Data is important, but creativity and intuition still matter

The more you know about your target audience, the greater your ability to create products and services that appeal to them. With the abundance of data available today, it’s easier than ever for marketers to leverage this information to fine-tune their campaigns. Recently we discussed on this blog the importance of interpreting data correctly: It is most powerful when it yields actionable insight.

As a blog post in the New York Times points out, the availability and use of data has changed the way that marketing is conducted. Because it allows marketers to more accurately target their audience, customers are increasingly coming to expect that businesses and advertisements will already know more about their preferences. This is exemplified by targeted advertisements that appear on websites.

This personalized marketing has become commonplace, but according to Forrester analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo, some customers may wonder why a company knows so much about them online. This causes concern for marketers who are faced with an abundance of data and must determine how they are going to use it.

Amidst all of this data, what happens to creative marketing?

The analysis and interpretation of data has been changing the marketing landscape as marketers must determine how to put the data to use. As Khatibloo goes on to note, data has added an element of precision to marketing but that doesn’t mean that intuition has to go by the wayside.

Babson College Professor Thomas H. Davenport notes in a Wall Street Journal article that “data and analysis-focused marketing initiatives” will likely go on to have an impact in every industry. For marketers everywhere, data insight can help give campaigns an edge, but creativity still matters.