Really, We Haven't Said It Enough... It's All About Data
Posted by sdubois on 6/26/2008
This is certainly one of my favorite topics, and I continue to say this a hundred times a week to our clients. The value of data in marketing efforts cannot be overlooked, and having "deep" data opens up a world of possibilities.
One of my regular reads is Seth Godin's Blog and he has an excellent post about the
Five Easy Pieces in marketing. Seth lists them as data, stories, products, interactions and connections. Great observations.
However as it applies to marketing I think Seth may have understated data (although maybe not intentionally). Technology is such, that a large part of media can be personalized. Therefore data can be used to encourage interactions or to variably showcase relevant products (he does talk about AdWords). How about using data to showcase different stories? A product (or more so a service) will often have a multiple stories that will appeal to different people.... If the data is "deep" you can go there! I guess in the chart, I would have data on top.
I find the hardest part about adopting this for people is that it involves change. To often data is treated as one-off, or if there is an observation and data is appended, it never seems to make it back to the IT people so that it can be used in the future. Crazy!
I should also point out one other great article by our friend Barb Pellow at InfoTrends focusing on the value in data-driven marketing.
Until next time...