In this Expert Insight Interview, Michael Loban discusses his new book Crawl, Walk, Run: Advancing Analytics Maturity with Google Marketing Platform. Michael Loban is the chief marketing officer at InfoTrust and an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University. He is also a presenter and an accomplished author, whose work has been published by Forbes, Adweek, and CIO Magazine.
This Expert Insight Interview discusses:
- The myths and misconceptions about the power of data
- Why data is not necessarily the best place, to begin with, your digital marketing strategy
- The importance of experimentation, testing, and making mistakes
Data Analytics
In 2019, there was $130 billion spent on digital advertising alone, but most people are still not sure that all that spending is producing worthwhile returns. John Wanamaker famously said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”
Over the past several years, everyone has been talking about the promise of data analytics and how it can help organizations drive business results. However, in Michael Loban’s experience, this is still easier said than done. He wrote his latest book to debunk the myths about digital analytics and help organizations put consumer analytics to good use.
Where to Start?
One of the struggles that people often have with digital marketing, as with almost any other aspect of the business, is knowing where to start. There is a lot of data available, but it isn’t easy to discern which data is most important to focus on.
Part of what Michael Loban does in his book Crawl, Walk, Run is helping people understand where to start. He believes data is actually not a good place to start. When he and his organization work with businesses, they first try to determine those businesses’ goals. Then, they use data as a tool to achieve those goals.
Failing Upwards
Michael Loban believes that there has to be a “happy medium” where marketers are comfortable with making decisions. It is impossible to always be right about anything, marketing analytics included. However, organizations often suffer from the fact that people are afraid of making mistakes, so they shy away from making any decisions.
In such cases, organizations need to be more open to the idea of testing, experimentation, and even failing before they reach success. Of course, a business should not go all-in on one idea only to see it fail, but diversify its risks and test out several strategies to find the right one.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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