Welcome to the second growth podcast. I am to work in like the P of demand Jen here at Refine Labs joined today by my co-host Allison Hi, hi everyone. I think we're also live on LinkedIn. So this is new for us We'll see yes, I like that I was kind of a question kind of a statement because we're really kind of flying blind here a little bit But yeah, I also believe that we are live on LinkedIn right now So trying something a little bit new today Obviously, you know our collective team at Refine Labs have been doing the podcasting for a while and so we're trying to Break into a little bit of a new platform medium here So we're trying with the simultaneous podcast recording and LinkedIn live stream right now And today Allison and I are gonna be talking through crafting a narrative with data storytelling So the the way that this topic came about is we're actually doing We're kind of structuring a bit of a curriculum internally for some of the folks on our team that were looking to train up on some of the Hard and soft skills that you know We typically ask of our directors of demand Jen here and and so I had put together a little bit of a training on this specific topic And I thought it would make for some great content to share it out with the Brother audience as well.
Obviously we took some some liberties as far as as changes of things that just weren't going to apply to a Brother audience as compared to you know what we might be talking about when servicing our clients But I think you know the core of this really is applicable to anyone and everyone in our Our finance following here and those folks that are interested in trying to learn a little bit more about how to present and visualize data in a Different way and I feel a story with it. So let's jump in and see if I can also navigate the slides here Awesome as you're doing that just a quick note I can see the comments rolling in so for those who are joining us live We'll do our best to sort of address those if you leave any questions It doesn't look like we can reply directly right now So we'll also get to those once this is like fully available on LinkedIn But if we can answer anything while we're live here, we definitely will yeah good call out and so yeah If you do have any questions concerns comments about anything that we're talking through feel free to just post a comment on the LinkedIn live feed here We'll do what we can to address it and yeah if we aren't able to speak to it during our recording then maybe we'll just reach out and You know DM your try to set something up. Okay, so back to it I digress I digress Fax-tell story sell I got this advice way back early in my career back when I was selling printers for Canon One of my my first managers told me this and it has stuck with me for many years Of course at the time, you know, this was advice from a selling perspective Not to just feature dump and data dump But rather to try to find a way to tell a story that you know Your audience in that in that case your prospect is going to be able to resonate with and the reason for that is that you know Stories are memorable and raw data is not I think you know, that's probably something that's evidenced by You know all the people that are out there now that are effectively telling stories with data You can even kind of make the the leap to say like, you know Mean culture and things like that are doing a you know great job Just finding different ways to to help visualize and tell a story or make a point outside just using words or data or You know, just go to a fashion copy But the fact remains right you don't want to be in a position where you're just data dumping or feature dumping You want to find a way to craft a narrative around you know The data that you're trying to share that you're trying to deliver and that is going to provide the necessary context that oftentimes the raw data lacks and so When we talk about you know, just data storytelling I wanted to try to kind of tee this up in a way that really hit close close to home for me And and so I really want to just kind of quickly go on a short-engine here just about storytelling itself putting aside the data Right, and so the two cute children that are showing on our feet here for anyone that's following a long live These are my children and the reason that I wanted to use them as an example is because my children my two daughters who are Three and four years old are some of the worst storytellers that I have ever met in my life I've got a lot of work to do there with them they Know all the wrong ways to tell a story and and so you know when I was starting to just kind of like think through the right way to Help inform and coach people up on you know things to do with data storytelling I thought the best place to start is just kind of talking about sort of telling as a whole right and so good stories Right something that will will hook you early bad stories are gonna be kind of taking a little bit longer to develop You know and maybe they're not gonna get your attention right off the bat good stories have an arc a beginning a middle and end and bad stories oftentimes lack that same direction and can maybe lead to confusion instead of you know a realization or insights and Probably most importantly good stories elicit emotion And I think that is ultimately the most important thing when it comes to data storytelling is that you are trying to elicit emotion There's a number of different emotions that you can be striving for to impact or influence But you know what you don't want right is kind of leaving someone with the impression that perhaps they wasted their time Just just listening in right and so with all these things in mind right like what it takes to tell a good story an effective story The question so remains how do we actually do this with data because data itself is For the most part pretty boring and can be you know kind of vanilla or difficult to really you know craft it a narrative around and so I'd come across this This this image that I'm showing on the screen here now and again for anyone that's just listening on audio You know It's basically a pyramid kind of showing at the bottom data the raw data and then tearing up You know the next stage up from there is information and then it goes into knowledge and then insight and action And so the reason that I like this