POV

In an age of data-driven marketing, many marketers place raw data at the helm and expect it to lead the way to success. However, without a touch of intuition thrown into the mix, it can be very easy to overlook critical areas of human interest in your marketing campaign.

Effective marketing these days requires both solid data and intuition that’s been honed over years of experience. However, this nexus where intuition and raw data meet is more than an efficient recipe for progress moving forward.

It’s what will separate the cream from the crop in our fast-paced, data-focused world.

The Results of Raw Data and Intuition Working Together

In my agency, Propel Digital Media, we’ve spent many years studying data, statistics and correlation analysis of our marketing efforts.

Although our efforts largely steer towards search engine optimization and content marketing, we’ve been able to secure faster wins for our clients than other agencies precisely because of our approach, which combines data and intuition.

For instance, by analyzing data for a shipping client, we found that very few shipping companies did a great job of targeting a particular search term, which was a central aspect of our client’s unique selling proposition. The data helped us uncover this opportunity.

We also applied our intuition, which is based on years of research and experience. Raw data couldn’t tell us what people would respond best to in advance. We would have had to test many things to figure that out. However, with our keen sense of intuition built over years of experience, we were able to create a winning campaign for the first time around.

One page that we created to fill the gap in our client’s market was responsible for an increase in traffic of over 220% and an increase in sign-ups for the client from 20 accounts per month to 200+ accounts per month.

Sure, the data told us this was a viable opportunity. However, marketing intuition is what really drove the success because understanding what our client’s users really want is what drove their conversions.

So here’s why we blend both raw data and intuitive insights to drive efficient success for our clients and how you can make the best of both approaches, too.

Why Raw Data is Essential for All Successful Marketing Campaigns Today

Running an effective marketing campaign today requires data that offers customer insights we otherwise wouldn’t have.

Quality data, when applied correctly, helps remove guesswork, thereby preventing wasted marketing budgets that result from excessive trial and error.

There are many great data-driven marketing tools on the market today which make accessing raw data far easier than it’s ever been before. The data points we’ve found to be the most effective in our marketing campaigns are those which lend insight into a potential customer’s journey before and after they discover our client’s websites. Of course, the quality and the speed of the website also played a significant role, so it’s no wonder why many companies decide to go with small business web design services and reap the results.

Understanding what they are looking for and what they hope to find helps us give them what they want. There’s no secret sauce other than being able to gather these insights, to begin with.

Pitfalls of Only Relying on Raw Data

In saying this, however, we’ve certainly observed that there are now far more data points available to marketers than there ever have been before. Pair that with the fact that few marketing degrees also train marketers in data science and we’re left with a whole lot of ‘data noise’ that most marketing teams struggle to make sense of.

Valuable insights can often go lost or unnoticed if your team is feeling overwhelmed by too many data points. In order to use data efficiently in your process, it is necessary to steer your team toward the data that will have the most impact on your campaigns.

Another downfall of only relying on data is that we lose valuable historical and socioeconomic context that can’t be captured in raw quantitative data. How people think and feel depends on the world around them. How they think and feel is the basis of any purchasing decision they make. As marketers, we have to take these intangible qualities into account.

That’s why it’s my firm belief that a qualitative, human approach is equally as essential as raw data. Without understanding humans, the data alone is meaningless.

The Role & Value of Intuition in Marketing

All marketing is aimed at influencing the actions of humans. As we’ve established, data alone can’t do that. Humans don’t feel understood or emotionally compelled when presented with data.

Intuition is a human quality that cannot be replicated by machines and will never inform raw data without a human present. It’s what lends insight into the relevant context that can help drive a marketing campaign forward where raw data fails.

Solid intuition is built over years of experience, observation, and trial and error. Its basis is in historical data and, when applied correctly, intuition is far more than a ‘gut feeling’ plucked out of thin air.

Where raw data has its limitations in a marketing campaign, experience-based intuition can step in to lead the way. Without intuition narrowing the scope of a marketing campaign, the possibilities presented in raw data are too great for most marketing teams to handle.

How Intuition & Raw Data Work Together to Pave the Way for Efficient Progress

For CMOs and marketing teams to succeed in today’s data-driven world, an effective blend of raw data and experience-based intuition will deliver efficient results.

As a CMO, you will no doubt find that as you steer the ship forward of your organization’s marketing department, you will lean on your intuition more often than you may realize.

A young team can gather the relevant raw data when paired with the right diagnostic tools and training on how to use them. However, they lack the fundamental experience that will give them the depth of insight your intuition will already incorporate.

As a CMO, the biggest gift you can share with your team is the intuition you’ve honed over years in the industry. Infusing your intuition into the process will help steer your team in the right direction and achieve faster results ahead of your competition.

This is the approach we’ve taken at Propel Digital Media and our clients have been reaping the rewards ever since!