Data is useful because it allows you to speak to a person like they are a person rather than a number. Or a tag. People resent being numbered and or tagged – so don’t do what every self styled media guru in social media on the planet tells you to.
Err on the side of caution. Test. Learn. Roll out.
You only roll out a campaign, after you are sure what your return on it is going to be. Data allows you to run a campaign, collect responses to it (marketers really have to go beyond clicks – clicks make Google rich – NOT your brand) use clever codinf strategies and then calculate how much value the campaign generated from a brand, financial, emotional, social and personal (a key consumer insight is still the most important thing you will generate) perspective.
Once you have a core metric – your next step is to benchmark for the rest of the year against it.
The biggest issue with databases is not data – it’s the way it’s been collated. When fields are not consistent, analysis becomes hard- even impossible. Big consultants and digital agencies are selling you expensive solutions, not quality ones. Their motivation is their mortgage not your business or your success as a Chief Marketing Officer, CEO or Chairman of a Board. All they are selling is glorified Excel – standardised fields into which your staff mindlessly enter data without any thought for how they’re going to use it to drive profit or margin (your KPIs) at a later date.
Field consistency is important but it’s basic The real game is using data to make accurate predictictions on your market and where it’s going next. For these predictions to be robust, data cannot work in a silo. It has to integrate with the media. And other qual research that is vailable for marketers to tap into.
A good qualitative research will generate the same insights that customer data does. The difference is with customer data we can tailor products, purposes, prices, promotions and a range of other factors that allow us to be more successful with brands and the way we market them – position and sell them – to their customers.