image is because I believe what it does is it demonstrates the path to value where you're effectively converting that raw Data into something that is going to inspire action And and at the end of the day This is exactly what we want to be doing as marketers as sellers when we are telling story with data We want to we want to have the numbers that are going to support our point and support our narrative But what we're ultimately looking for is a way to influence action and again illicit emotion You know move from the objective into the subjective Provide that context that is oftentimes lacking when it is just a raw data point or a collection of raw data points or visuals And really help convert that raw data into something that is going to you know encourage or elicit action on the part of the Audience or the person receiving this this presentation Yeah, and something like I just I want to put out there is actually the reason why I was really excited to join Tory on today's Podcast episode is because this is actually an area that I tend to struggle with as a as a as a presenter So I tend to be a very mathematical person I see the story in the data without needing the story to be written out and as I've worked with so many clients here I think I've come across you know 16 17 different clients I'm beginning to realize that obviously not everybody is in my brain And so I think it's really important to learn out loud and to admit when like Hey, this isn't necessarily a topic with which I am the expert But I am like just like many of you probably out there trying to learn this and incorporate this into my workflows as well And I've learned a lot from Tory and my other peers here on how to be better at this and so something that's really sort of fascinating to me is that concept of Even if you can see the story and the data others can't and so it's your job to explicitly sort of write out what you're seeing in those charts And just steal it into something that can be shared and like sort of disseminated throughout an organization and that once I once I Realize that like this concept of storytelling or having a strong narrative Has been something that I've been really kind of hyper focused on over the last six weeks or so Like how can I do this better within my own presentations? Yeah, and I think you said a couple really interesting points there Alison and like I think what you're what you're saying right Tees up this concept of data storytelling first and foremost it requires a conscious effort For the exact reason that you just mentioned so like the situation in the scenario that you just described where you are Effectively living and breathing this data.
You're inside the CRM's of your clients and the same can be said for anyone listening in Like you're spending time looking at your your platform data or your CRM data And you know this information inside and out but more often than not the people that you're going to be summarizing for and and you know creating these presentations for do not have that same level of familiarity they might not be either as Advanced and just understanding and interpreting the data or perhaps they're just not as familiar with it whether it be because they're from a different part of the Business they're not as dialed into it as you and your colleagues and your team are or maybe it's you know an entirely Different perspective to someone coming in that's that's brand new but whatever the case right like having that kind of that perspective that empathy for your audience and understanding that like You know you can't just just put a bunch of numbers in front of them and expect that they're going to be able to have all that same context as you are That's a really important part of this and probably one of the important starting points that I'll get to here in a moment Which is understanding your audience right that is kind of a golden rule in marketing and the same applies with data storytelling It's really knowing who you're talking to and you know what they do or do not know But again kind of back to like this larger concept of data storytelling So I'm sharing another image on the screen here, which is like a event diagram with four different circles on it And those circles calling them out one by one. So there's what is data storytelling? It's context for communication number one number two The crafting of that narrative again, which is you know kind of what we're really after here Number three it is it is you know presenting the data itself Which of course is going to be critical in your data storytelling and then the fourth element of it They write is that visual design and so data visualization is a skill in and of itself And there are people that are just masters at it and maybe they spend all their time in like tableau or you know Google Data Studio or a million other data visualization tools and I probably never even heard of and so all of these things whether it be the communication the crafting the story the analyzing the data the visuals like These things can be entire fields of work and what I'm trying to suggest here is that like not that you be a master at all of them But just find the different nuances within each of these disciplines or or hard and soft skills here And figure out a way to weave them together to deliver your message in an effective way And so this is not a masterclass in communication or crafting an narrative or data analyzation or visualization But I do think that there will be some some good takeaways here for our listeners for our Watchers of our live stream if we have even one of them right now That would be a high five moment And so let's kind of get into the right the nuts and bolts of it and how to do it So what I came up with here is what I call a four step prep framework for data storytelling As I mentioned just a moment ago, right? Knowing your audience at any point in time and marketing no matter what you're doing This is you know of the utmost importance you need to understand who you're talking to you need to understand You know what these people might be expecting of you or we're looking for But the other thing that you really need to understand is is you know like Allison was mentioned before in the scenario She described like how familiar are these people with the data with the numbers that you're gonna be presenting?
