The problem with “data driven marketing”
This will probably be an unpopular opinion.
I have a problem with data driven marketing: I think it sucks.
But before I go any further, I want to say this: I don’t hate data. I love data. The amount of information I have at my fingertips in 2018 is unparalleled and incredible. A marketer in 1998, much less 1978 would kill for the amount of data that I take for granted.
OK, maybe they wouldn’t kill. Sorry for being dramatic. But you get the point.
And yet, I have a problem with data driven marketing.
To start, data driven marketing is often not data driven at all. Instead, it’s marketing that’s worked marginally well in the past that’s reused because it feels safe. Yet, it makes a massive assumption that because something has worked once, that it’ll work again. Maybe it will and maybe it won’t. Sure, there are some tried and true things in the world, but when it comes to marketing and advertising, it’s not always best to go with what’s worked in the past.
But no one will lose their job over this decision, to go with what’s been done before. And hey, we have numbers to support the idea. Maybe it won’t make a great impact, but its safe, middle of the road, and not least of all, it’s easy. With the glut of data points available, we can practically make anything look like it’s working. Even if it’s not. We’ll make this look good again.
All over the world, there are agencies and marketing departments being asked for reports on their latest efforts. Usually, these requests come far too early in the campaign to send stellar results, so we cherry pick glamour metrics and put together a clean looking report with a lot of upward trending graphs and charts splashed with plenty of green and blue. We avoid the red. We avoid the numbers that haven’t moved in the direction that we wanted. It seems innocent enough. Virtually every one of us has been guilty of this.
We sold the decision maker on social media, or email, or content, or inbound and now they want to see the sales or leads or whatever the agreed upon KPI was. And, in this hypothetical, social media has resulted in no leads. So we show the impressions. Email has yielded no new sales, so we show how many people opened the email. Our content has a bounce rate in the high 80s or low 90s, so we talk about the amount of people that clicked to it and “read it”. We shift the focus to the good looking data.
This isn’t always the case, of course. Sometimes all of these result in sales and leads. But when they’re not working, rather than make a bold move, people shift the focus to the good looking data.
And social media yielding tons of impressions isn’t bad. High email open and click through rates are fantastic. Tons of people checking out your content is fabulous. But if it’s not yielding sales, we should try to regroup and find something that will and also teach decision makers about the value of brand awareness. But you can’t take brand awareness to the bank, so tweak, test, optimize, whatever you want to call it. Make something creative. Something based on data but is bold enough that you’re not sure how it’ll work. Use your gut.
Marketing is part science, part creativity. Never one or the other.
The ability to misuse this data results in a lack of innovation.
It’s not an innocent situation, and both sides are to blame — the decision makers and marketers alike. The decision makers need to understand that marketing takes time and marketers should educate them and set realistic expectations. Then go do something meaningful and bold. Or go down in a blaze of glory trying.
I’ll say it again: Marketing is part science, part creativity. Never one or the other.
This all happened because a lot of the data driven marketing channels worked really well when things like email, social media, and content were brand new, shiny concepts in the digital age of marketing. They worked really well because there was less competition. It was less noisy. And the data was showing that things were going very, very well. But was it, really? Or was a good chunk of this fools gold?
What if some of those sales were going to happen regardless? That’s the worst thing about this situation. That’s the he worst thing about data driven marketing.
Often it leads to taking credit for sales that were already going to happen. This becomes a goal, then. Attributing sales to marketing. New ideas be damned. We’re going to find a way to make it look like we’re effective. Maybe this comes from putting too much pressure on marketers to deliver results, and maybe it comes from marketers just not knowing the true value in what they do. Of course we want to drive sales, but we want to drive new sales. Sales that would have never happened unless we did what we did.
If you’re driving new sales with your campaigns, fantastic. But if you’re feeling like you’re constantly playing catch up or shifting the focus from one metric to another — maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board and create something clever and new. Contrary to popular belief, there are still new ideas out there to be had.
Thanks for reading.
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