Insight-driven, not data-driven marketing. This is the way.
Data-driven marketing is dead. Long live insight-driven marketing!
There is a continuous discussion around data, data-driven marketing and how focusing on them companies will be better and win at the market. Though it is obviously good that more decisions and actions are done with better knowledge and understanding of the situation, data-driven as a term easily drives us off track from gaining the biggest competitive advantages and growing companies market shares even faster. Let me explain what is not optimal in data-driven marketing.
Data-driven easily guides us thinking that data already has all the answers. We just need to look at it, draw a line and look through that line where the data is going and follow that. There lie two huge issues:
- Data is always historical and doesn’t tell anything certain about the future
- As the data is everyday more democratized, everyone has the same data available
So, data itself isn’t giving very much competitive advantage nor capabilities to differentiate from competition. Though especially proprietary data can be very valuable source of insights. These two weaknesses lead companies to drive marketing towards the direction of yesterdays trends and towards the same direction where everyone else is going. Creating brands and companies which start to look more and more like twins. Though customers favorite food has been pizza for years, it doesn’t mean next week they couldn’t change it to hamburger.
Following the historical dataset outlooks also makes us passive. We outsource ourselves and our human creativity from the decision making by following the drawn trendline. This is also giving us cognitive relief as if something doesn’t work, we can blame the data and say that we just did what it said, instead of taking full responsibility of the decision.
Insight makes all the difference
Insights you make based on the data is all that gives you real competitive advantage. It also takes a lot of guts to truly put yourself, your creativity and your knowledge into the decision making. Being insight-driven is like being a scientist who seeks the next big thing. You trust your intuition, create a hypothesis and start acting accordingly. When you are insight-driven it is you and your team who are making an interpretation based on the data about where you believe world will go next. Then you start making it happen with marketing.
Doing insight-driven marketing really pays off! By seeking new insights, you have possibility to find something unique which is easily ownable at the market and gives you competitive advantage. It was not purchase data that showed Karl Benz that inventing a car is a good business, but his intuition and curiosity to seek the next big thing in transportation. And like all trends, no trend just pops to humankind out of nowhere. They are all created by marketeers and inventors. Obviously, most of the trials will not break through globally, but it doesn’t mean it is not worth trying to win the market.
Believe in your vision and make it happen. When you make sure your brand will offer something better for the customers and support your own strengths with distinctive marketing you will win. Just be brave, do the investments and be patience when seeking long term victories.
Put your human strengths into the game. Be creative. Be insightful. And be distinctive. Make sure you add on top of the data so that you are not the same as all the others who act data-based and just follow the historical trendline.
What do you think?
Writer is a Strategist and Client Lead at Mirum Agency and believes that strong insights will change the world.