And understanding those things should really help influence that story that you try to tell with the visuals you use because You know for instance if I'm talking to like a performance marketer You know they might be inside our ad platforms and be talking about different metrics and data points that just get totally lost on me And you know it would be important for those those performance marketers to understand that You know when they're updating me on something right and sometimes it might be visual clues Like if my eyes are to glaze over it looks like I'm multitasking You know getting to know the person that you're delivering this this presentation to you know that should have a huge influence on You know on how you tell that story so Allison in your experience I mean You know how what's one of the best ways that that you've kind of figured out over your time Let's just say working with clients here or fine labs that you know kind of has helped you cater your your message You know just based on like you know who you're delivering it to any tips or take away They might be able to offer yeah I think the one that stands out to me is that you have to understand sort of first and foremost how in the lead somebody wants to get So that can be challenging because there are some people that like they want to see Like they're the people that love a good appendix You know they want to see every single graph chart every sort of variation broken down by segment broken down by region You know and then you have your CEOs or your CMOs that really just and I had a client tell me this and it's it's like totally sticking with me And something I'm so conscious of now is like just give me the headlines I want the headlines and so sometimes like actually this is where you have to take really like ownership of your meeting because You might need to present twice you might need to just do the headlines for your decision makers And then set up extra time to like really dig in and get nitty gritty with the people that want to go in the weeds I feel like depending on your mix like when in doubt go more simplistic focus on sort of number two maybe like that story and then really Let the others who want to go deeper like have some special time because I think when you try to do it all That's where you're gonna get really tripped up and that message and that story will naturally be diluted and I've been in the situation where I'll go it like we won't even get past slide two because we're already so far in the weeds that they don't actually like get to the full story So that's my biggest hurdle in roadblock and thing that thing that I'm learning is Just really understand who who is attending and what their level of interest is and how much I think you had a great phrase like are they time poor or time rich so do they have a lot of time to like dig in and understand or Are they like is this the one chance you have with them a recorder to just give them those headlines and really figure that figure that out and give That person the confidence they need to keep your programs going. Yeah, what what matters to your audience, right? You know keeping that in mind so if you're if you're talking to a CEO versus if you're talking to you know Yeah, like a content marketer You know you're gonna want to be talking about different things different points You know one of them is going to be much more interested in revenue and future projections The other one might be a little bit more interested in like website metrics around like that content or you know The you know how engaging the content is right and so yeah, no your audience is always going to be the most important thing And so the next two steps here I almost want to kind of like group together even though they are very distinctly different But the reason I want to talk about them together is because it was very intentional that I I bulleted these that I number these This way and so actually for those that are just listening right now This four step process from top to bottom number one know your audience number two structure your story number three gather Group stratify your data and then number four is distilled down So we talked about know your audience right and again always going to be critical of marketers But number two is structure story and the thing that's interesting here is that what I'm suggesting with this data storytelling is that the story comes Before the data I'm going to pause there and let you take that in for a moment because that's that's really really really important to being able to craft an effective narrative So there's caveats here right as a marketer especially people in the positions that we and our colleagues are fine laughs Like we are very close to the data So we already have a general understanding of what's going on our interpretation our analysis our expectations our forecast You know how are all these things kind of working? But when we're talking about delivering an update to a client or a peer You put those things aside and first you need to figure out what's the story you want to tell And understanding the story that you want to tell is then going to help you figure out which data points are going to be the most important And this is a really important nuance right because there is a such thing as analysis paralysis There is a such thing as too much data You've heard it a million times before like if you look at the data long enough You can tell any story with it And so what I'm suggesting here right is that in the back of your head you want to understand what your story is going to be Before you go and start aggregating all the data and collecting it and plugging in individualization tools and charts And this might be like for anyone listening or watching right now The biggest and most important takeaway in all this with data storytelling is that the story comes before the data And so I think that that that is something that you know is is going to be really interesting and probably counterintuitive to people But when you when you figure out what your narrative that you want to tell is going to be first gathering and stratifying that data becomes a lot Easier because all of a sudden you're going to be much more dialed in you're going to know what's important to your story What's supportive and you're going to know what is just noise?
