From time to time, team members will share their views stimulated by content from an industry thought leader. Here, our CEO, Lisa Maier, discusses the recent AdAge article, “THE NEW TRANSPARENCY: ARE YOU A DATA ‘HAVE’ OR ‘HAVE-NOT’?” by Julie Fleischer, Neustar.
Love the tone of this article, just a little cheeky. But she is right when she point out this stark reality:
“Let’s reflect for a moment on some of today’s biggest business stories:
- Amazon has crushed retail
- Uber and Lyft have changed the taxi game
- Dollar Shave Club got acquired by Unilever for $1 billion
- Facebook and Google dominate media
All these brands have one thing in common: they are the ‘haves,’ companies founded on and built by data. Those without a direct link to customer data? They are today’s brand ‘have-nots.’ “
The DirectiveGroup agency was founded 10 years ago to ride on – and perhaps learn to drive – the exciting roller coaster of digital marketing, our passions fueled by what has been made possible data-wise in the digital world. Fast forward till now, and many prospective clients we meet feel whipped by the data made available, slogged down to the mud in ‘datawhelm.’ Our job and our mission is to change that, and I, as a statistician, think this is of extraordinarily high value to the clients we serve. That is why I get giddy when I read this article.
For the CMOs we seek to serve, our message is similar to Julie’s unvarnished comments, which we hope are extremely compelling to pull them forward into discovery of what their data about their markets and their customers can do for them. Direct access to data that can be distilled turns into information, which can be further refined into knowledge, which can become highly actionable. Her five tips are right on and very much in line with our approach:
1. “Rebuild your digital marketing for data.”
2. “Leverage this data for marketing performance analytics.”
3. “Become data obsessed.”
4. “Decide what you want to learn and figure out how to learn it.”
5. “Disintermediate the intermediaries.”
Data are a beautiful thing when the master is in control 😉 and that is what we give to our clients through our Marketing Artificial Intelligence program. This program targets mid-size companies that are primarily B2B, with a long sales cycle and a steep investment in digital marketing. Most importantly, our solution delivers on the above edicts, and it puts CMOs firmly in control of their your data to gain knowledge that will ultimately deliver the ability to drive a significantly improved ROI, much greater customer insight and a greatly improved understanding of how to gain competitive advantage.
However, you get to being a data ‘have’ vs a data ‘have not’ now is the time to take bold action. Go for it today, and become the industry leader in your category tomorrow!