Introduction

From informing creativity to tracking a single customer’s pathto-sale, data has become an integral part of every marketer’s thinking. First came large volumes of structured and unstructured data—better known as ‘big data’. Then came small data, which focuses on working with data in a volume and format that makes it accessible and actionable.

Basically, marketers know that data is important, but a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Magnetic highlights the current challenges and limitations that face marketers. Every day, enterprises process so much data that most of the information coming across multiple channels and departments goes unnoticed and unused. So how can marketers start making sense of it all? And how can they break down ‘big data’ so that it not only makes sense, but offers real value to the organization?

The Forrester study cited data quality, technology, and expertise as top obstacles for leveraging data. At Movable Ink, we wanted to dig further into specifics and asked different data experts about some of the top challenges for marketers today—and for actionable tips that businesses can use when thinking about data. Here’s what they told us…

1. Avoid Analysis Paralysis

One of the biggest data challenges marketers face is analysis paralysis: with so much you could focus on, how do you find the data that’s relevant? There are two strategies you can employ to help focus marketing with big data.

First, set realistic goals of what you want to attain and then figure out which datapoints will help you get there. Employ marketing strategists and data scientists to help you set and achieve these goals.

Second, be creative with the data that you take in. We recommend utilizing human data1 to help you get an authentic picture of a customer.

Human data is the most infallible data that a person can generate— activity, health, fitness, and location data. It allows you to further segment and target your existing customer base.

For instance, if you knew that half of your customers were highly active, you could save real marketing money by narrowing your healthy lifestyle and fitness brands to this segment. Reversely, you could target your non-active segment with more relaxing and low impact brands that fit their lifestyle.

2. Get Internal Stakeholders to Care

One of data’s greatest challenges and opportunities is that it’s not just useful for marketing tasks. Traditional marketing data can be used for other business areas and should involve C-level executives, marketing, IT, sales, product, HR and other internal stakeholders.

No matter how much data a company collects, the analysis of that data should be driven and tied back to core business goals—the infamous “bottom line.” The amount of data that can be collected tends to cause such a state of overwhelm that many businesses lose sight of the reality that the data is only as valuable as its relation to business growth.

3. Enhance Offline Experiences with Online Data

Today, consumers demand seamless experiences. One of the best ways to provide this is to anticipate intent. Recognizing a customer’s needs before they pick up the phone means the service rep can provide the missing link in the path-topurchase, creating an omnichannel experience for the customer as they move from online to offline.

Data gained from online interactions such as search queries, keywords, clicks, and impressions can further be used to route a customer to the agent best suited to deal with that type of call. That agent can then be given specific information about the caller, making them much more likely to deliver a sale.

4. Don’t Make Decisions on Bad Data

“Garbage in, garbage out” is a phrase that perfectly captures the idea that faulty data will lead to faulty decisions. Before making decisions based on data, even when it’s small data, you have to ask and answer one question: Is it good data? In the Forrester study, 38% of respondents cited inaccurate data as a critical challenge.

A common mistake when using data is to put forth a thesis and then search the data in order to validate what you want the answer to be. Large data sets will almost always provide certain amounts of evidence you can use to support all kinds if incorrect assumptions. Instead, you should start with the data, pare it down, look for outliers, and, if possible, review it over time to identify trends.

5. Use Public Data to Pinpoint New Customers

Studying the data your business generates can tell you which of your online marketing campaigns works best. Do your ads appeal to your target market or another market altogether?

For example, GreenPal, an online marketplace for lawncare, ran a payper-click (PPC) Adwords campaign with one ad targeting the entire metro area of Nashville, TN. The headline read: ‘Local Lawn Pros in Nashville are a click away.’

The ad performed well, but they wanted to make it even more contextual and relevant to the recipients. GreenPal used census data and found that East Nashville is an up-and-coming neighborhood populated with a more working-class demographic. They segmented those zip codes and ran a specific ad with a headline: ‘The Cheapest Lawn Mowing in Nashville. Lawn mowing from $20.’

After running the ad for one month, on-page analytics proved it was a good strategy. That targeted campaign experienced a more than 200% lift in click-through rate and 30% lift in on-page conversion.

6 Keep Your Data Updated

Data drops in value when it can’t be accurately tracked across touchpoints. This is where a robust customer relationship management system and airtight marketing automation programs come into play. When you don’t have these systems in place, the data-update onus is on the people who interact with the buyer, at each critical touchpoint.

This is where the utility of big data starts to fall apart. Even when you select a handful of high-value columns, gaps occur when the data isn’t updated. This can be as simple as forgetting to mark a record as unsubscribed, to a more critical issue like failing to re-segment a buyer based on stated product interests.

7. Fill Out the Other 98%

In an ideal world, you would automatically get consumers’ email addresses when they visit your site. This way, you could send them emails with content tailored to match what they did on your site in order to generate more leads without spamming.

In reality, the only way to do this is if the consumer signs up for something, which is a small subset of site visitors. For example, Blue Fountain Media, a website design and app development company, is only able to capture data on about 2% of the users that visit their website.

Using the data you do capture, send a simple message with a survey that asks about their experience. This can help you determine what initiatives you need to move forward with, and what needs to be changed.

8 Make Your Data Human

Though having lots of data on your customers and knowing that data is a big competitive advantage for marketers, true customer knowledge and insight must go further. Want to really know your customers? Ask them what they need.

If, as a marketer, you are not in the habit of talking to your customers, start now. If you are and ask leading questions, change now and ask more open-ended questions that get you into the mind of your buyer. And if you truly want to understand your ideal buyer, ask those folks who are not your customers. Again, keep the questions open-ended and not so focused on “why did you not choose us?”

Big Data, Big Decisions

When it comes to actually making use of data, the first thing marketers need to do is ask themselves what they want from it. Right now, there’s a lot of emphasis on collecting as much data as possible, because data is good. But why is it good? And what good does it do for the business? More importantly, how does it improve and enhance the consumer experience?

If your efforts at data collection, cleansing, and analysis don’t lead to better outcomes for your company and customers, then big data is a big waste of time. By starting off small and focusing on immediate use cases, marketers can finally use data in a meaningful and significant way.