And I think you know this this concept of like you know explanatory data instead of exploratory data right? So this explanatory data again is it supporting evidence and exploratory data is like okay I'm going to put a data point on the screen and we're all going to sit here and Pronosticate about it like oh, what do you think this means you know boy? You could look at it this way or this way right none of that leave that out of your data storytelling You want to make sure that you've got your story crafted then you go and collect the data and then that last point they are right? Marie Condor that shit to steal it down does it bring you joy?
Does it bring you value if not get it the hell out of there because otherwise you're running the risk of getting cold off track? You're running the risk of the story itself losing impact falling away from that story arc that you kind of already designed in your head And so that last step right is just kind of eliminating all the noise so Allison I know this is probably the first time that you're seeing some of this stuff But like what's your you know, what's your feedback there? What are your thoughts on that four step prep framework? Your audience I mean, I think you're spot on and I'll just say like this is hard But it's so easy to put a you know a four step prep like checklist up here and talk about it but like putting it in practice is super challenging and Tori struggles with it.
I struggle with it like we were we're presenting this so that like we can further educate our listeners We can make better marketers out there in the world But like don't feel bad if this doesn't come naturally to you and if this is challenging because it's still challenging to even us And even like the best of us out there because most of us naturally will go to that third step We'll begin gathering and grouping our data chances are we already have a million dashboards set up We've got a pretty you know pretty fleshed out sort of like pipeline analysis process And so even and that's me naturally like I'm very much you showed that chart before on you know the communication the narrative the Data and then the visualization like I'm so strong in three and four like I love to pull data I love to find the best way to visualize it And then I think my story is like where I spend the least amount of time on because I'm so proud of like look at all this You know data I aggregated and like this is really interesting and fascinating But if you can't kind of harmonize that together, it does lose a little bit of impact And so I think what I love about that is like if you start with a story in mind If you've been monitoring the state of the course of a month or quarter You kind of already know the highs the lows like I always think of things as like what do I want to keep doing? What do I want to start start to doing and what do I want to stop doing? You pretty much already know that and now you can use that data to sort of help you tell that full story and give that arc versus Creating basically the data first and then trying to fit the story into it which is hard It's almost like the exact opposite approach you would normally take and I think that's what sort of separates the really strong You know leaders who can get that by and in that effective change management from the people that are just sort of reporting You know and not having a lot of conversation or a lot of impact within the organization Yeah, and I am I was having a conversation with a colleague just last week and you know The advice that I was giving them was you know on every Monday when you're looking at the week ahead Right and looking at your in this case the client meetings that he's gonna be tasked with preparing for You know I said look at that meeting and you know even if it's just writing it down It's paper in the back your head like setting an intention for that meeting What is your intention for that meeting on that particular week? And I think this applies to anyone listening in right not just people here at fine labs And so if your your goal here right is to figure out this data storytelling this new better way to deliver a message to present your data To your audience when you look at that meeting like what is your intention of that meeting?
Is it for instance like okay? I want to showcase positive signals and help this this you know instill confidence so that you know We can really practice patience with this strategy because it's still early right and we don't have all that Performance data to point to yet or is it you know hey? What's up Nick or is it a situation where like you know? We've got people that are maybe more mature with some of their programs right and we want to just kind of help them understand How much are those programs are maybe to the program?
