Data-Driven Marketing Vs. Customer Pulse Reading: Are Marketers Becoming Too Data-Centric?

In the world of marketing, data analysis is seen as the one-stop-solution to all needs for insight. Big data mining has changed the way we approach marketing forever.

The data-centric approach is useful, but the average marketer has so much data at their fingertips that getting too caught up in analysing data might actually be detrimental.

The data-heavy approach is advocated by marketers in an effort to become more customer centric. But the way it’s used now is might do more to hinder than help.

Try and sift through too much data, and you risk stagnation while you tear out your hair in frustration. This doesn’t mean that data is evil though. On the contrary, it’s incredibly important to your marketing strategy. The catch being that you need to use it in the right way.

Pick And Choose

To keep big data analytics from doing more harm than good, you need to adjust your marketing plan to have a solid long term strategy in place and use that as a springboard. Be wary of exclusively wading through the potentially immense amounts of data that you can collect.

Don’t lose focus of the big picture when you’re choosing what data to use. For example, use only KPI’s that are relevant to your goal and disregard the rest on a case-to-case basis.

Understand The Data Fully

When it comes right down to it, data can only tell you the ‘what’. The ‘how’ and ‘why’ comes from the person analysing the data. They need to know what data is relevant to the marketing goals, and how different data sets are connected to each other.

When analysing the data you’ve chosen, keep in mind how the numbers were arrived at. This helps glean accurate and actionable insights instead of simply taking a textbook approach.

Watch Out For Bad Data

Another major problem you might encounter with a purely data-driven approach is that the data you collect might be faulty. This could happen for a number of reasons. The data collection methods might used be unsound, the sample sizes and composition could be off, or your data sources might be unreliable.

Keep A Finger On The Customer Pulse

Deviating from the data-centric approach might be scary, but getting an accurate reading on your customers’ thoughts can do wonders for your marketing strategy. It allows you to take a flexible, truly customer-centric approach.

Talk To Your Customers

A carefully-framed questionnaire or survey directed at your customers will give you everything you need to know about their views on your service or product. This would help you improve the customer experience greatly.

Focus groups are also effective at figuring out what they think of your brand, but research has shown that a lot of the time, the views presented by focus group participants might be influenced by their desire to impress other participants. This makes it important to choose your sample carefully.

Don’t Forget Your Employees

The insights you glean from your customers can be further supplemented by tapping into your employees’ knowledge. They interact with customers everyday. In cases where the customer has a problem but can’t be bothered to make a formal complaint, they’d let your employees know.

Asking the right questions is important, or the whole exercise would be moot. A good marketing strategy uses a combination of data-driven marketing and keeps a close eye on your consumer base through market surveys as well.

If you’d like to use this innovative approach to grow your business, contact us here.