Steen Rasmussen (IIH Nordic): Stop thinking of yourself as an analyst and start seeing yourself as a data-driven business developer

Steen Rasmussen, senior partner and co-founder at IIH Nordic, one of the largest analytics agency in the Nordics (“Best Danish Analytics House” 13-14), will be speaker at the TeCOMM eCommerceConference, taking place on April 21, in Bucharest.

During his workshop at TeCOMM Bucharest, Steen Rasmussen will talk about „How to take your customer analytics to the next level”. Based on practical cases and a couple of operational facts, this session will take the  audience  for a dive into the data and identify 7 of these critical questions areas about the truly interesting insights about customers, competitor insights, marketing performance and business impact. This will help improve the digital marketing, relationship with the users and business performance overall.

TeCOMM: Why should companies use web analytics?

Steen Rasmussen: As the digital business space becomes more and more crowded with players, it becomes increasingly important to have the best possibly performing website for all the segments. The analytics tools help you get better results faster and with less resources.

TeCOMM: What advice / recommendation would you give to a web analytics professional?

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S.R.: My advice would be: stop trying to get perfect data and start using the data you have! Data in itself has no value and until you start using the data to provide data-driven recommendations and insights for improvements. So stop thinking of yourself as an analyst and start seeing yourself as a data-driven business developer, the objective of the assignment is about generating positive business outcomes, not data.

TeCOMM: What are a few things that retailers should be doing with their analytics efforts that most don’t do today?

S.R.: Take a step back from the business and try to focus on the customer. The digital activities has to support the way our customers buy our products and this is the key process we need to map and measure, not bounce rates and average time on site. A lot of people still look at session based conversion rates, but forget to take into account how many times a user normally visits the sites before converting.

TeCOMM: What is the future of Analytics?

S.R: In the medium run, analytics as an independent activity will disappear and be replaced with some hardcore data technicians. What we already see with the arrival of Google Analytics 360, points in this direction. The analytics data and other data might be the basics where all the data is being used for business which ensures the return on analytics.

What do you focus on in your trainings from Google Partner Academy Trainer?

S.R.: Being a trainer for the Google Partner Academy is a privilege which you repay with radical honesty, there are no cutting corners or trying to keep things to yourself. Normally I will always try to focus on sharing my own experience. As a consultant in the digital marketplace I am on the edge of 20 years of experience from the agency side. This means I can share some great and massively entertaining success stories, but at the end of the day I have found that this approach only will give the participants so much.

With 20 years of experience I have already tried and failed at most things possible in the digital business area – both for my clients and as a consultancy, but we have survived. And this is one of the key things I try to share. We all have to recognize that we are all human and that mistakes will be made. There is no « zero-error culture » in culture in digital, because we are still sailing in uncharted waters and the waters are constantly changing with new players, channels, tools and preferences of the users. You have to get up in the morning being ready to fail, because the insight you find in one failure today is what gives you the competitive advantage for tomorrow. But we still need to have faith in the fact that it is possible to survive our own stupidity and come out on the other side as a success.

What do you recommend us: More Google Network Search Campaigns or more Display Network Campaigns?

S.R.: This is the perfect question for the horrible classic answer – it depends. But it really does depend on what you are trying to achieve, what’s your product and time frame. What we normally see when we analyze campaign setups or media plan is that there is a remarkable tendency to oversimplify things. This typically happens because the agency or person setting the campaigns up either has too little time or not enough information regarding the end customers purchase journey.

With digital we as marketers for the first time actually have the opportunity to meet a mass audience with something resembling an individualized message, but it takes time to setup and the basic requirement to know what message in which channel would support the end users decisions process and nudge them toward our desired action. Much too often activities are too narrowly focused on our objective as an organization and we end up sending people too far into the funnel.

Because we focus on our own objective we forget the big question about why the customers buy our product in the first place. The truth of the matter is that we can’t force the users to buy, but we can enable, inspire and delight them towards making the right decision. So the answer is honestly that is not about the channel – it is about the users.

 How will you define technology?

S.R.: Technology is an investment, which should enhance the abilities of people to perform above the level of their own time, capabilities and limitations to deliver a higher direct impact on the business objectives. In reality a “do more, do better, do faster” approach.

But for me the key word of the sentence is actually the single word “Investment”. No matter type of technology we are talking about it should always come with both a price tag and just an importantly–an objective. Too often technology is brought in to be a solution with the expectation that it will be able to solve the problem alone. But a tool in itself does not solve the problem and without the right people, resources, support and objectives technology have a tendency to end up only on the cost side and won’t get the desired positive impact on the business.

Technology is an investment, so you should always have the ROI in mind, not just the technology.