Data is God if Content is King

Digital marketing is nothing new, but still not a big leap forward. The question of how digital marketing works has been irrelevant for years. It is not about how it works, but more on how to do it right? At Mills, we have a unique approach for digital marketing.

In digital marketing, content is the King, data is GOD.

Take a look at a chart of the HubSpot state of the marketing report 2019 (see above). Nowadays, with all these channels in marketing, we need two skills to practice our work: (1) content skill (2) data skill.

Here is our thought for content. Everything on social media is about content and mainly the short and snackable content. The world is now left with only a few-seconds attention span. The content consumption behavior has been changed from reading to glancing, and now may be just a few seconds of screen swiping.

• • The average attention span is 8.25 seconds (less than the attention span of a goldfish), compared to 15 years ago, the average attention span was slightly longer at 12 seconds.
  • 17% of the website pageviews last less than 4 seconds, and only 4% last more than 10 minutes.
  • The average percentage of words read on a single web page is about 28%.
  • Internet videos seem to be more captivating with the users spend an average of 2.7 minutes per video.

You should find your audience before engaging them with content

As an experiential agency, we totally understand that it takes great effort to produce content. But with a wrong match of the audience who give only a few seconds of their attention, the effort to engage will be in vain to produce any meaningful outcome. It is true that good content can create attention, but what if you can know the audience’s interest or intent before creating the content to grab their attention? Does it sound like a better strategy?

Mills has a unique data crunching approach to research for interest and intent. Our client Kering Group came to us for a digital landscape research before they developed their marketing content.

Of course we can’t reveal the client’s data, but we can still show you our approach and methodology.

Too many data, too little source.

It isn’t difficult to find data but not many channels that you can find the legit data sources. Good data is priceless, rubbish data can be toxic. Data add a scientific layer to marketing. With the correct data, you will be benefited from making the informed decision.

But good data is a scarcity. Too many people claim to have data but in fact most of the insights developed through the bad data are superficial, if not worse, it distorts the result. Most people will turn to the search engine and social media for data. These two channels are indeed useful, one for the intent-based data, the other is good for persona.

Some DMP and the data on-boarding companies are able to provide you the advance programmatic data solutions. But if you just want to develop a landscape of your market or establish a baseline to validate your marketing campaign, etc., using a DMP might be a bit overkill.

A holistic approach for your digital landscape.

While you are screening and classifying the data, you should also come up with a structure for your data views.

This is one of the models that we are using to develop a digital brand insight. It gives a very concise but holistic perspective of your brand landscape with different views for interest and intent.

1. 1. Start with the market, look at the brand equity with the data distribution.
   2. Establish a benchmark with the TOMA – Top of mind awareness.
   3. Create a market drill-down for segments.
   4. Craft a digital persona of your audience.
   5. Profile your competitors.

There are always things that you don’t know you know

Data discovery is way more interesting than data reporting. Why do you pay for the insight that you already know? Your marketing will not be benefited from the conventional wisdom. At Mills, because of our DNA as a creative agency, we like to discover new horizon. In fact, it is much more fun and invaluable to discover new insight instead of reporting the same old.

In our experience, with the digital Gen Z taking over the economy and they are eligible to vote for what to do and how to live, digital marketing needs a new face to communicate for new perspective. We no longer push or shout to our customers without knowing what they need; instead, co-creation is the key to resonate with them. And the winning strategy for content co-creation is to discover things that we don’t know we know.