How to conquer data paralysis

Marketers need to learn how to master data science to stay ahead

Twenty years ago, marketing was a whole different ballgame. You’d buy a magazine ad or a billboard and hope for results.

Today, marketing looks much more like a science; it’s data-driven, precise, and numerically grounded. For example, it’s possible to know how many people landed on your company’s latest blog post last Wednesday, what city each person was located in, and how long each visitor stayed on the page.

But just because that information is available doesn’t necessarily make it useful. The current marketing dilemma isn’t in gathering data; rather, it’s sifting through the mountains of minutia without getting buried in a veritable landslide. The challenge of marketers is now fishing for concise, actionable insights in a stream of scrap data. 

Symptoms of Analysis Paralysis

CMOs want quantified, useful information about how customers think, feel, and interact with the brand. But where to begin? With a few keystrokes, you can probably pull up enough charts and data to boggle any statistician’s brain. Between figures about website visits, social media engagement, app downloads, bounce rates, and conversion rates, it’s no wonder so many marketers feel paralyzed.

One major issue that leads to data paralysis is poor presentation. Data scientists might drool over linear regression models, but marketers feel more at home with Facebook posts and press releases. To make data more interpretable, present it in a pie chart or graph for easy reference.

Another notoriously paralyzing challenge for marketers is tying data to ROI. Sure, Google Analytics can help you track your site’s keywords, but unless you can associate each keyword with actual conversions, your CEO won’t be impressed.

Mining for Gold

The data mountain is formidable but hardly impossible. Even if your background is in business rather than data science, you can still conquer the summit with these tools and tips:

• Create goals. Too many marketers start hunting before they even know what they’re looking for. Before you ever set eyes on a data set, create a plan — are you mining for gold, copper, or coal? In other words, what questions do you want to answer? Do you want to discover the customer lifetime value for your app, or are you more interested in looking at in-app purchases?

• Get a metrics dashboard.With data goals in place, you’ll need simple, automated software to plot your most valuable data points. Plenty of agencies build in-house software, and Klipfolio offers some out-of-the-box solutions for social media monitoring and keyword tracking. A metrics dashboard presents data visually to make tracking your progress a breeze.

• Cultivate broader buy-in. You aren’t the only one who needs to know what’s going on with your company’s prospects and customers; the information you collect is useful throughout the entire company. Don’t just guess at what the engineering department wants to know. Ask them! When the whole team feels like they have a stake in the project, you’ll find helping hands everywhere you look.

• Invest in the right tools.Your mining efforts won’t go far if you only bring a plastic shovel and a sand bucket. Invest in robust analytics software, such as Tableau, to help you comb through the rubble and discover hidden gems of insight. Using specialized software, rather than Excel or Google Sheets, can help you display insights to a non-technical audience and massively reduce the amount of time spent on tasks like data entry.

• Hire an analyst.It isn’t easy, but there comes a time to recognize that you’re in over your head. Your Excel skills and memories of basic statistics won’t cut it anymore. Consider hiring a data scientist to guide you on the data mountain — it’s not a cheap solution, but a dedicated data analyst can propel your marketing efforts to new heights.

Sure, marketing has changed. It has shifted from a guess-and-check industry to a regimented, quantitative one. But with concrete goals, a clear way to display insights, and the team on board, the data mountain won’t look so insurmountable after all. There be marketing gold in them hills — if you know how to find it!

Deren Baker is the CEO of Jumpshot, a San Francisco-based startup that offers marketing analytics software tailored for the travel, retail, media, and e-commerce industries. He has previously held senior roles at Travelocity, Switchfly, and EzRez. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.