Data-First Marketing

CHAPTER 3Data-First Marketing: Transforming Your Marketing Organization

Increasingly, data-driven or data-based marketing is the topic of discussion for marketers. This seems straightforward – that marketers would use information they have collected to develop strategies and make better decisions about content, campaigns, and the like. But most companies, even the marketing “leaders” with the resources to truly invest in data analytics resources and capabilities, are not realizing the full potential of the data and intelligence available to them. Too often, data-driven marketing is still considered an “add-on,” utilizing data analysis resources residing outside of the marketing function instead of being used every day by marketers themselves. Most data-driven marketing is reactive and not strategic – applied after campaigns are executed instead of being incorporated from the beginning of setting strategy and goals. It's a nice-to-have instead of a must-have. It's no wonder that data-driven marketing is still marginalized.

In order for data-driven marketing to succeed in any organization, there must be a fundamental transformation of the marketing function. We are asking marketers to embrace something that most of them have never done before. You can't just say, “We're going to start analyzing our data to make smarter decisions.” You need to set your marketing team up for success and change your culture to one where you think of data first, not last, which is exactly where data-first ...