8,097 domain names from the MarTech 5000 directory, then loaded those into Hubspot’s CRM software. Hubspot Insights appended data for 5,025 unique domain names, which is the basis for the chart above. The date of study is September 21, 2021. Trust Insights is the sole sponsor of the study and neither gave nor received compensation for data used, beyond applicable service fees to software vendors, and declares no competing interests.

This is a roundup of the best content you and others have written and shared in the last week.

SEO, Google, and Paid Media

Content Marketing

Data Science and AI

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