KEY IDEA: According to Forrester “Companies have become over-reliant on big data to understand their customers. Brands misconceive which data properly measures how customers think and feel. As a result, 56% of brands say their strategy is informed nearly or fully by big data. This overreliance has led to challenges in customer understanding, technology, and organizational communication.
You have to hand it the big consulting companies, they have done a great job of making marketing complicated to the point that most marketing executives are drowning in “big data”. Believe it or not, marketing is not complicated if you focus on the essentials.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]Data, big data, whatever you want to call it, is costing brands a lot of customers and leading to bad marketing.[/inlinetweet] Too many brands are drowning in data that they can’t see their customers and they are losing prospects because they are afraid to get a cup of coffee without having big data to support their decisions.
Men are more responsive to online ads than women, according to an eye-tracking study by picture provider Shutterstock. Men looked at the ads for 0.4 seconds longer than females (0.9 seconds vs 0.5 seconds) while noticing a third of the ads in the study, compared to a quarter for women. This is an example of useless research and is a clear indication that some research companies don’t have any common sense.
We’re all taught in marketing 101 about consumer segmentation, but what happens when there are micro segments of consumers within each segment? While there are some large groups of consumers that can be segmented ignoring the individual behaviors of smaller segments can lead to ineffective marketing.
The biggest gap in 90% of marketing departments is not data, it’s people who can successfully interpret the data and recommend actionable strategies to leverage current consumer trends.
There is a lot of money being wasted on ineffective marketing. Why? Too much data, too many meetings to try and understand the data and too many brands, allowing their agencies to lead them on a road, that they have promised, is lined with gold. Take away all the data, all the meetings and you’re still left with a fundamental of marketing, the brand promise.