“Get the Backstory right”.

Great marketers understand the difference between “Getting the Backstory right” vs “Over-interpreting the Backstory”

Seek for the story doggedly, but denoise your story persistently.

As operators, we all have to make peace with the fact that a big portion of our success will invariably and unpredictably come from things like Timing, Luck and Market momentum.

Yet, preparation in view of DATA is still the #1 proponent of success, so naturally you can set yourself in the right direction, if you improve the way you see data.

And while there are a thousand and one ways to improve how you technically “see” data, interestingly “seeking context behind the numbers” can add so much more meaning to your analysis.

Well, seeking context for a more whol-istic understanding of the numbers has its merits, but sometimes, seeking backstories can also lead to cherry-picking information that supports a preconceived notion, and might affirm the confirmation-bias that we all have.

Great marketers understand the difference between “Getting the Backstory right” vs “Over-interpreting the Backstory”

For Example, a surge in sales from a particular region is noted, that may lead the marketer to allocate more budget to that area. Without finding more reasons for the spike, and lacking more knowledge behind the spike, you may miss more indirect reaons for the spike. So, not understanding that a local event temporarily boosted website traffic and sales, she risks misinterpreting this as a sustainable trend and over-invests in the wrong geography.

On the topic of over-investment, some more examples I’ve seen in my teams:

1. Seeing a higher conversion rate on weekends, the performance marketer assumes weekends are the best time for all campaigns. This bias under-estimates and overlooks the potential of weekday opportunities, which results in over-investing resources based on a narrow interpretation of data.
2. Similarly, imagine you come out of a customer reviews discussion, and you’re understandably feeling that your customer dislikes more things than you imagined. Now, this may impacts the marketer emotionally, leading her to overreact by quickly changing the product’s messaging on an ad or a landing page. This emotional response (even though appreciably agile) could distort objective analysis and miss the broader customer satisfaction trends.
3. Accidental clicks: You see an uptick in ad clicks and assume increased interest on a new color scheme or new CTA placement or a new hook, not realizing that most clicks are accidental. But, by examining user behavior post-click, you can better understand real-world engagement vs misleading click data. This is also a barometer of how well you understand “context of the data”.

Want to share more daily examples with me on how marketers miss the context behind data? Comment here!