As you’ll see in a minute, I recently developed a measurement framework that actually works.

But you might be surprised to hear that, before I figured out the secret to marketing measurement, I spent most of my career in SEO.

I often reflect on why SEO has played such a big role in my data career.

Here's what I've put it down to...

For companies to truly adopt data and become data-driven, it comes down to the individual's need to understand the charts and graphs in front of them.

It comes down to user intent.

If what they see doesn't align to their needs and self interests, they leave. They click the back button, leaving them either frustrated or confused because it didn't answer the "so what".
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The same can be said for user experience on search engines.

The last 4 years have lead me to experience these 3 Penny Drop moments...
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I was asked to build a dashboard reporting framework for the CMO of one of the largest insurance companies in South Africa.

With no formal dashboard training, all I had to lean on was my 10+ years experience working inside Google Analytics, building manual reports and finding key insights to answer the "so what" for my clients.

I knew the key to a successful project was to align the user's needs, the CMO.

Inspired by Avinash Kaushik's impact matrix, I used his approach to drive the discussions and project forward.

And BOOM- we had success! 

This project was the catalyst for helping their team become more data-driven!
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I was then brought onto another, much bigger project spanning 12+ months. To build South Africa's largest digital data team to support the growth of a multi-national FMCG.

This was a different challenge.

To integrate the data and insights teams into their marketing team across 30+ brands. No easy feat!

This was the perfect opportunity to implement my "People + Data" approach.

Good habits = Good data!

The value of the insight was EVERYTHING. Answering the "so what" in every report was critical to brand teams.

This is where I used the "counter metric" methodology. I helped the team identify key metrics that needed to drive specific outcomes.

We visualised this into a real-time BI tool.

In this instance, it was to drive brand salience. I learnt a lot from the Kantar's insights reports and learnt the value of building brand salience. More of this later!

We proved how an integrated approach with our creative and data teams can influence growth.

And again, BOOOOM! More proof that this approach works!

We showed how the metric, earned impressions, can help grow brand salience and ultimately drive more revenue.
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With my good friend (and content contributor) Craig Wight, we developed this guiding framework to build highly effective data teams.

After exiting Hoorah Digital, I had time to reflect on the real challenges marketing leaders have today.

I've seen the frustration that CMO's and Heads of Marketing have, they are under immense pressure to prove marketing's impact on business revenue.

And here's what I've realised...

Owned, Paid and Earned Media have unintentionally created their own silos.

Currently there is no SMART solution (until now) to measure the impact of these media types have on each other.

More recently, after working on a measurement project for a multi-national financial organisation,...

I came to the realisation that data visualisation holds the key to breaking down these silos and getting better at measuring marketing effectiveness.

And BOOOOOOM- another breakthrough.

The Growth Metrics Framework (GMF) was born! 
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