Integrating Marketing Data Silos: Way to Discover Actionable & Meaningful Insights
Modern-day Marketing has overtaken all sectors of an economy and is no longer everyone’s cup of tea. It requires dynamic cross-functional teams to work across numerous projects by leveraging intuitive tools and products to achieve their goals. Working with numerous tools simultaneously often results in Marketing teams leveraging inconsistent data to make their business decisions, thereby affecting the number and quality of Marketing insights gained. Sometimes, even the Marketing tools being employed by teams to extract data for analysis can result in a situation where the data can only be accessible by a certain department in the organization and not by all. All these situations result in the formation of Marketing Data Silos.
Table of Contents
A Data Silo represents a repository of data that can be accessed only by one department of an organization but not by others. One of the most significant issues that Data Silos pose is the lack of transparency, efficiency, and trust that it brings to an organization. Hence, it is essential t to develop a methodology to integrate these Marketing Data Silos because once unified, they can provide exceptional customer and Marketing insights, helping you build a more satisfying customer experience. It can also help marketers to accurately measure the performance of their Marketing Channels at an aggregate level.
In this article, you will get an in-depth insight into what impact a Data Silo can have on your Marketing performance and why integrating your Marketing data is an absolute must to make effective decisions. It’ll also provide you with some key steps you can take to unify your Data Silos seamlessly. Excited to learn more about this topic in detail? Before we get into the details, watch this video to get a gist of our detailed course on Integrating Marketing Data Silos.
P.S. This course is a part of our impeccably informative Marketing Analytics Masterclass. Click here to register for our Masterclass on Marketing Analytics and upgrade your Marketing skills to discover integrated Marketing insights with unified data.
Table of Contents
- What are Marketing Data Silos?
- Why there is a Need to Integrate Data?
- Impact of Marketing Data Silos
- How to Breakdown Data Silos?
What are Marketing Data Silos?
A Marketing Data Silo, in essence, represents a set/collection of information only accessible to a particular department/team of an organization but not others. Data Silos can arise across all forms of Marketing activities/initiatives such as Performance Marketing, Growth Marketing, etc. as Marketing teams often leverage a diverse set of robust software for numerous purposes. Data and insights provided by these tools usually reside in their respective databases, thereby giving birth to a Marketing Data Silo. In such situations, invisible barriers arise between teams that lead to ineffective ad campaigns and various other Marketing efforts. Hence, Data Silos reduce the transparency and efficiency of various teams of an organization.
Interestingly, organizations can have Data Silos and not even be aware of it. This usually happens when teams unknowingly/knowingly leverage redundant data available across a diverse set of data sources to perform their analysis, thereby building a Data Silo. According to Deloitte, the number of quality insights, an organization can gain from Marketing/customer data is determined by the Insight-Driven Organization Maturity Scale.
The Insight-Driven Organization Maturity Scale
This scale gives an in-depth insight into how well an organization is equipped to unify, analyze and leverage insights from diverse data sources. This scale is divided into 5 stages:
- Analytics Aware: In this stage, the organization is aware of the power of Data Analytics but it has little to no infrastructure available to leverage it and make Data-Driven decisions for its business operations.
- Localized Analytics: In this stage, the organization often adopts various Analytics techniques & leverages its capabilities to articulate efficient strategies that are specific to Data Silos alone.
- Analytical Aspirations: In this stage, organizations are in the position to extend and utilize their robust ad-hoc analytical powers/capabilities across diverse business projects and operations. This way, they are able to strategize and build decisions across all divisions of the business. Most organizations are at this stage of the scale.
- Analytical Companies: In this stage, organizations actively industrialize the power of Analytics. Companies leverage data from a diverse set of data sources, carry out an insightful analysis, and leverage these actionable insights to build intuitive ideas & strategies to build robust products.
- Analytical Competitors: In this stage, the organizations readily leverage Data Analytics to monitor their performance, design and create new products, preserve the value of their older products, etc. It also helps them be on track with rapid technological changes.