We say this one's running really smoothly. Let's focus our attention elsewhere Right and so having you know that that intention in mind ahead of your your call that is gonna kind of help you structure The story that you want to tell and then you know kind of it's a domino effect Right and then having that structure for your story is going to help you gather the right data And then once you've got that right data It's gonna help you distill it down a little further So all these things really do kind of almost like kind of build off of one another But enough about the prep work right let's actually get into telling the story so Again kind of four different tips here when it comes to data storytelling So I'll just run through them quickly and then we can go back into them one by one So the first one don't take a dump right visualization summaries are going to be your friend here Allison already hit on the second one right of using headlines I learned this one the hard way You don't want to just be dropping different charts and graphs on there The thing to keep in mind with this use of headlines and summaries is how will your deck in this case read without you there to present it? So I know that I can run through a you know a Google slide stack a PowerPoint deck And I know that I can deliver the message that I want to but if I'm not there If I'm just passing a link around and it's gonna get you know socialized around to a bunch of you know leaders in my company or the CEO or the Board of Directors Well, what's gonna happen if I'm not there to provide that additional context and so that is where you know the data and the Visualizations of course they're helpful in telling your story But the supporting even if it's just a couple bullets or you know a headline or a subheader that additional context Which you want to keep succinct is going to make a huge difference in the ability for that that you know a piece of content to effectively become kind of almost like evergreen right and be able to be socialized around without you there and then third point here right the zooming out so our Chief Growth Officer here over fine labs Cassidy a couple weeks ago He put out a great post and it came from a presentation He did internally which was talking about the need to zoom out when you're talking about your in this case your performance data Right, so when we look at things on a day-to-day or week-to-week perspective It's really easy to get lost in making assumptions about why there's eps and flows happening and sometimes it makes sense to Root cause these ebbs and flows but sometimes you just need to zoom out and take a better broader perspective on what you're looking at and understand that like Okay, while there are things might have been going up and down a little bit when you look at it You know from a quarterly view they're only going up and so you know It's easy to get lost in some of those dips from time to time But when you're looking at looking at things from a broader perspective or just a different perspective sometimes that can really help you Better understand what is actually happening and not get lost on on you know some granular details And then last point here right is is always have a plan So you know it comes back to like kind of starting with the end in mind right? What is the intention that you set?
What is it you know that that you want the action that you want to inspire with the story? Because ultimately that's where you want to kind of cap things at the end right is with a like any good marketing material with the call to action What are we gonna do here? And so the advice that I'll often give our you know my teammates is like you know don't just You know talk about what you're seeing right? It's like oh the data looks good Why does it look good and how can we continue doing these things that that you know have brought us to this point or oh?
There's a different performance. Where's the dip coming from and what are we gonna do to change it right? What is our mediation plan here? So those are kind of the four tips right for actually you know telling that the story right don't data dump use headlines Zoom out and always have a plan or call to action, you know at the at the end your story and think your delivery so Al some applause there.
I probably just did a you know a little bit of data dumping that might have been just kind of Word soup there, but yeah any any thoughts on on some of those tips when it comes actually telling your your data story? Yes, I think one thing that Probably is is important to know is that I don't believe that all stories have to have a happy ending And so I think sometimes there's that balance between being the person who's always presenting things like positive and you know Everything is great and and and manipulate manipulating the data sometimes to show only the positivity I like to strike the balance. I don't want to be doing gloom all the time I don't want to only focus on the things that are going wrong But I want to get myself credibility and be firm enough and strong enough in my My ability to understand what is working and what's not working and there are times where you have to deliver a negative story Or a story that like just doesn't have the happy ending it really is a critical situation It needs to be solved, you know, your programs aren't seeing the results that you would expect There's infrastructure gaps that need to be tidied up that need to really have a strong focus on it And so I think there's always that balance like with because I think sometimes with with headlines people naturally want to go to like How can I find the most positive aspect of this data and just you know microphone that and? There's a balance there like it is okay to say that something is not working It is okay to say that something was unexpected or not going the way that we would hope But that's where that having a plan really compliments the headlines you can have that balance between good and bad basically Yeah, yeah, well said well said and I think that that's you know Probably some you know some really sound advice here for for all those you know marketers that are listening in are watching today Right is that you know?
