are 4 ways to create a data-centric culture within your agency

Your agency’s 2023 goals may include improving your data skills, delivering excellence to clients, and standing out to potential clients as we welcome in the new year.

These tips will help you get started in building a culture of data in your company.

1. To guide you, hire experts

Experienced leadership is required to build a solid foundation. The person responsible should:

• Defining high-level agency data goals.
• A detailed plan to achieve them.

Many companies are relying on fragmented data pipelines, siloed information and outdated infrastructure without any real central ownership.

An experienced data professional can help you organize everything into a coherent data blueprint. They will also decide whether to keep existing processes and infrastructure in place or move forward.

These responsibilities should not be left to your client service and ad managers.

Your agency and clients will notice that you prioritize your data strategy when you assign experts to the appropriate roles and give them the keys.

No matter how big or small your company is, dedicated data personnel will make it more efficient.

This supports your marketing efforts, which leads us to the next point.

2. The data team and client services teams can bridge the gap

Although it is important to have a data team, they should be considered an extension of client services rather than a department.

The goals of the client service team should be supported by the work of the data team.

To maximize the potential of data, and to simplify data processes for the entire agency, it is important to foster a sense of synchronicity among these teams.

Data education should be an agency-wide initiative. Data teams should:

• Tell the client service team about what data is available.
• Provide ongoing education and cross-training to the rest of your team.

Client services can then think creatively about ways to present clients findings and analyze them to unlock the results.

Although ad managers don’t expect to become data engineers, their understanding of data flow and processes will allow them to think creatively about how to optimize data and provide clients with deeper insights.

A good marketing education for your data team will allow them to see the right context and think of solutions.

This prevents them from creating data pipelines or reports that aren’t necessary to support the goals of the client or their service team.

Your client services team should receive ongoing data education. Your data team should also be proficient in marketing principles, platforms, and tools.

3. Invest in the best technology and tools

Data leaders must stay up-to-date with the latest technology and evaluate the best tools to fit your agency’s needs at least once a year.

These are some questions you should ask:

• Are your current tools adaptable to future growth?
• Are your employees spending a lot of time doing data-oriented tasks that could be automated using technology solutions?
• Are there multiple processes or tools that you could replace with a multifunctional, better solution?

Data practices and technology are not universally applicable. You might not like what worked last year, but it may not work for your future goals.

If you are using solutions that do not support your data culture, avoid the sunk cost fallacy. Do not be afraid to experiment with new methods!

You should ensure that you have the right resources and people to master new technologies and tools.

• Manage the tools
• Create new processes
• Developing documentation.
• The entire team should be educated about the improvements.

These resources will still require the bandwidth to support daily activities.

A good data culture is not about rushing or burning out your team.

Although it isn’t a cost-effective part of your business, a data strategy can be a long-term investment and will pay off tenfold if implemented correctly.

4. Bring your clients to you

Although we cannot force clients to adopt data-centric cultures, we can lead by example and be marketing analytics experts.

Agents will be able to build positive client relationships and provide guidance and innovation.

You can establish a data culture in your agency and impress your clients with the importance of data governance to maximize your potential for extraordinary results.

Your team can push your clients to give feedback and guide them in areas that may be data-related.

We can help our clients with data-related projects in a number of ways, including:

• Helping to clean-up tracking.
• Provides insightful and efficient performance reports.
• Incorporate down-funnel metrics in your reporting and strategies

These areas will allow us to be de facto experts and make our job as marketers easier. This will also enable us to spend more time on marketing activities.

The post 4 Tips to Build a Data-centric Culture in Your Agency was originally published on Search Engine Land.