t is common to find in the market industries and customers enthusiastic about dabbling with data, on the one hand, driven by their innate instinct to seek more and better knowledge to boost their business and on the other, moved by reasons connected to innovation. Both are correct, most startups and modern companies base their business models on developments in which the main input for the creation of offerings is based on data; either in its capture, utilization, segmentation or optimization. On the other hand, there are those companies that can make better decisions based on data, and we are not only talking about marketing decisions, but also about efficiency in production chains and costs, forecasts of their business and customer behavior, among many others.

The world of data and its usefulness in business is immense, but I want to focus on marketing and communications clients, for whom, despite the unethical and incorrect nature of the Cambrigde Analytics scandal, it has become a benchmark for what they know can happen using people’s information: from creating influence, super segmentation, sowing specific ideas about a topic and effectively calling to action, to selling. As perverse as it may sound, this is what advertising does and today these are the means. In defense of advertising as specialists we can decide how far to take these methods and knowledge, which did not happen in the case of the U.S. elections.

Data without strategy

To execute any of the above actions, let’s start by disproving the idea that “data is everywhere”, we must eliminate the misconception that it is just a matter of getting into the Matrix and getting it out of there. There is no such Matrix if you haven’t created the environment and data extraction structure to make it happen, nor is there a Neo capable of getting it without the right strategy.

In other words, you can have everything connected to digital repositories, and be completely unaware if the data you are getting reveals the behavior of a consumer or business or if they are just loose metrics that don’t say anything.

What this means is that CRM, digital, media, e-commerce or app strategies and implementations must be built around not just conversion, whatever that may be, but getting the right data. Thinking only about achieving a transaction is a one-dimensional idea of what data can do to a business or brand’s understanding.

You don’t make a digital strategy that sounds good and then measure what you can measure and optimize what you can with what comes out of it, but the opposite. Today digital strategies must actually start from a data strategy that allows you to take business and customers to the next level. That is why, if you have a digital strategy and a team of technological ninjas capable of connecting anything and despite this the idea you had does not work, it is possible that you still do not have a clear data strategy.

First party data… first

To create a data model that works effectively it is essential to rely on information that belongs exclusively to you, open-source or third-party data is not effective for creating your own models. They are either pre-manipulated or include a lot of anonymous information that is not useful for understanding people and through them your business.

Getting the data you need to achieve your objectives is not just a matter of automating, but requires devising the best and, ultimately, the most ethical and correct way to get it. The big companies that own the world’s information have used data strategies to collect what they now know about people and, by the way, what they charge you for. For example, when Facebook started it was all about a game: handing over my data was fun, saying where I am, who I am with and posting many photos was a social currency, but behind it was a strategy to obtain data based on gamification: for users a game, for them their business of personal information of millions of people in the world. That they are now the owners of all the social networks you use, including Whatsapp, is no coincidence.

But that was another era, now that game has evolved and we are talking about people being more inclined to the utilitarian sense that digital assets provide them, and in return they leave daily traces of everything they do, just as Google works: its data strategy is based on developing technological services that allow them to know more and more about you: maps, videos, location systems, operating systems to connect everything that happens on your phone and add it to its large ecosystem of information. In either of the 2 examples all your individual data belongs to them, and you can’t even imagine how much they know about you, that you don’t even know yourself.

So, whether you want to dabble in your own digital business idea, implement better digital strategies that involve data or make the final leap to more complex data science models, the first step is the same, answer the questions of any strategy: what do you want to understand, how are you going to get the information you need and using what.