|
#Data #analysis is supposed to replace hunches with facts. Brands don’t want to risk millions of campaign dollars on someone’s gut instinct.
The marketer, ideally, has a goal, a clear threshold of success that must be crossed to achieve results. So how do you get there?
Data analysis is the “GPS.” The whole point of data analysis is to understand what is going on and to use that information to make the right decision.
It’s “ready, aim, fire” (data, analysis, action). But sometimes the order gets mixed up, resulting in people drawing the wrong conclusions and acting on that basis. The process then becomes “ready, fire, aim”, or even more comically, “fire, aim, ready”.
“The biggest test of data is analytics,” said Mark Stouse, chairman and CEO of Proof Analytics. “It contextualizes the data, making it extraordinarily difficult to manufacture conclusions, whereas data visualization alone makes it easy.”
Can one gauge causality from data alone? Stouse believes not.
Marketers can try by extrapolating from historical data, then check to see if this extrapolation was correct. “If everything is stable, extrapolation can work. But when the variety, volatility and velocity of change is great, extrapolation has zero value.”
“Data is indeed always about the past, and it has no innate ability to forecast. Past is not Prologue,” he continued. “But multivariable regression is the proven approach to taking data representing the relevant factors (the known knowns) — as well as some potentially important stuff (known unknowns) — and turning that into a calculated historical portrait of causality. That, in turn, creates a forecast against which you can understand the accuracy of the model vis-à-vis a comparison between forecast and actuals.”
Stouse stressed avoiding a fixed mindset.
“Blindness to analytical reality is about choosing not to see, because what is there offers a challenge to what you believe.” he said. “The opposite of analysis is a certainty you have chosen and justified without any real basis except your own self-interest. More mistake have been made in the name of certainty than anything else I can think of.”
#Digital #DigitalExperience #DataDriven #Analtyics #Insights
|