Blog posts of '2019' 'September'

The evolving role of the Chief Data Officer 

Data has become a big part of organization decision making and success. Organizations rely on data as a predictive tool for making decisions such as target market, how much product to produce, and upcoming trends they can take advantage of. With such a greater emphasis on data and data quality, more and more organizations are hiring Chief Data Officers and considering their role to be an essential part of the executive team.

With the emergence of such a new role, the associated job descriptions of Chief Data Officers, or sometimes called Chief Analytics Officers, vary drastically from organization to organization depending on the organization’s needs. As with all change, there are some who hesitate or don’t understand the importance and need for change. For many stakeholders this is the case, as stakeholders need to understand the importance of the CDO’s work before they will buy-in.

Without a narrowly defined role, CDO’s have a lot of leeway for shaping their jobs, much like entrepreneurs. With a business focus and a understanding of the strategy and direction their organization is heading, CDO’s find a way to accomplish their objectives by using data.

Many organizations are even combining the roles of Chief Data Officer and Chief Analytics Officer into one, because data only becomes useful when it is good quality and once it can be explained by means such as analytics.

With the growth of the role, certain trends and patterns are being set and followed for the progression of the CDO role, but there is still a lot of room for change.

Marketing by Zip Code

The idea that a business can reach consumers across the United States and Canada within a few minutes would have stunned early marketers. Before the rapid breakthrough’s in technology of the internet, television, radio, and freeways, marketing was confined to small geographic areas and was done primarily through word of mouth and local newspaper ads. Today, just the opposite problems exist, its too easy to reach people and so business find themselves competing for the attention of consumers. This has leads to more specific intention marketing. Rather than spend immense amounts of ad spend trying to reach everyone and hope someone notices you and then wants to take action and purchase, targeting specific people who are most likely to buy leads to increase ROI and greater overall profits.

There are many ways to target consumers. Age, gender, ethnicity, hobbies, and income are among a few, but if your product or service is applicable to any of these categories, then targeting by geographic area may be the most effective option. For your business, it may be easier or more cost effective to deliver or offer your product in particular areas, for example if your product is related to farming, you would want to target areas where farmers live and own property. While you could choose a county or city, you may still be paying marketing expenses for many people not in your target audience. Zip Codes group areas that are similar to each other, for example a business park may have its own Zip Code, or a group of apartments. Targeting by Zip Code more effectively allow you to reach the right geographic group that will give you the boost in new customers and sales your business needs.

When targeting by Zip Code, you can decide how specific you want your campaign to be by choosing to use a basic 5-digit Zip Code grouping, or a much more detailed 9-digit Zip Code. Both are created by the USPS, but the 9-digit Zip Code is specific to delivery areas and routes of the postal delivery workers. The 9-digit Zip Code will give you the most insight into areas that are very similar to each other, like neighborhoods with similar income residents, or an apartment complex. The 5-digit Zip Code breaks up areas of a city and possibly surrounding cities that tend to be similar, but doesn’t break the areas up to the same specific detail as the 9-digit Zip Code.