Data Standards for Marketing Are a Must, But Few Brands Have Them [Research]

Does your marketing measurement and data have standards?

What does that even mean?

Well, it means you have a standard method for naming, storing, and tracking data across the organization, according to new research (registration required) from Claravine, a software provider, and research firm Advertiser Perceptions. This could include shared taxonomies for marketing data, measurement metrics, and even tracking codes.

Do you have that?

Probably not, according to the research.

However, 95% of those surveyed agree that standards are a must for moving forward and showing ROI for advertising and marketing. And most agencies (98%) and client marketers (81%) agree their company will fall behind competitors or lose market share over time without a data standards practice.

Yet, weirdly, the same research finds that these same advertisers report an average 33% increase in return on investment that is (or could be) seen from implementing data standards.

Wait. If they don’t have any data standards, how could they be so confident in the ROI to be gained from them?

We wanted to know more so we asked Robert Rose, CMI’s chief strategy advisor, for his take. Read on or watch this video:

Fascinating findings in new data standards research

When I talk to marketers in my workshops, training, and consulting, I talk a lot about setting standards — the definitions for everything that crosses the marketing and content operations threshold. So, I was particularly interested in The State of Marketing Data Standards report released this week by Claravine and Advertiser Perceptions.

It looks at the importance of setting standards and the challenges companies experience in setting them. A few of the findings were fascinating, if not a bit obvious.

For example, the researchers found that advertisers who had implemented a data standards strategy (34%) were significantly more likely to have a strong understanding of data standards than those who had not implemented a strategy (10%).

Well, that makes sense. If you haven’t implemented something, you’re less likely to really understand it. But wait a minute.

That 34% stands out. Does that mean that 66% of those who have a data standards strategy don’t have a strong understanding of the practice?

Though the research doesn’t clarify that, the results almost certainly indicate teams are implementing standards even though they don’t have a strong understanding of them.

Regardless of their understanding, marketers are apparently confident that having data standards will improve things — that’s reflected in the finding that marketers expect a 33% ROI after implementing a data standards strategy.

The impact of the strategy implementation was even higher across categories such as privacy compliance and brand safety and slightly less for areas such as the consumer experience, marketing campaigns, and productivity.

1 in 5 ads get delivered to the wrong consumer

Another finding buried in the research caught my eye. It unsurprisingly concludes that a key benefit of having data standards is confidence and greater visibility into performance. That’s especially important because roughly 23% of ad creative is served to the wrong consumer.

Let me say that again. According to these marketers, more than one in five ads end up in front of the wrong consumer.

Is that just the advertisers’ perception or an estimate? Or is it accurate but the fault of advertisers because they do not have or have faulty data categorization on ads? Or is it the fault of the advertising platforms that serve the ad to unspecified or incorrectly interpreted categories? And if it’s the latter, is that because the ad platforms don’t have data standards by which they manage the ad inventories?

The research doesn’t make the reasoning clear. However, the results make a business case front and center for ensuring that you have a data standard in place for your advertising.

This is the hardest part of standards

What’s my take?

Well, I’m fascinated but not surprised. I frequently tell clients one of the easiest ways to get immediate ROI from developing a content strategy is a set of content and communications standards for the company. You can’t do that by downloading a template from the internet. You can only do that when you come together as a marketing function and define them.

For example, what’s an e-book? What’s the definition of a white paper? What’s a blog post?  What’s the standard name for the things marketing does? Is it a campaign? Is it an initiative? Is it a project? What’s the difference between a campaign and an initiative? What’s a theme? What’s a content pillar? What are the standard names of your personas?

From there, you move on to measurement. What’s your standard definition of a lead, an opportunity? What counts as a download? What’s a conversion?

Is it any wonder that marketing can feel so hard to measure? Yet, it’s really not. The hardest part of measurement is agreeing on the standards for measurement.

As Taiichi Ohno, the creator of the Toyota Production System, said decades ago, “Without standards, there can be no improvement.”

Or, as I have asked clients so many times, “How will you know if you’re successful if you haven’t agreed on what the standard of success looks like?”

In an interesting twist, this new research study unintentionally illuminates that as marketers, your approach to developing standards has to meet the teams where they are.

If you approach team-wide development of marketing, content, advertising, or data standards by using external definitions, you’ll instantly get caught up in a conversion about how they won’t work for your organization because you don’t understand how they apply.

But, if you sit down and collaborate to define what you need to standardize to have a shared vision of your objectives and goals, you will find them meaningful to your organization even if they differ from how the world sees them.

Just remember, the point of setting any standard is to be able to improve upon it. However, to improve anything, you first need to define what improvement means. In other words, you must define the standard or truth before accuracy means anything.

Then you’ve got a standard for setting standards, and that should be standard in your marketing.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute