Agile marketers use data to develop insights and make decisions. Consequently, they’re far more nimble, which lets them maximize opportunities in a rapidly changing marketplace; for agile marketers, data is a strategic asset.
In this article—the second in a six-part series on agile marketing—the round table of experts discusses how they do it and includes the three requirements to implement agile marketing: 1) faster decision making, 2) a solid data foundation, and 3) new tools and methodologies. See Part 1 here.
| The team of experts: | |
| Jennifer Zeszut | CEO, Beckon |
| Jim Ewel | President of Peel the Layers and publisher of the Agile Marketing.Net blog |
| Mark Verone | VP, Global IFE Operations & Automation, Gogo |
| Roland Smart | VP of Social & Community Marketing, Oracle & Author of The Agile Marketer: Turning Customer Experience Into Your Competitive Advantage |
| Scott Brinker | Co-founder & CTO of ion interactive; Editor of chiefmartec.com; Program Chair of MarTech, Author of Hacking Marketing: Agile Practices to Make Marketing Smarter, Faster, and More Innovative |
Kimberly Whitler: Do marketing teams need to change how they think about and use data to support faster, data-driven decision-making?
Scott Brinker: Data in marketing used to be mostly relegated to the content of quarterly and yearly reports. It was a record of the past. In an agile environment, however, data becomes an essential part of navigating the present. We must use it like a pilot uses instrumentation in the cockpit to control a plane in flight.
Data-driven marketing doesn't mean that data has all the answers for us. But it does mean that we treat it as a first-class citizen in our decision-making, to be intentional in our priorities and iterations.
Mark Verone: Data is the new currency of audience measurement, analysis, predictive analytics, personalization/customization and behavioral decisions. If you are not making data-driven decisions or leveraging data-driven marketing techniques, you will fall behind. The amount of data is overwhelming but marketers are natural storytellers and have the innate ability to use the data to tell stories and make more intelligent decisions.
Whitler: One problem marketers struggle with is the fact that data is spread across different departments. How do you create a solid data foundation to support agile marketing?
Jennifer Zeszut: It’s a bit of an oxymoron, but to go fast and be agile, marketing must first slow down and become intentional and deliberate regarding the quality and integration of its omnichannel marketing data. Like contaminated well water, if we give everyone access to bad data, we’ll just make bad decisions at scale. In fact, Gartner found that 90% of self-serve BI (Business Intelligence) projects have NOT done the data governance and cleansing work required to ensure good business decision-making. In other words, 90% of companies are making decisions that negatively impact the business.
Good, clean, accurate, connected, aligned and validated data is essential to unlock insight and growth. Marketing needs a solid data foundation, a source of truth. Access to good, clean marketing data for good, clean decision-making didn’t used to be at the top of a marketing leader’s priority list. But it is now in this era of data-driven marketing.
Brinker: Analytics are only as good as the quality of the data in the system. Therefore, it's important for marketers at all levels to pay attention to the validity of data sources and take steps to make sure that the integrity of the data is maintained over time. High-quality data takes a village.
That being said, there are certainly more technical practices for data management that most marketers won't need to personally master. But they should appreciate the value of those services and seek to collaborate with technical staff who can provide them. This is often a great role for a marketing technologist.
Whitler: How do methodologies for data access and analysis need to change in order to support the rapid decision-making of agile marketing?
Roland Smart: Marketers should look for opportunities to break down big experiments and research into smaller experiments and research—this will output the data needed for agile iteration more quickly and it ensures that we have the most critical information required in a timely manner. The fact is, we often don’t know what to test or how to test at the onset of experimentation and data analysis, so small experiments let us align to the iteration while validating direction quickly.
In addition, the data from this research is often not shared transparently with those on the front lines because it’s seen as strategic or sensitive data. This mindset must change along with the approach to research.
Brinker: Agile methodologies rely on a fast feedback loop. You try ideas and measure them, which then informs your priorities for subsequent iterations. Having access to the latest data in that feedback loop is crucial, and response time matters. If you have to wait weeks for a report, it's very hard to leverage that data in an agile fashion.
One of the tenets of lean management, which is a part of successful agile marketing, is to continually improve by identifying and eliminating bottlenecks. Today, data access and analysis is a common source of bottlenecks. However, the rise of self-service data analysis tools—supported by a culture of empowerment and transparency—is helping to overcome those hurdles.
Join the Discussion: @KimWhitler