It's okay If you know the story that you're telling is that you know your performance or your campaigns are not where they need to be Just as long as you follow that with but here's what we're going to do to fix that and here's what we're going to do to close that gap Or here's what we're going to do to lift performance Just what we're going to pivot right and so that needs to be part of your that needs to be part of your story to even if it kind of Makes it feel like incomplete even if it you know there isn't let's say closure for the audience there at the end of that presentation The closure you know that confidence might just just come from the fact that you know They're confident that the person that just delivered the story to them does have a plan for you know How we're going to kind of fix the trends that we're seeing or or get that performance back in a better spot and in line with some of our projections Or forecast so yeah, well said there else and yeah, and I'm very much of the mentality that like I'd rather expose the problem Then have somebody expose it to me and I think there's a way you go about it again It goes back to knowing your audience are the people on the call really in a position to address You know a potential problem that needs to be solved if they're not maybe you focus on sort of other aspects of the data but if you have a chance to get a decision maker in a room and you can weave that into your story that you should absolutely do that because You know I think as marketers like that's where we can then get on the defense is like oh well, you know I didn't see this coming or I wouldn't have done it this way It's like you know you kind of put your cards out on the table and say there's a lot of good things that are happening Here's where we need our attention Here are things that we should scrap like get comfortable with saying things aren't working and being decisive and in your In sort of like what you're presenting and feeling really confident that by the time you sort of piece it all together You're going to kind of have to your earlier point that arc You know you kind of got like the journey how we got there like the good thing or maybe like some bad things that are happening And on a high note like as long as it's kind of all weaved together and you've got multiple perspectives and and angles of let's call it a quarterly review that you're doing You know that's that would be my advice like if it's weighted too heavily on positives and there's nothing that needs to be fixed Then I think you open yourself up to that potential like people poking holes or probing you with questions that you might not have the answers for because you Didn't have a plan for that. I think it's just that balance of Understanding the full story like what what you know the highs and the lows the good and the bad Yeah And so going back to like the you know when I was talking about the prep work and distilling down your your message or story or data the other part that I probably Left out that is important as well is is you want to have that really poignant story, right? And it's and it's concise and it's succinct But that doesn't mean that all the data that you decided, you know, maybe this is should be included Maybe not you can have an addendum that is four or five times larger than the actual deck that you plan to present And when that gets socialized around that addendum can come with it, right? But like having that data available so that just in case someone does start coping holes or things do go sideways and your story does effectively V-ROS course, that's okay And it's also great look for you if you just say, you know what?
Like I thought you might ask that let me just hop into my you know These other slides that I had prepared just in case you did bring up a question like that and oftentimes again When we're talking about instilling confidence in our audience that we you know is ultimately one of our biggest goals here You know having that kind of plan B that's already Thought out and you have some documentation some data some information around it You know that's always a great addition to the story itself, right? So yeah kind of always being prepared for you know what those rebuttals might be and that comes back to know your audience, right? What do they care about and what questions might they ask where might they co-coles have that prepared even if it doesn't slot perfectly into your Story arc and and yeah, you'll you'll never be you know You'll never feel bad out of shape if you go through tell your story and everything went perfectly and you had a whole bunch of extra data That you didn't get into there's never gonna be a case like oh, you know, maybe I over prepared for that That is okay, and you'll be happier if you hadn't didn't need it so Okay, well, I guess in terms of our our story arc here I think we might have reached the end of it might reach our our conclusion here So this was this was fun. I'm interested to hear kind of how the podcast turns out I wonder if there were more than just the two people that said hi in our live stream here that that caught this today besides you and I also know to look for people but yeah, I don't know Maybe we'll be able to check out this number somewhere but for our inaugural voyage here on on LinkedIn live with our second good podcast.
This was a lot of fun So yeah, any any closing words or just say a fair well that the audience your house in? Yeah, no, I think we're all on this journey together. We're all going to become better storytellers and Yeah, I'm excited. I hope to see some good comments So once this is kind of pushed out there's replay options and any questions you guys have let us know awesome and with that the end So that'll end our broadcast.
Thanks everybody