Quotes about Data and why they're important
I am not a great believer in predicting the future but I will state the obvious from time to time. Data in 2024 is going to get more and more important as time goes on.
The analytics industry is changing almost weekly what with new laws and such but it doesn't mean that the critical fundamentals of why we do it has.
Here are some quotes from far cleverer folks than me that prove that and my perspective on them.
Never let your campaigns write cheques that your website can't cash.
He's basically saying spending anything on ads to drive visitors to your website should be covered by the outcome of visitors going to your website.
So if you spend €100 to drive 100 visitors do those visitors make you at least €101 in profit?
Use the data you have to find out.
The ability to take data – to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualise it, to communicate it – is going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades.
He isn't (and wasn't) wrong, but data isn't just for the giant companies like Google, everyone who can do what he's saying, becomes super valuable to the business they work for.
From the micro start-up upwards.
People don’t want the raw data, but instead want marketers to decipher the tech speak for them and present the valuable insights.
This is why if you can translate the data you see into stories everyone can understand your job prospects will go through the roof.
This one skill early helped me embark upon a 20+ year career in #data, write 3 books and sell 2 agencies.
The core advantage of data is that it tells you something about the world that you didn’t know before.
Anyone willing to put the effort in, regardless of the size of the company they work in can take advantage of the massive opportunity data offers them.
Data science is all about asking interesting questions based on the data you have—or often the data you don’t have.
Business often worries about the data that they don't have with good reason. However its possible to predict, optimise and make gains simply by testing a hypothesis.
Where you didn't have data before you now do.
As Sarah points out though, it's all about the questions you ask.
Data is a tool for enhancing intuition.
Never a truer word spoken.
I often find that the people with the best intuition are the most experienced in the room, the ones who have seen years of accumulated insights and advice.
I like that quote because trusting your gut is fine, but only when you know more than you don't know about the course you're about to embark upon.
If you are 50/50 or worse on something, getting more data is the way to go.
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
When you're just starting to build your data operating system, especially in the earliest days, your data will be lightweight.
It won't be the cleanest, won't be the most detailed and won't be the most insightful.
But its a start. I believe in starts.
Don't be discouraged. Keep going.
We are surrounded by data, but starved for insights.
It's a typical scenario. People log into Google or Adobe analytics or are sent an excel spreadsheet that has no context, no story and no insight.
There are though systems you can create that allow you to draw insights from your data and get serious benefits from it.
Have you designed this for your business?
Data are just summaries of thousands of stories—tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful.
Data alone is rarely meaningful or interesting, its much better when you turn it into a story.
I highly recommend Dan's books, Made to Stick is great.
There were 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every two days.
That was a quote from Google's Eric Schmidt from over a decade ago, but it kind of puts it into perspective.
There are now 328 exabytes created per day.
The reason that G and other big platforms make money is cos they understand how to monetise the data they have collected.
Have you? It's worth looking at it. Even if you're a one-man band your business I'm almost certain generates data that you could use to your advantage.
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