The daily, unromantic grind of sourcing and analyzing data to build products for marketing is not sexy.
The tediousness, testing, tweaking, then deleting and starting again in the quest to find the right formula is definitely not sexy.
But when you do find the right formula the results are very sexy.
Unfortunately, many marketing companies want to skip the hard work, ignore the “down in the trenches” effort that is needed to create great products, and settle for mediocre campaign results because complacency has taken over.
Eventually, if you continue with the status quo, you will be left behind.
Here are a couple questions to ask yourself about your data company to find out if they are a good fit for your business’ future.
1. Is your data company creating new solutions?
Most companies take the easy way and don’t invest in research or new products. They rely instead on the easy plug and play answer:
- Buy and resell data as cheap as possible
- Plug this data into a template
- Hope the customers run to your door (or website)
The process of testing data until you find the right formula, by definition, includes failures along the way. Our current marketing environment does not want to acknowledge this. True – isn’t it? (call about our Dealer Elite Selections that are customized for your dealership)
2. Is your data company claiming market conditions as their success?
This is a tougher question to answer, but it’s important. For example, the last few years have been the “car buying party”, allowing many data companies to hide behind results that were due to an environment where just about anybody could buy a car. It was an environment that covered a lot of ‘data sins’.
We all know that car buying trends are changing. Car loans are longer, higher interest, and coupled with faster depreciation. The “party” is over.
Data matters now more than ever.
This is the critical time to ensure that your data company provides the data and insights into the best selections that match your marketing messaging. Data that is processed through hundreds of business rules for results that drive better marketing.
It’s quality, not just quantity, that will lead you to marketing success.