2. Take people out of the data-hygiene process where possible.

Most marketing teams still struggle with manual processes, especially data cleaning and reporting. Pair your investments in technology with investments in data management — things like integrating data sources, breaking down organizational data silos, and designing clear, consistent performance dashboards.

The end goal: devote more time to open-ended data exploration and less time to low-value data tidying tasks.

3. Make metrics actionable.

Drill down to understand key customer segments, buyer journeys, and performance within campaigns — then choose your metrics wisely. Make sure they track progress toward marketing and business objectives (e.g., metrics with bottom-line impact). You may not have enough data volume or quality to measure exactly what you’d like, so be prepared to iterate.

Also, remember: “actionable metrics” are guides, not rules. They’re open to interpretation (i.e., human required). When your team has data-smart people, they will be more confident in questioning, experimenting, and interpreting data.

4. Let the world know!

To win confidence (and budget), deploy your team’s data skills to design custom, automated reports for company leadership. Executive-level reports should be clear and credible, focusing on ROI. Best of all, make those reports so user-friendly and practical that someone can understand the key insights in three minutes or less.

5. Embrace "self service"

As you and your team gain more confidence with data, the ultimate goal is to cut out data experts who don’t work in marketing. (They may be perfectly likable people, but they aren’t marketers!) It’s time to fully own the data management process and be 100 percent accountable for results.

6. Power up your single source of truth

Invest in a marketing performance platform that can gather data from all your far-flung channels and transform it. No more wasting time on low-value cleaning — and we know you won’t miss the cleaning. It’s high time to use your data mavens to analyze, share, and collaborate — all in a single spot.