Every golfer knows what happens when you start overthinking things.
Thanks to new technology, golfers can now get tons of data on every little nuance of the golf swing.
Hop on a launch monitor, purchase a shot tracking app, and you'll quickly be swimming in data.
But in golf, more data does not translate into better results. If you're thinking too much your execution will fall short. It's paralysis by analysis.
Same thing happens in marketing departments.
Everyone's talking about how "big data" is the holy grail of golf marketing. There's no doubt, we have more data to work with than ever before, and that data often contributes to some tactical marketing successes.
But there's also a downside to all that data, especially for small golf brands and golf operators.
It's easy to get paralyzed.
I see business owners all the time who think things to death and worry about all the wrong details.
They bide their time by gathering data, analyzing the situation, planning, second guessing things and making up excuses.
For a lot of these people, date-driven marketing is a safety play. Continued analysis is just a form of procrastination. And procrastination is just fear and insecurity talking.
When they finally pull the trigger on something it doesn't meet expectations because, perhaps, it was micro-managed.
Which, of course, makes it even harder to pull the trigger the next time.
Most golf operators are not operating in corporate cultures that encourage frequent failure. Just the opposite. So they'd rather do nothing than launch anything that does not guarantee results.
In small businesses you can't get away with that for long. And there are times, even in a corporate environment, when you have to trust your gut and "Just Do It."
When Nike launched their famous "Just Do It" campaign in 1988, they didn't have any data to go on. In fact, the top managers at Nike were absolutely anti-research.
So the brief given to the advertising agency was pretty simple:
"We should be proud of our heritage, but we have to grow this brand beyond its purist core. We have to stop talking to ourselves. It's time to widen the access point."
Widen it they did!
In "A New Brand World, Nike's Scott Bedbury said, "The unique brand positioning of 'Just Do It' simultaneously helped us widen and unify a brand that could have easily become fragmented. The more we pushed the dynamic range of the Just Do It commercials the stronger the brand positioning became."
"Just Do It" will go down in history as one of the most successful and memorable slogans of all time. It cemented Nike's #1 position in a massive market and became the cultural soundbite that still resonates today.
And no one would have called it a data-driven marketing initiative.
Most business owners are only dealing with little bits of data, pieced together from various sources like Survey Monkey, sales meetings and customer comment cards. And that's okay. At some point, you just have to move forward, regardless.
The problem is, people who are operating from a place of fear and insecurity will always hedge their bets by saying "we don't have enough information to go on."
And here's another type of "data" that constantly sabotages progress: Institutional memory.
Managers who have worked somewhere for a long time often say " we don't do it that way." Or "this is how we've always done it." Institutional memory overrides any insight that might be generated by data-driven marketing.
And how's that working out?
Insecure marketing managers are often the ones who know, deep down, that they've been promoted beyond their level of competence. They're afraid of being found out, and that fear affects everything they do.
To the insecure over-analyzers I say this: Pull your head out of the data and Just Do It! One of my favorite sayings applies here: "Action is the antidote for despair."
The best way to gather more data is to get something done and then look at the results. At least your missteps and blind alleys can lead to insight about where NOT to go next.
If you do nothing you have nothing to go on. No new data. No progress whatsoever.
If you're stuck, do something besides more analysis and more stewing. Take action and keep in mind, failure is, ultimately, the key to success.
Creative types — the writers, art directors and designers who execute great ad campaigns — know this intuitively. Getting shot down comes with the territory, and we always have five more good ideas ready to roll.
If only the client would just let go and pull the trigger.
So by all means... employ data-driven marketing. Use all the information at your disposal to glean some insight that will, hopefully, inform your marketing efforts. But don't expect data-driven marketing to be the panacea.
Big data doesn't replace the need for a big idea.
If you want to add a big idea to your marketing efforts, contact me here. The first meeting is always free, but highly valuable.
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