Having an Insight-Driven culture ensures that businesses meet their goals in a periodic manner while keeping track of the latest technological trends across the world. The figure given below highlights the above steps of The Insight-Driven Organization Maturity Scale:
Why there is a Need to Integrate Data?
Setting up a Single Source of Truth for your Marketing data is one of the most effective ways of tackling Data Silos. It allows teams across an organization to be on the same page by letting them access and analyze data from a single data point. In fact, According to Dun&Bradstreet, more than 80% of companies have Data Silos.
Impact of Marketing Data Silos
Customers interact with the services/products that organizations offer in numerous ways. Having Data Silos prevents Marketing teams from gaining insights from Marketing/customer data, ad campaigns, etc., thereby preventing them from making data-backed decisions. Marketing Data Silos can affect business performance and effective decision making as follows:
1) Duplicative Work
With numerous Marketing teams working on a similar kind of content, ad campaigns, and various other initiatives, the Data Silos that these teams generate often contain redundant information. Hence, they add no value, rather cannibalize the effectiveness of other Marketing initiatives.
2) Data Quagmires
A Quagmire represents a situation in which organizations find it challenging to unify and leverage complex cross-functional data from a diverse set of sources, thereby preventing them from building strategies that drive performance and boost revenue. Data Silos essentially make different sections of the data inaccessible to different departments of organizations which can result in Quagmires.
3) Cohesion Failure
With dynamic Marketing initiatives running in parallel, Marketing teams often work in a non-collaborative manner, preventing them from maintaining sufficient transparency. This results in invisible Data Silos being created, affecting the performance without coming to the notice.
How to Breakdown Data Silos?
Working with Data Silos can be a major headache for any team across an organization. It results in poor decision-making, limitless issues of data inconsistencies, and a lot more, thereby hampering the performance. Hence, breaking down Data Silos is essential and to do this, you can leverage any of the following techniques:
1) Top-Down Cultural Change
In this technique, business processes are changed internally. This cannot be handled by a single person and requires complete collaboration between multiple teams to drive the change from the top to the bottom.
2) Define and Document KPI’s
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) play a crucial role in measuring the performance of an organization. In order to prevent the formation of Data Silos, building & structuring proper KPIs and sharing them across departments is essential as it can help break them down and boost performance impeccably.
3) Transparency
Ensuring Data Transparency is one of the most effective ways of breaking down Data Silos. It allows teams to be on the same page, collaborate and analyze data and thereby build impeccable growth-generating strategies.
Conclusion
Data Silos are a global problem and by now we all know how bad it can impact our business if we don’t unify our organization data for better visibility, Analytics, and growth. Most of the company’s today are still at the 1st step of their Analytics journey and there are quite a few who are transitioning from being analytics aware to using localized analytics. In order to simplify this transition and implement advanced analytics, businesses must adopt the Data-Driven culture and switch to a modern Data & Analytics stack. Creating a Single Source of Truth for Marketing data has helped Data-Driven companies seamlessly break down Data Silos and discover business insights that worked as a catalyst for growth.
If you’re wondering the answer to managing Data Silos, then our Masterclass on Marketing Analytics can be your one-stop-shop solution! In this Masterclass, you will also learn the latest Marketing Analytics trends, tips, and strategies directly from the global Marketing thought leaders. There will be 7 on-demand video courses covering 26 different topics and 1 live Q&A session at the end of this course. Book your seat today and get ready to discover your integrated Marketing insights using the modern Marketing Analytics stack like never before.
Sign up today for our Dcode Marketing Analytics Masterclass and join us with Brandee Sanders (Vice President of Marketing at Modal) and six other industry thought leaders.
It’s a free, on-demand virtual Masterclass specially designed for Marketers & Growth Analysts. Learn how to harness the power of Marketing Data & Analytics to drive business growth like never before!
You can check out our highlight video below:
