Digital transformation is not an overnight process. It takes time, buy-in from execs and determination from those wanting to bring it about. One of the trickiest parts of the process can be getting the whole management team on board.
Fact-bases based on a series of key insights about your market and your business can be a great way of communicating the potential opportunity of digital marketing and Ecommerce to your colleagues, allowing you to blend the facts with simple, high-level commentaries in a visually compelling and easy to understand format. They work particularly well in large organisations where non-marketers like CEOs, CFOs and CIOs need to be persuaded about the benefits of additional investment in digital marketing.
We’re highlighting this term you may not be familiar with since it’s the topic of our new Digital Marketing roadmap Powerpoint template by Rob Lauren. Rob has extensive experience as a digital director where he used to present and now as an independent consultant at Kaizen Digital.
What is a marketing fact-base?
A fact-base for marketing is:
A collation of data into a “single version of the truth” of quantitative measures and KPIs to make your case to a senior management team. These start with commercial measures of revenue and profit for digital channels, but include more specific measures for digital marketing.
This fact-base should include an assessment of a business’s digital channel capability – benchmarked against competitors where possible – as well as clearly presenting past performance and future target data.
Why a fact-base?
In our Powerpoint template, the fact-base acts as the foundation and context for setting out a clear vision, SMART objectives and the initiatives planned to meet those objectives, working within the Smart Insights RACE framework.
Driving change to a more digitally-focused business model requires the clear communication of many complex elements to colleagues and decision makers within an organization. Here are Smart Insights, we’ve developed templates to help you do just that, by effectively blending the facts with simple, high-level commentaries in a visually compelling and easy to understand format, another example is our digital marketing plan workbook.
What insights should it contain?
Exactly what the fact-base should contain will depend on your sector and who the intended audience is. However, all fact-bases should summarise the top-level commercial, marketing and customer-specific KPIs, and provide insights into the level of digital opportunities available within the sector you are operating in. Analysis of competitors’ efforts, current market shares vs. that of competitors and assessments of your current ability to REACH, ACT, CONVERT, and ENGAGE should also be present. Rob uses this infographic to introduce the fact-base template – it’s partly to show a coherent structure, but also for shock-value – to show non-digital marketing specialist the range of digital communications channels or touchpoints which need to be managed.
Using a fact-base to support investment in digital marketing?
A fact-base should be the ultimate tool for encouraging buy-in from the top and securing appropriate investment in digital marketing. By showing the opportunities available from digital marketing and informing management about how competitors are already exploiting new technologies to great effect. Identifying data to back up your points and presenting it in a clear way is probably the most effective way of increasing support for investment in digital marketing across the business.
This article was originally published at SmartInsights.com, by author Robert Allen.
Recent Comments