3 Ways To Avoid Information Overload

I’ve heard and used the colloquialism “TMI” (short for “Too Much Information”) in social situations plenty of times — like when my sister wants me to watch a YouTube video of an operation she’s about to have on her finger.

But I had never heard “TMI” used in a business setting until last week, when a data analyst used it in a presentation to the CMO of a major retailer to describe the data problem her company faces.

It may have felt a bit informal for a CMO presentation, but her assessment was spot on.

In business, it’s hard for CMOs to identify TMI. CMOs don’t want to miss anything, and they don’t want to look dumb. As a result, most CMOs live in a TMI world just to be safe. As a result, they run the risk of missing out on important insights because they’re buried in superfluous data.

But they don’t have to.

In my previous article, I introduced the concept of a Performance Framework, a system my company, Right Intel, uses to simply identify the data that matter and put them into priority.

This time around, I’m going to outline the three primary things that should be included in a Performance Framework.

1. Start With One Clear Objective & One Desired Outcome

The only rule here is that you work with your team to come up with one top-level objective. Something for everybody to rally behind.

Here’s an example of a good objective: “Double revenue in 2014.” I like this objective because it’s short and clear.

Here’s an example of a bad objective: “Increase sales with our Fortune 500 clients and increase customer lifetime.” There are two objectives disguised as one in this case. Not good.

In the end, you want your people laser focused on one primary objective.

You will get pressure to have more than one, but you need to resist the temptation. Have you ever seen a football team succeed with two starting quarterbacks? I haven’t.

It’s the same for your top-level objective. You need one, and it must be clearly defined. It must also be measurable, and typically it’s financial-based. Later, you can add supporting objectives — but in the end, you need one objective to rule them all.

It’s important to get team buy-in when determining the primary objective. I suggest using a straw man objective as a starting point. Inevitably, you will go into a room and there will be three or four objectives that are all important. The team leader’s job is to moderate the conversation and insist that the team agrees on one objective.

2. Define Your KPIs Through The Lens Of The Customer Journey

My experience has taught me that it’s easier to find key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter when you look at them through the lens of how prospects buy your product.

Most prospects tend to follow a similar pattern when they shop and eventually purchase. I call this the customer journey. If you’re lucky enough to have a research team, odds are that they have done some qualitative research on what the customer journey looks like for your brand.

At Right Intel, our customer journey is:

Defining the customer journey is a qualitative process that’s highly subjective. If you are an analytical person like me, embracing something so soft and squishy can be challenging.

But in the end, I’ve found that adding the customer journey to how we measure success makes marketing initiatives more focused and customer-driven.

The next step is to define one objective and KPI for each part of the journey. (Consider using objectives that were in the running as your primary objective but didn’t make the cut.) Below is what we use at Right Intel.

As you’ll see, each objective has one clear KPI used to measure its success.

3. Create Separate Performance Indicators

If every metric is a key performance indicator, then in the end you have no performance-based metrics, or PIs.

PIs are important; they deserve to be tracked and analyzed, but they aren’t as pressing as the key objective or KPIs. Metrics like “Unique Visitors to Our Site,” “Number of Case Studies” and “Number of Social Mentions” are examples of Right Intel’s performance indicators.

We strive to improve those numbers, but they’re less important than our key objective and KPIs.

When I get an update from my CMO, I want to know how we are doing with our KPIs first. Then, I’ll review the PIs if I have time. This helps me focus on what really matters and not focus on data that happens to be available.

I recently helped a friend create a Performance Framework for the $3 billion megabrand he works for. The results have been encouraging from both a business perspective and from a personal career perspective for my friend.

The CMO is starting to recommend changes to the marketing strategy based on the objectives and KPIs that actually matter. (Hallelujah!!) And this week, my friend was asked to present the framework to the global CEO.

When you digest the right amount of information rather than TMI, good things are bound to happen.

 (Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)