CEOs, you may not be setting your insights team up to succeed

Welcome to Ryan’s Rant, my weekly newsletter aimed at helping companies drive customer-centric growth.

This is a message for CEOs, COOs and CFOs.?

If you say you’re customer centric and you currently have a VP of insights, but you’re not seeing growth… you probably aren’t setting them up to succeed.?

You probably aren’t actually seeing consumer-centric decisions being made across the company based on real consumer data.?

Because assuming you’ve hired a good VP of insights, you should be growing. Consumer centricity leads to company growth. When you focus on the consumer and make decisions with them in mind, your company will grow.?

But I fly all around the world and meet with insights leaders who are doing great work, but they can’t change some fundamental things about the business that are blocking them from having the most impact.?

Those things come from the top. That means you.?

Why insights teams can’t succeed

Insights teams are the shepherd of consumer centricity in the business. They are the owner of consumer understanding. Or they should be.?

Insights teams should be using a system they have intentionally set up to allow the business to test and learn as they make decisions. That process results in a data asset that grows more and more valuable over time and can be used across the business to enable even greater consumer centricity.?

Yet I’m always meeting with VPs of insights whose businesses aren’t using insights correctly. The business comes to them to rubber-stamp decisions that were already made, just to cover their ass. They’re being asked to take orders and just get the data to whoever asks — as quickly as possible. They don’t have the visibility in the organization they need to make any real impact.?

And I work with these leaders on how they can change their circumstances to make a greater impact. But many of them are frustrated that they’ve transformed as much as they can without buy-in from the top.??

Because every single one of those company’s earnings reports say they’re deeply consumer centric. So passionate about their consumers. But the insights teams tell me a different story.?

If the insights team isn’t set up to succeed, then why bother having them in the first place? And can you really call your company consumer centric??

How to set insights up for success

Does your head of insights have the authority to drive change across the organization? Are consumer insights woven into your broader strategy??

If not, you have some changes to make. Here’s my advice:

• Give your VP of insights the authority to drive change from the top down, so insights influence every decision. And give your insights teams freedom from solely reporting to marketing so they can drive that change.
• Allow your VP of insights to invest in connecting data — building a unified ecosystem of consumer insights.
• Make insights a strategic business priority and encourage the organization to see it that way.
• Foster a culture where insights are shared, acted on and celebrated.
• Track the ROI of your insights investments and share success stories to build organizational buy-in.

The C-suite — CEO, COO, CFO — need to hold the space for insights and make it clear that consumer data is a competitive advantage. When this happens, companies will spend their marketing budgets more efficiently, see advertising effectiveness improve and sales go up.

Keep an eye out for my new book

Next week we’ll be in New York to launch our new book, The Consumer Insights Revolution, which is literally the playbook to establishing an insights ecosystem. Keep an eye out for details on how to get your hands on it!?

In the meantime, check out my latest MarTech podcast episode with Steve Phillips:?