The "guesswork" era in Marketing is over!

Over the past few years, data has become essential in business development and is a trend in the technology world. Data takes center stage; everyone talks about analytics, artificial intelligence, customer journeys, etc. “Data is the new oil,” as someone once said, but truthfully, data itself is useless!

Yes, it’s the use of data and the ability to transform data into “intelligence” that is the great differentiator.

Despite being a familiar topic, it is still somewhat distant for some organizations that need to recognize its value and the real differentiating factor that data can have as an essential tool for business development, productivity improvement, efficiency, and better decision-making, among other areas. These organizations, despite having access to data, need a data-centric culture.

A study by Qlik found that only 24% of business decision-makers feel comfortable with effective data usage.

Therefore, data literacy is a big topic today for modern management. The ability to access, read, interpret, and demonstrate the insights discovered and, subsequently, act and make decisions based on those insights is often the difference between success and failure. In the current organizational ecosystem, not only large corporations can create large information repositories, data lakes, or real-time analytics. Fortunately, these concepts are increasingly generalized and made available to every company. Therefore, it’s no longer enough to have data, and installed capacity to extract, treat, and make it public. Everyone can have that. The real differentiation lies in empowering resources and teams to interpret all the collected and available information.

As for marketing, the situation is similar. Analytics and analytical profiles are increasingly finding their place in marketing departments. In marketing, data should be the essence of decision-making and strategy definition. We live in the analytical era; there’s no turning back.

As I often say, the “guesswork” in marketing is over!

Marketing strategies must be increasingly data-driven, with an ever-greater concern to measure them, their real impact, and their return. Campaigns are no longer launched just because we “think” they will have an effect or because they are disruptive or creative. Decisions are data-based, and the implemented strategies must be measured and evaluated.

In 2019, Harvard Business Review stated that customer experience has become the new marketing.

Only with analytics is it possible to design an effective customer journey, know the customers, their consumption habits, their buying behaviors, their “moment of life,” interaction history with the brand, on which channels, in what way, etc. Data… and more data. The marketing of the future uses all this data to extract relevant insights, which allow creating unique experiences for its customers.

The Marketeer is a manager who makes informed decisions and must have an increasingly greater data literacy, the ability to understand the business, analyze data, and define and interpret KPIs. These are “core” competencies for any marketing and communication professional who wants to create an impact on their company’s business.

Article originally written in Portuguese in November 2022 for ECO Newspaper- O “achismo” no marketing acabou – ECO ( sapo.pt )