I was recently asked to share my professional experience with a bunch of people at work. My opening statement was – “I look at Performance Marketing here.” When I looked at my colleagues after I delivered my opening statement, I understood they were a little clueless about what it meant. So, I gave them a realistic and relatable follow up statement – “I spend most of the money that is allocated for marketing”. They laughed and seemed to understand (somewhat better than before).
When you are a performance marketer, data is the center of your world. Five and half years later, I enjoy numbers more than words. The way to convince me to do anything is explaining it through data. I am no mathematical wizard and cannot query in SQL but I understand and comprehend data to take important decisions effectively.
You might be thinking that the headline and what I am talking about is slightly contradictory. On one hand I am expressing my love for data and on the other asking a question on looking beyond data. Let me get to the point.
I spent my last week in Jakarta. The capital city of Indonesia is very similar to home (Delhi) in terms of population, traffic & pitch (people generally speak loudly). There was one crucial factor that made me doubt all decisions I had taken basis data – language. The primary language of communication was Bahasa. It was rare to find anyone speak any other language. Even our hotel staff was very hesitant to speak in English. I couldn’t believe that hospitality industry could run without spoken English in Asia.
When I looked at data, I saw that most people (>70%) have their browser language as English. Most people have their phone language set as English. The decision was easy – put more money in running English Ads and dedicate more effort in optimising that. I was told by colleagues that most people converse in Bahasa but since I prefer data, I saw otherwise. What actually happened was very different.
Was the data incorrect? Of course not. What the data failed to convey is that most people do not know how to change their OS language or browser language. It failed to show how most people are able to read English but does not mean they prefer/are most comfortable reading English. It missed the fact that user behaviour is not black and white, there is fair bit of grey area.
I realised how human interaction and “actual” in-market knowledge is crucial for global businesses. One size fits all does not work in real world. Technology should be built in a way that it is able to pick local intel even if there is no data to illustrate the use case in first place. I specially like how Uber asked me to choose the mall exit gate when I requested a pickup from a mall. It’s way more effort than just adding country specific editorial content & that’s what makes them amazing.
From now onwards, I am going to look beyond data. What about you?
Marketeer by Chance 