Creating a data-driven marketing culture

“Data is the new oil.” — Clive Humby

All this talk about data everywhere we look - LLMs, AI, IoT, Big Data analytics, etc., etc., etc. – it all underscores the profound impact (and potential) that data has on shaping our understanding, our decision-making, and even the news and content we are exposed to.

To say we live in a data-driven world would be an understatement. In fact, data is now sometimes argued to be the world's most valuable resource – not least because of its potential to deliver huge amounts of value to those who use it effectively.

The business world of course agrees – collecting and using data at an unprecedented scale across all aspects of operations – and especially for marketing.

And of course, the technology, breadth of application and governance of data has evolved immeasurably (and at an accelerating pace) meaning that organisations are not only collecting, storing and managing more data – they are getting a lot better at it too!

The reality, however, is that data has no intrinsic value

While we are no doubt collecting more data than ever before, it is important to remember that the data in itself will not generate value. It is a tool, and as such is only of value if skillfully put to good use.

Simply having data isn’t enough. To drive real value you want everyone in your marketing team to feel empowered and confident using data, and in skillful ways.

Mind the gap

One of the big challenges organisations continue to face in this data-obsessed world is working out how to make full use of the vast amounts of data they are now collecting – and more specifically, how to create a commercial and marketing workforce that is both data literate, and in turn, culturally data-driven.

But how can I empower my ‘non-technical’ team to be more data-literate? It’s a question that we come across often.

Building bridges

In our experience, marketing teams see the value of data and want to be more data-driven – but often don’t have access to the data and insight that they need, and when they need it.

In most organisations, access to data is concentrated within specialist, expert analytics, data science and/or reporting teams.Commonly, business users are kept one step away from the data, and need to request data and insight from these specialist teams.

And of course, data experts in the form of analysts are very much in demand and almost always very busy. The result is long backlogs for analysis – meaning marketers need to wait a prohibitively longtime to get any insights (if indeed they get it at all!).

This creates a ‘gap’ between data and your marketers that, over time, has meant that far too many teams and individuals are not confident or empowered to use the data they need to do the best possible job.

We help our clients create a data-driven culture in their organisation by bridging this gap and ‘democratising’ their data among their non-technical teams. This involves doing two things:

1. Making it easy for your marketing teams to use data and insight – with confidence
2. Proving the (incremental) value of data-centric marketing

By successfully making use of data (1) easy, and (2) quantifiably valuable in improving campaign results, data-driven optimisation becomes a no-brainer for marketing teams – creating further appetite for ongoing optimisation, and increased data confidence.

Making it happen

Democratising data isn’t easy – and it’s an ongoing journey that requires patience and perseverance. The pay-off, however, is massive. Here are some of the approaches we recommend:

Find some translators

Driving value through data and analytics requires not just technical profiles like data scientists and architects. You also want hybrid experts that can ‘bridge the gap’ between your business and analytics teams.

This is where ‘Translators’ come in. They ensure that organisations achieve real impact from data and analytics by helping marketers to understand ‘what’s possible’ and, at the same time, translating their requirements so the data team understand the ‘why’.

Then, having shaped and helped deliver meaningfully useful insight tools, they size the commercial value of these efforts – ensuring you (and the business) know exactly how much commercial value your new data products have delivered.

Keep it simple

Start small and build - rather than trying to optimise too much in one fell swoop, instead take an iterative approach to optimisation.

Empower your teams to try simple things at first, delivering foundational improvements and then building up sophistication over time.

This makes things a lot less daunting for your teams, means risk is managed at a critical point when teams are building up their data confidence, and enables you to see results far more quickly.

Invest effort in proving value (carrot not stick)

Combined with keeping things simple, you should also keep an eye on the value you are delivering.

This begins at the ideation stage, by running benefit estimates to size the potential value of your ideas, and then, once completed, taking the time to articulate the value you’ve created– both in bottom-line benefits and enabling your stakeholders to meet their goals

Having a quantified value outcome from your efforts serves to not only impress your stakeholders and bolster your investment case –it also supercharges motivation among your business teams to do more with data.

Self-service

Well designed ‘self-serve’ tools are another great approach for arming business teams with a lot of the insight they need. Many of the frequent use cases can be fulfilled without the need of an analyst. Getting counts of the likely audience for a campaign, through to understanding incremental conversions, to even profiling responders – all of this can be achieved by non-technical colleagues using well designed, user-friendly dashboarding tools.

Spending the time upfront to build this capability, and providing the right training for your business teams to use it, can drive long term behaviour change across the breadth of your organisation – not least by reducing SLAs for most types of insight from days or weeks, to mere moments.

How Loop Horizon can help

We are very familiar with this challenge, and have successfully supported many of our clients evolve towards a data-driven culture.

Our hybrid experience across both data and marketing, across a wide variety of industries, gives us a unique understanding of the‘translation’ needed to shift the dial on data-centricity, and make the use of data realistic among business users.

We love to help brands on this journey. If you’d like to find out more please get in touch here.