This year alone, the U.S. is projected to absorb a shortfall of 190,000 data scientists — and that’s not even counting the 1.5 million more analysts and leaders needed to make use of the information big data supplies.
This is an especially terrifying prospect in the marketing world, where data science provides the signals that let marketers know their decisions have paid off. “In the end, the analytics won’t tell you the next big creative idea,” Elea Feit, assistant professor of marketing at Drexel University, says. “It will tell you when the next big creative idea is working.”
Data scientists can use data points and trends to help strategize content, tweak content to meet demand, and measure the outcomes of the actions taken by marketers. They combine the science of statistical models with the art of creative work to go past the “gut feelings” of the “Mad Men” era and into a space where marketers can not only see a payoff today, but also a payoff tomorrow.
What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You
Having a wealth of knowledge is a huge advantage — until your knowledge surpasses others’ understanding. If people don’t know how to apply a significant piece of information, that data is useless.
This is why data science is so essential to the marketing equation. “ The most powerful data scientists are those who act as bridges between insights and people ,” says Kirill Eremenko, the founder and CEO of SuperDataScience, an online educational portal for data scientists and data science enthusiasts. “There’s a science behind analytics; however, communicating insights is an art.”
Straddling that line is important because data science insights are connected to marketing results. Marketing departments are expected to quantify their results as justification for keeping their budgets and strategies intact. Marketers handle digital information within their campaigns and collect it to improve their tactics, increasing the demand for data science.
Data science is responsible for mapping social networks and illustrating customer personas. It also identifies demographics and locations, in addition to tracking target audience responses and moods. Data science has enabled companies to customize their customer experiences. It also helps develop new approaches to long-held marketing challenges.
“Data is massively complex and comprehensive, which makes it difficult even for experts to understand,” says Eremenko. “Extracting insights is the first step, but the crucial follow-up is finding ways to communicate and contextualize those insights so they’re accessible to all.”
Application As Inspiration
If there’s a shortage of data scientists, what does this mean for marketers? Marketers have to learn how to use data science for their work on a global scale, and they need to position themselves for success, regardless of how accessible data scientists may be on any given day. 91% of senior marketers indicated that customer data was essential to making decisions. Here’s how marketing teams can take advantage of every piece of that data.
1. Break Down Departmental Silos
Data science can’t take into account data it doesn’t have. Department- or division-wide silos put up barriers where they shouldn’t exist, blocking one department from receiving data from another that could be valuable. How many times have you heard about content marketing teams having to start newsletter subscriber lists from scratch because the sales team wouldn’t share its email lists?
The same idea applies here. Find ways to allow your platforms to integrate and share data; at any rate, build systems to report data from one segment to another. Something seemingly small — such as your company Facebook page’s demographics — could influence not just your social media marketers, but also your SEO team, your affiliate marketers, even your R&D department.
2. Keep Your Streams of Data Current
Data has to be timely to be actionable — or, at the very least, it needs to include information from the past through the present to highlight patterns and trends. As big data analytics and visualization firm Zoomdata explains, real-time data analytics are the optimal option because they allow marketers to act on information as it’s happening. Streaming analytics, which occur nearly in real time, are a close second.
The focus is on fresh data so your decisions are made based on what’s best for your current market. But context is important, too. Creating entire trails or streams of data will allow your marketing team to see that a product that sold well last winter and dismally this winter may be influenced by bigger factors you’re also tracking, such as economic downturns or a declining audience segment.
3. Invest in Tools and Technologies, Particularly for Visualization
Data can only be gathered if you have the technology to do so. If you’ve been putting off investing in a data platform because you figure your team can do it manually, or you assume the information will sit in a database never to see the light, think again. Data not only showcases ROI, but it’s also ROI itself — you need numbers to justify numbers. Remember that you’re only as good as the information you have.
Visualization is an especially important tool to have in your data-gathering belt. Dynamic visualizations can simplify complex data and capture numbers in a graphic representation, which will speak more clearly to a wide swath of people. Most importantly, visualizations unlock collaborative opportunities for marketers and data scientists to discuss data together and interpret the data’s meaning for future campaigns and marketing efforts.
While we’re looking at a dearth of data scientists in the near future, that doesn’t diminish the importance of data science for marketing. If anything, it should compel marketers to set their systems up to benefit from data science and empower themselves by learning to broadly analyze data alongside data scientists. What you don’t know can hold you back — and what you do know can drive your company’s ROI.
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