Marketing Data

We’re now in the crossfire of a peaking hype cycle for big data and its inevitable backlash. One marketer the other night was yelling on Twitter, “Big Data People need to GET OFF MY LAWN.” I confess, I empathize with his frustration. Of course, I believe that data — the right data, used in the right ways — is immensely powerful in modern marketing. As I wrote in a post about pragmatic marketing, “Relying solely …

14 rules for data-driven, not data-deluded, marketing Continue Reading »

Let’s face it: we’re swimming in a sea of essentially infinite data at this point. In a recent Teradata report, “lack of needed data” was cited as the least common obstacle to data driven-marketing. Only 22% of the marketers surveyed said that’s what held them back. The most common obstacle? “Lack of process to bring insights into decision-making.” Data may be marketing’s most underutilized asset, but it’s hardly its most scarce. Teradata honed in the …

Strategic data vs. data theater in data-driven marketing Continue Reading »

According to a new study on data-driven marketing by Teradata Applications (the artists formerly known as Aprimo), 45% of marketers believe that data is the most underutilized asset in the marketing organization. Most underutilized. That’s throwing down the gauntlet. And indeed, 78% of the marketers surveyed say that they feel pressure to become more data-driven. The research, conducted with more than 2,200 marketers at companies with $100 million or more in revenue, revealed a number …

Data is the most underutilized asset in marketing Continue Reading »

As marketers, we want to be better consumers of data. Presented with data and its analysis, we want to be able to judge its accuracy and relevance to our decision making. We want to gauge its ambiguity and uncertainty, even though on the surface we’re being presented with quantified “facts.” We want to detect bias and account for it. So let’s start with our own statistics in content marketing. Because, seriously, too many of the …

5 ways to make stats in content marketing more credible Continue Reading »

A couple of months ago, I wrote a column on Search Engine Land titled Why Big Testing Will Be Bigger Than Big Data. A shorter spin-off of my post here on the big data bubble in marketing, its overarching message was that in a world of ever more data, experimentation would inevitably become king. The message seemed to resonate, and the article was widely shared. However, my suggestion that the number of people empowered to …

Advice from a Jedi Knight of marketing experimentation Continue Reading »

If I were a marketer psychologist — that is, a therapist to marketing teams, for which I’m sure there’s a market — I could imagine making a fine living by asking open-ended questions, such as “What does marketing science mean to you?”, and holding up a mirror to people’s responses. I hear you say data-driven. What’s your earliest memory of working with data? “Marketing as a science” strikes me as a bit of a Rorschach …

Does marketing science mean you can predict the future? Continue Reading »

There is tremendous excitement around data-driven marketing. A whole catalog of data-related phrases are echoing throughout the marketing world: big data, data mining, data science, data exchanges, data management platforms, controlled experiments (“big testing“), analytics, metrics, dashboards, etc. But the data driving all these different activities isn’t quite the same. Or, more accurately, the contexts in which marketers use that data aren’t the same. Different data-driven activities change how you should think about data, manage it, …

Marketing data: exploration vs. confirmation Continue Reading »

In observing the language that CIOs and CMOs alike keep using around the big data bubble — where both parties seem ready to acknowledge that marketing is in the hot seat for making productive use of data — I’m starting to conclude one of two things: “Data” is a euphemism for all application-level marketing technology. There’s an illusion that data-driven marketing can thrive independent of any deeper engagement with the technology that generates or harnesses …

Data is marketing’s gateway drug to software fluency Continue Reading »

Let’s face it: marketing is in a big data bubble. That’s both a “big data” bubble and, more generally, a big “data” bubble. Everyone is talking about data, big data, data analytics, big data analytics. Vendors, analysts, consultants, pundits, bloggers, etc., are all falling all over themselves to squeeze these terms into their propaganda content marketing. As just one example, three out of the Top 10 predictions for CMOs by IDC revolve around data. How …

The big data bubble in marketing — but a bigger future Continue Reading »