Report Monkey: Don’t Fly Solo, When You Can Have a Whole Team

March 24th, 2011

Topics: About, Digital Marketing, Training

DEAR REPORT MONKEY,
My company prides itself on “getting” data-driven marketing. We have it all: the right tools, killer integrations, fancy executive dashboards—but we’re missing the right people! Or person, in my case.

That’s the problem. Since my company bought it all, I’m expected to do it all. But I’m swamped and I can’t do it alone. Where should I turn for help?

Sincerely,
FLYING SOLO IN TEXAS

DEAR SOLO,
I hear this so often that I end every single Webtrends marketing class with a slide that I tell students to take back to their managers. That slide states one very clear message:

“You can’t do this alone.”

Not Won’t, Can’t.
The geeky English major in me wants to point out the difference between those two words. Won’t suggests a decision, as in “I won’t work 90 hours a week to do this”; Can’t suggests impossibility: “I can’t be an expert in everything that’s happening everywhere online, in my business, with my competitors and with my customers.”

Even if you did work 90 hours per week, it’s simply not possible! Not unless you’re a god (or Avinash Kaushik).

So where do you turn for help? The experts at your own company.
Who knows the most about your company’s social media marketing? Buy him a cup of coffee and chat about how you can work together. Who handles email targeting? Take her to lunch and ask if she’d be willing to run some tests with you to see what subject lines work best. Who builds your landing pages? Grab a snack and show him how Webtrends Optimize can run an A/B test on different designs.

Then go back to your manager, tell her what you’ve been doing, and ask if you can make it a normal practice to work with these people in the future.

Collaboration is key, Solo!
Han had Chewbacca, and eventually a whole Jedi team by his side. You need the same, or you’ll be stuck in that dive bar in the Degoba system with a bunch of broken-down tools, too much data and no purpose.  Edit:  If you’re getting ready to comment on how mushed up the metaphor has become, you’ve been beaten to the punch – see below.

Okay—that’s stretching the metaphor thin (or, really, breaking it), but you get the picture: Working alone is no way to provide value. Pull together your own team of experts in house, and go far you will.

Have a question for Report Monkey?
Email us or ask it in the comments below.

  • http://Website Adrian Hoppel

    Your incorrect Star Wars information gas distracted and, I am sure, many other geeks from your message. Dive bar in the degobah system? Really??

    • Sandra Elliott

      DING DING! Give that man a prize!

      I had a bet going that it would take less than an hour for someone to cry foul on that completely trashed metaphor. Got your attention, didn’t it? :)

      Okay – let’s earn back geek creds before I make my point. An appropriate metaphor would point out that the bar in which Luke and Obi-Wan hire Han was on Tatooine, and that Dagobah was, in fact, where Luke trained with Yoda. Good geeks know this (and I number myself among them), and will happily jump in to help you make sense of a mess when you make one with that data. Pays not to go it alone.

      See what value collaboration brings?