The full session of “Drowning in Data, But Thirsty for Insight?” was a 75-minute epic of marketing data information. Here are the takeaways from that session, presented by Melissa Mines of Bulldog Solutions.
Transcript
So, I think a lot of the chapters that we’ve just seen, there’s three main takeaways from what we’ve really learned, and one is align. So, it is possible to organize. There is way too much coming at us, but if you line up the framework, something similar to this or what we just showed, I think it’s a good way to align your people for you to look at where you have gaps, for you to look at where you need to bring in technology partners to help fill that gap. Obviously, start with your customer’s priorities and then you can categorize, then you can really take a look at where your business is.
The second is commit. So, this really speaks to a lot of the really great points that Elizabeth made around data. Results are only as good as your underlying data. If you don’t start there, anything that I just showed in terms of a case study is going to be off. It’s sort of that one-degree change ultimately as you go miles ahead you end up miles apart.
So, there are four basic questions that you can ask, and at the bottom of it really is how are you building that culture? That admits where you have data strength and admits where you have data weaknesses, but always with the customer in mind.
And then trust the process. Trust the process of acting and learning, of analyzing, of really rolling up your sleeves, and if you don’t understand how to interpret the data, it’s okay, raise your hand, and ask for help and then iterate and constantly iterate.
So, what we know for sure is that you’re not going to drown if you jump in, but if you only read a textbook on swimming and you never jump into the pool, you’ll know the strokes and you’ll know it beautifully, but you really won’t ever know how to swim, and the first time you jump in it will probably—I don’t know like me it will probably look a little silly, but ultimately you’ll get the strokes down.
Data deluge – It’s really—marketing is no longer anything but really data and anything but tack. It’s kind of going back to the old town square but now we have data and we have drop lines where we can see people’s behaviors out in the wild in ways that we haven’t ever been able to. So, it’s the water in which we swim. It’s the air that we breathe, and it’s where the exciting—I mean, we’re really having a renaissance in our profession. It’s never been really a better time to be in marketing.