Top Marketers’ Advice on Getting Started with Data

Where do you start as you’re trying to transform your marketing organization into one driven by data? Matt Westover, vp-product marketing, Turn, led a session with top brand and agency marketers on the topic at the Gartner Digital Marketing Conference in San Diego.

With 80% of business leaders expecting their companies to become digital enterprises by 2019, it’s safe to assume most marketers are weighing the challenges of being data-driven.

Lily Won, communications director, Saatchi LA, said an easy way to get started is mining data to get a deep understanding of your audience. The aim is to create a profile of the people going to your website and how they may differ from your existing customers, she said, adding that Turn has been a great strategic partner for Saatchi as its clients try to better understand their customers.

While a lack of visibility into performance is cited as a leading challenge of for marketers, that doesn’t mean they need or want performance updates in real-time. It’s often costly and doesn’t provide an insight marketers can act upon.

Jeremy Lyons, head of CRM and web marketing, Sony, said that actual real-time is almost never necessary, especially on the reporting side. He said that the worst use case for real time is measuring something that doesn’t have time to change.

“If you keep asking what day is it all afternoon, that’s a useless question,” Lyons said, adding that real-time reporting can be distracting and present an opportunity cost to marketers.

Two things that necessitate real-time reporting are creative testing, which informs media buying, and customer experience, said Lance Hill, global head of insights, HP. If a customer has a problem with a printer or PC, HP aims to respond to customers within a few hours. And with more technology available today than ever before that can be used to improve the customer experience, data could improve every part of the customer journey — not just turning a negative situation around.

Westover asked the panelists what they wish people knew as they left the session. Won recommended businesses trying to get data-driven know their “north star”: “Have a plan, have a vision, so all partners are working toward a shared common goal. If you don’t have a plan to socialize key stakeholders and communicate to key agency partners, it compounds what’s already a very difficult process.”

Lyons gave a tactical answer: “Get in the discipline of planning what you need to accomplish. Make sure you can measure it… And see if it’s going to work.” Following a disciplined process will point you to solutions and data you don’t have and need and skills that your team needs to build.

For more on getting data-driven, see how Turn is making data and analytics better for marketers.

About Amobee

Founded in 2005, Amobee is an advertising platform that understands how people consume content. Our goal is to optimize outcomes for advertisers and media companies, while providing a better consumer experience. Through our platform, we help customers further their audience development, optimize their cross channel performance across all TV, connected TV, and digital media, and drive new customer growth through detailed analytics and reporting. Amobee is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tremor International, a collection of brands built to unite creativity, data and technology across the open internet.

If you’re curious to learn more, watch the on-demand demo or take a deep dive into our Research & Insights section where you can find recent webinars on-demand, media plan insights & activation templates, and more data-driven content. If you’re ready to take the next step into a sustainable, consumer-first advertising future, contact us today.