Turning Data Into Action

What’s the number one challenge for marketers in this digital age? The answer, according to Michael Fassnacht, who writes for CMO Strategy in Advertising Age, is turning consumer data into actionable marketing insights up and down the organization, something he refers to as the “democratization of data.”

More than that, the data must be “distilled and made easy to read, understand and leverage.”

Yet, Fassnacht argues that this simply is not happening, and he cites three reasons:

First, most marketers lack the basic understanding for how to do this.

Second, those savvy enough to do this have trouble translating data into insight and action.

Third, marketing execs rely on spreadsheets, instead of “intuitive and graphically appealing visuals.”

What’s a CMO to do to drive data-driven marketing?

As Fassnacht reviews, CMOs need to become champions of data. They can “embrace the geeks” and team them up with a marketing strategist. And they can stop using spreadsheets and focus on “new visualizations” to explain insights.

Fassnacht cites IBM’s use of “history flow,” or visualizing dynamic data.

Finally, he argues that CMO’s need to focus on relevance. “It’s never about the volume of analyzed data or the complexity of an algorithm but about the actionability of derived insight.”

In other words, get past “analysis paralysis” and turn data into action.