In 2011, I left UCLA to join Southern New Hampshire University.
At the time, I had transitioned my career from public relations to marketing and I was eager to jump on what I saw as the next big wave - online education.
During my four years with SNHU, I had the pleasure of being part of a team that grew the institution from 7,000 students to 70,000 students.
Along the way, I held three jobs, earned my MBA, and got a crash course in all things performance marketing.
The Power of Big Data
Among the many things I learned during my time at SNHU, I got to witness firsthand how powerful big data can be for marketing.
The organization utilized a centralized data service model and this centralized Data Team supported marketing, owning reporting, analysis, and even developing complex models that were able to accurately project everything from GPA to organic inquiries per gross rating point.
The Dangers of Data-Driven Decision Making
It was early on during my time with the university, when I was just starting to work on developing the institution’s burgeoning TV commercials, that I had a particularly profound exchange with Steve Khederian, SNHU’s VP of Data & Analytics.
We were discussing (perhaps debating…) the efficacy of TV and how best to approach attributing upper funnel admission performance to both the medium, as well as specific networks and dayparts.
I was young and naive at the time (I’m still naive, but sadly not so young…) and I kept pushing Steve to provide a perfectly scientific way to measure something that simply isn’t perfectly scientific.
That’s when Steve said “Look, Seth…
Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire
Steve went on to explain (perhaps far more politely than I deserved) that the objective wasn’t to use data to make the right decision, but rather to use data to make smarter decisions.
He explained that sometimes data-informed decisions are far more effective than data-driven ones.
Why? Because…
Data-driven decisions can be slow, while data-informed decisions can be fast.
In a growth-oriented culture like ours, speed was a necessity and we simply didn’t always have the luxury of slowing down and spending months perfecting perfectly scientific tests.
Instead, our job as marketers was to quickly make educated, data-informed decisions, to track their impact as best we can (aka ‘find the smoke’), and to then recalibrate and execute again.
The speed at which we iterated was far more powerful in driving performance and was proof-in-action that when it comes to data perfection can very much be a hindrance to progress.
Finding Smoke
So the next time you’re interested in understanding the nuanced performance of a particularly complex component of your marketing campaign, remember Steve’s advice and don’t waste time looking for fire - look for the smoke.
You’ll be able to find the smoke a whole lot faster and chances are it’s all the information you need to make a smarter decision the next go around as you optimize your campaign.
About the Author
Seth is the founder and CEO of Kanahoma, a San Diego-based education marketing agency. We offer full-service marketing support for higher education, K-12, education technology, and more.
You can learn more about Kanahoma at www.Kanahoma.com.