You Ask, I Answer: Why is Marketing Data Rich but Insight Poor?

In today’s episode, you’ll explore the intriguing paradox of why marketers, despite having access to vast amounts of data, often struggle to extract meaningful insights. You’ll discover the crucial role that well-defined questions play in guiding data analysis and learn why simply having data isn’t enough. I’ll share a practical framework that helps you transform data into actionable insights and improve your marketing effectiveness. Tune in to unlock the power of your data and make smarter, data-driven decisions!

You Ask, I Answer: Why is Marketing Data Rich but Insight Poor?

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Christopher Penn: In today’s episode, Brooke asks, “Why is it that marketers are data rich, but insight poor?”

Oh, that’s a good question. A lot of reasons. Let’s talk about some definitions first. What are insights? Think about the actual word insight, like sight within, looking within—looking within something. What are you looking into? You’re looking into your data. And when you look into your data, what are you looking for? Answers. Answers to what? Answers to questions. What questions? Questions like: “How do I get this person to buy more from me? How do I get this person to be happier with my company? How do I get this person to recommend me to a friend?”

These are the questions that we need to have written out and documented so that we know then what to look into in our data. We’re looking for connections in the data, we’re looking for patterns, we’re looking for conclusions. And all of our data that we have doesn’t mean anything if we don’t have questions we need answers to.

Likewise, if we don’t have those questions, we might not even be collecting the data for it. If we are—if we’re concerned about customer loyalty and evangelism and we’re not tracking recommendations in our social media management software, then we can’t answer that question. There’s no way to answer the question with the data we have.

So part—part of the answer to Brooke’s question about why we are insight poor is: we don’t know what we’re looking for. We didn’t ask the questions, we haven’t defined the questions, and therefore we have no—we have nothing to dig for, we have no answers to look for. We just go look at the data and go, “Huh, there’s the data,” and we don’t do anything with it.

Think of data like ingredients. Go into your kitchen, go in your pantry, the ingredients—as marketers, we have no shortage of data, we’ve got data everywhere. Are the ingredients any good? Are they fresh? Are they spoiled? Are they filled with bugs?

Bad data, like bad ingredients, is worse than no data because bad ingredients can make you sick. Bad data can lead you to incorrect conclusions.

Christopher Penn: Do we know what we’re trying to accomplish with the data? Going back to those questions. If our ingredient that we have the most of is flour, are we making a cake, pasta, sourdough bread, salt dough for salmon on the grill? If we don’t know what we’re asking for, if we don’t know what the recipe is, we don’t know what the final outcome is, then the data doesn’t really matter.

Do we have a recipe and process? This matters. This is something that my CEO Katie talks about all the time is: you need to have a recipe. You need to know what your process is, you need to have a recipe to get to that final dish. Again, if insights are answers to questions, we need a recipe for how we turn data into answers.

Do we have a chef with the skills needed to execute the recipe? Can I cook it? Can you cook it? Do you know how? I can give my dog a recipe, but we’re not going to get what we want. I hope he’ll be very happy, and he’ll be eager to help, but he will not bake a loaf of bread. Pretty cool if he could, but again—do you have the right appliances?

If you’re making bread, do you have an oven? It doesn’t matter how skilled the chef is or how great the ingredients are, how good the recipe is, if you don’t have a source of heat, you ain’t baking bread at all.

Same is true with data: if you don’t have the tools to process it, as well as the knowledge of how to process it, you’re going to have a very hard time.

Asking why marketers are data rich, but insight poor is a great question. The answer is the same as why a restaurant is ingredients rich but has no food on the tables for diners to eat. It’s because something broke down in the people, the processes, the platforms, the purpose, and the performance—the Trust Insights 5P Framework, which you can get at TrustInsights.ai/5pframework.

That’s the answer. That’s why we are so data rich, but insight poor because we don’t know how to make the insights. We don’t even know what it is we’re trying to make.

Thanks for the question. Talk to you on the next one. If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button. Subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already. And if you want to know when new videos are available, hit the bell button to be notified as soon as new content is live.

You Ask, I Answer: Why is Marketing Data Rich but Insight Poor?

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