The King and Queen of Marketing

Today I was talking to my friend Anne about a business intelligence initiative I was driving to help a client develop an end-to-end measurement program to track online marketing campaigns. I was geeking out on how fun it was to roll up my sleeves and dig into Google Analytics, Salesforce, etc., with the goal of trying to connect the dots from click to acquisition. I exclaimed, "Data is king." And she said, "Well, not exactly. Content is important, too." I agreed and that inspired me to write this post.

If "data is king" then "content is queen." The two go hand in hand as the King and Queen of Marketing.

Great content or creative is required to engage customers and often make that emotional connection. It's the hook! It's the "Wassup guys," the "What do you have in your wallet?" and the "Can you hear me now?" from the marketing hall of fame.

Data is required to know if the content actually worked and to prove marketing effectiveness. Without it, even the best content has no way of convincing senior management it worked and to ultimately seek more marketing dollars.

Last year's Old Spice campaign is a great example of brilliant, memorable content like this:



Then, with proper measurement techniques, you can show ROI like this:

That's something that Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik would call an analytic orgasm!

Few companies do both well all the time. And that's the fun challenge I love waking up to every day...

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