Handle with care: the data challenges facing marketers

Busi­ness­es that make the most effec­tive mar­ket­ing deci­sions have a thor­ough under­stand­ing of their clien­tele based on good, clean data. As ­Geor­gia Swan­son, direc­tor of mar­ket­ing at dig­i­tal con­sul­tan­cy ARQ, puts it: “Like chess play­ers, we mar­keters must analyse the moves we require to win. The only way we can do that and find the best path is by hav­ing accu­rate data to hand and the scope to inter­pret it.”

But she adds that the task of col­lat­ing mate­r­i­al that’s wor­thy of inter­pre­ta­tion from the wealth of sources avail­able to them won’t be straight­for­ward in most cas­es.

“Dis­parate, siloed data presents room for human error. It may need to be pulled in from mul­ti­ple imper­fect sources and stitched togeth­er,” Swan­son says. “Our goal is to deter­mine what’s most valu­able to our cus­tomers at var­i­ous times and work out how to reach them at the right point in the buy­ing cycle with mes­sages that res­onate with their goals. I want to under­stand their needs now, over the next six months and in two years’ time – even before they know them­selves.”

One way to form such an under­stand­ing is the use of com­merce media and the data it pro­vides. Com­merce media – from videos and reviews to guides and recommen­ded con­tent – has become a cru­cial bridge con­nect­ing mar­keters to ­online audi­ences world­wide. By ­enabling con­sumers to dis­cov­er and pur­chase goods as part of their every­day expe­ri­ence on the web, com­merce media brings togeth­er great swathes of pur­chase-intent data, such as prod­uct views, pre­vi­ous pur­chas­es, ad clicks and con­tex­tu­al indi­ca­tors such as key­words and hashed iden­ti­fiers.

Deb­bie Gains­ford, an inde­pen­dent mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant, reports that there has been “a huge increase in invest­ment in com­merce media by adver­tis­ers, pub­lish­ers, agen­cies and tech com­pa­nies” in recent years. This has enabled mar­keters to tap into a mas­sive source of data to inform key strate­gic deci­sions.

Once Apple, Google and Mozil­la end their web browsers’ sup­port for third-par­ty cook­ies, first-par­ty data will become even more impor­tant to mar­keters. That mate­r­i­al, once it’s fed into the lat­est busi­ness intel­li­gence tools, will allow for more sophistica­ted and focused cam­paigns, accord­ing to Gains­ford.

“It will enable mar­keters to see where new cus­tomers are com­ing from, their media con­sump­tion and the poten­tial to expand into new mar­kets,” she pre­dicts.

Lawrie Jones, MD of med­ical sup­ple­ments provider Stronger Bones, also helps ecom­merce busi­ness­es to meet their growth tar­gets by using tar­get­ed ads and oth­er con­tent.

“More data means bet­ter deci­sions,” he says. “Our in-house data gives us the con­fi­dence to invest in new chan­nels know­ing that we can com­pare their per­for­mance effec­tive­ly. That’s a good thing for both the indus­try and its cus­tomers, who ben­e­fit from greater choice.”

The main goal should be to find where cus­tomers are, espe­cial­ly if you’re weigh­ing up poten­tial invest­ments in new chan­nels such as the meta­verse, accord­ing to Jones. “More intu­itive, tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing helps to build bet­ter rela­tion­ships with clients,” he adds. “That should trans­late into bet­ter rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers, which should in turn trans­late into high­er sales.”

For Swan­son, there’s still a key chal­lenge to over­come once the data has been gath­ered. As she sees it, mar­ket­ing is a strate­gic play – and great mar­keters are defined by their abil­i­ty to inter­pret data and come up with action­able cam­paigns based on it.

“You could be the most strate­gic, data-dri­ven mar­keter in the world, but you’d be unable to make any impact­ful deci­sion with­out access to uni­fied data that presents the insights you need,” Swan­son says.

Data vir­tu­al­i­sa­tion is emerg­ing as an effec­tive way for mar­keters to achieve a holis­tic view of data across the gamut of sour­ces. As organ­i­sa­tions strug­gle to process the grow­ing vol­ume of data being gen­er­at­ed, the use of this tech­nique is set to increase by an ­aver­age of 20% a year until 2031, ­accord­ing to Allied Mar­ket Research.

Apply­ing both advanced ana­lyt­ics and machine learn­ing, data vir­tu­al­i­sa­tion enables cus­tomer insights to be gen­er­at­ed as a sin­gle view of the cus­tomer, drawn from dif­fer­ent stores but pre­sent­ed as if it were one seam­less data­base.

Swan­son says that one of the key ben­e­fits of this tech­nol­o­gy is its abil­i­ty to estab­lish links between data points. She explains: “Sev­er­al data points will feed into the deci­sion­-mak­ing process behind a mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tive. The rela­tion­ships between all these com­po­nents are impor­tant in inform­ing expec­ta­tions of that ini­tia­tive and its over­all per­for­mance. For exam­ple, with­out the right bal­ance of oppor­tu­ni­ty, bud­get and chan­nel, there is no way of iden­ti­fy­ing whether the cam­paign will lead to the desired out­comes or not.”

For those who must make the right mar­ket­ing calls, achiev­ing such bal­ance is the holy grail.

The ongo­ing chal­lenge of extract­ing more valu­able insights from data is set to become tougher for mar­keters, with juris­dic­tions around the globe leg­is­lat­ing to pro­tect con­sumer pri­va­cy.

Gart­ner has pre­dict­ed that three-quar­ters of the world’s pop­u­la­tion will have their per­son­al data cov­ered by some form of legal pro­tec­tion by as ear­ly as 2024.

Syd­ney-based fin­tech com­pa­ny Frol­lo is acute­ly aware of the fine line it must tread. It spe­cialis­es in open bank­ing, work­ing with finan­cial insti­tu­tions to give cus­tomers secure access to their data under the terms of Australia’s Con­sumer Data Right, which was intro­duced in the bank­ing sec­tor in 2020.

Frollo’s head of mar­ket­ing, Piet van den Boer, explains that one of his firm’s fun­da­men­tal tenets is that con­sent can be giv­en by cus­tomers, but it can be with­drawn just as eas­i­ly.

“We can’t assume that, just because we’re able to col­lect data, we can use it for every­thing,” he stress­es. “We need to be con­scious that con­sumers own their data.”

Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, the leg­isla­tive push to pro­tect pri­va­cy is fuelling the pop­u­lar­i­ty of data-pro­vi­sion­ing plat­forms such as Priv­i­tar and Dat­a­Plus, which are designed to help firms com­ply with the rel­e­vant reg­u­la­tions. It’s part of a shift­ing dynam­ic between mar­keters and cus­tomers, as multi­na­tion­als tack­le the chal­lenge of ensur­ing com­pli­ance in sev­er­al juris­dic­tions while giv­ing their cus­tomers peace of mind with respect to how their data is being man­aged.

Van den Boer believes that it will soon become stan­dard prac­tice to offer pri­va­cy-com­pli­ant solu­tions. “We’re shift­ing to an era in which con­sumers are more in con­trol of their data,” he says.

Future pri­va­cy reg­u­la­tions are also like­ly to com­pel busi­ness­es to be more selec­tive in their data-col­lec­tion prac­tices to reduce their expo­sure to legal penal­ties and the asso­ci­at­ed rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age. It’s lead­ing to a change in phi­los­o­phy among mar­keters about what mate­r­i­al they need to obtain from cus­tomers.

“Data min­imi­sa­tion” is van den Boer’s term for the new approach. “Col­lect­ing only the min­i­mum need­ed is a com­plete depar­ture,” he says. “It used to be about col­lect­ing all the data.”