Marketing Research, Data, and Facts

Research, data, and facts should guide your marketing decisions. Do you know someone making marketing decisions using their MBA? I don’t mean a master’s degree, but rather what I call Marketing By Anecdote.

What is Marketing by Anecdote?

An anecdote is a story, usually about one’s personal experience or account of an incident. Anecdotal evidence is a deduction from that story that isn’t necessarily true because it isn’t necessarily based on facts.

When a conclusion is made solely based on personal opinion and experience, the reality can be skewed. Facts and research will always be more reliable and consistent when making decisions and evaluating situations. Take action based on what you can trust, not based on how you feel.

Some examples

A business owner told me about his current marketing program, with $5k/month (most of his budget) on billboard ads: “I think the ads are working because two or three people per month say they saw my ad!” His anecdotal evidence tells him his marketing strategy, message, audience, budget, and CTA are fully optimized. No measurement, no analysis needed. Just evidence from an anecdote. Marketing By Anecdote.

Another business manager told me, “I don’t use social media for marketing because I personally don’t use Facebook for business and I don’t think my customers do either.” This is also a form of anecdotal evidence because he thinks his #customers behave as he does. Faulty logic. Would you really want to throw away your digital marketing budget based on personal bias? Consumers convert through a wide variety of platforms and eliminating one of them based on your own usage is just ignorant. 

Facts don’t care about your feelings

Marketing decisions shouldn’t be based on anecdotes, hearsay, or what you surmise. Apply your personal opinion or belief on what to do, but add it on top of research, measurable data, and facts. Facts can make you money, while emotions can lead to a missed opportunity.

Facts don’t care about your feelings.