Over 90% of the marketing data we collect is noise, not signal, in terms of understanding our customers.
Since the earliest days of digital analytics, people fell in love with vanity metrics like HITS (a.k.a. how idiots track success). Social media and mobile technologies gave birth to even more vanity metrics.
The true value of data comes from how we use it to drive action (keep in mind that data, by itself, has no intrinsic value).
3 Reasons to Collect Data:
1. Improve the experience of your customers.
2. Understand and optimize how your internal business processes are performing.
3. Determine how you can outperform your competitors.
So reduce the noise; agree on a few key metrics to drive your business, much like a driver can look at a couple of key dials on the dashboard. Then turn what you learn from those metrics into action.
(Adapted from the article The Smarter Data Manifesto, by Wizard Partner, Bryan Eisenberg. Edited by Wizard Partner, Craig Arthur)