Its not unusual to have a team member held up as a standard for the whole business to aspire to. We have our own interpretation of this at c3 which we’ve all mutually agreed upon in the months since we’ve launched.
In our case, the person in question is Alan Ng – our Technical & Insights Director, Alan’s unofficial appointment of example to follow, is communicated internally with the phrase ‘Be More Alan’ – a phrase which we feel encompasses all our values, and the spirit of what we try to achieve as a business.
Alan heads up our data offering and is held up as our team standard because he is a wonderful blend of technical ability, enthusiasm, speed and humility.
What this means for connective3 is that our data offering supersedes most and this has powerful impact on campaigns. Not only in helping our teams to improve their output, but in helping us to recognise the full impact of our work upon our client’s businesses. To outline this, I have detailed out my top three ways in which our data strategy is driving performance.
Integrating offline data for true optimisation
When conversions happen offline it’s important to pull those back into Google Analytics and Google Ads to give visibility on value and conversions that matter.
If integrated directly into Google Ads then visibility of offline conversions may be gained, but optimisation such as bid modifiers and audience adjustments may not be directly applied to the new data, and as such the power is restricted.
By integrating data into GA and sharing across to Google Ads, the full suite of optimisation techniques in the Ads platform becomes available to the new data and campaigns can be accurately optimised for value.
With Alan at the helm, this integration work for one of our clients was turned around and the new levers were made available within just 48 hours.
Real time dashboards
Having sight of campaign results and account health at the touch of a button is invaluable and having real time cross channel reports even more so. Taking the time to integrate data sources to give a detailed view of a full account means that we spot things and optimise faster, prevent problems earlier and spend more time developing strategies than on account admin.
Having a data team that understands media, KPIs, data sources, APIs & channel relationships means that client and internal dashboards are genuinely useful, adaptable and insights are delivered in a truly timely fashion.
Example dashboards for c3 live reporting
Useful tools to deliver new insights and speed up processes
Alan is always asking us questions such as – What takes up your time? What insight do you need that you’re missing? What can we automate?
These questions have led to many tools being developed in-house that mean we as a media team can deliver stronger campaigns, faster.
Alongside macros for bid modifiers, my favourite tool to date lets us easily analyse the search landscape for a given keyword set over time. It graphically highlights competitors paid and organic strategies across keyword categories to inform our clients’ own search strategies. And, we’re already well underway with a model to determine how much brands should vary their spend on paid media in relation to their organic ranking fluctuations, thus integrating the two channels for the benefit of the greater good.
Don’t just take my word for it
But, having Alan around isn’t just good for data, as his influence reaches beyond his contributions to our data offering, and extends to his role as a valued member of our team, and the positive impact of his approach on our culture too and that’s why the phrase ‘Be More Alan’ can often be heard around the c3 office.
Its likely that each business has an ‘Alan’ of their own, some might have more than one, but we wanted to highlight the powerful impact that a motivated individual like Alan has upon our team.
With that in mind, I asked the team to define what this meant to them to ‘Be More Alan’ – and I’ve included some of my favourite quotes below:
“The ability to step back, analyse the situation and offer actionable advice to not only overcome the issue, but to make it turn into a positive”
“Being calm, collective and caring. Always help and never complain”
“Never judge anyone despite being the smartest person in the room”
“Being up for helping anyone and everyone in the most dedicated manner possible, providing solutions to make their work and life more seamless. Adding a care factor to even the most menial task.”
“The difference between good work and awesome work”
In summary, having an incredibly talented, helpful, humble and caring data team will help speed up the path to exceptional campaign performance.
#BeMoreAlan
