Craig Hanna is the Head of Content and Marketing at the Global Marketing Alliance, an international forum for connecting global marketers.



The Global Marketing Alliance is an online marketing resource for marketers. Their heritage is data and direct marketing, so they provide insight for data-driven marketers. They also focus, as per the name, on global best practice and next practice globally.
Some examples of the work of the Global Marketing Alliance
A few years ago, most of the innovation in the marketing communications area was driven by the US and the UK. Nowadays, it is very global. So, marketers need to know what’s happening out there. For example:

Micro-payments – East Africa is nailing this area.
Mobile – South and Latin America are leading the way.
Over the Top Messaging Apps and how they are integrated with Government & Commerce, then look at Asia.

Marketers can get inspiration from these markets and The Global Marketing Alliance wants to share that. Many markets have skipped technologies in hard-line/desktop straight to mobile, so they have had to innovate as that is their web.

Until recently, only large companies and niche smaller companies really traded internationally, because you needed to put an infrastructure in to do that. Now, with the rise of trade-platforms and the rise of cross-border fulfilment, you don’t need to put an infrastructure in to trade internationally. You can sell £millions overseas by using digital platforms and in-country fulfilment services to do so.
Post-Brexit, will The Global Marketing Alliance be even More Valuable?
EU legislation in data will be one of the toughest in the world, and we are pretty much signed up to implementing it. So, marketers will need to understand the changes from that arena.

We do live in a global market. So, we SHOULD be looking further afield. Look at the potential size of markets in developing nations from Brazil, China, Indonesian countries like the Philippines along with India, we will need to trade with these countries increasingly and not rely on what is in our immediate vicinity (EU).

So, marketers need to understand those markets, what platforms exist, and what their nuances are because they use marketing differently.
Data-Driven Marketing
The Global Marketing Alliance survey on data is revealing. As the internet of things gets bigger and real over the next few years, the amount of data we will see will become huge. Marketers understand that, says the survey, some 90%. But less than half that number feel they are ready for data-driven marketing.

It is also not a lack of will in companies. The survey asked whether the lack of preparedness was to do with senior leadership commitment – it was more skills than a lack of investment. There is a huge shortage of data analytics professionals to do modern analytics with the modern data flows from the internet.

For most businesses, their basic database isn’t right. Never mind the future requirements. So, a lot of companies should start with the basics. Where do we get our data from? How do we store it? What governance do we need around it? Companies are just not using their data to drive business value.
There’s a lot of data about, but precious little information
Craig sees this time and time again. They measure outputs NOT outcomes.
“The best thing about digital marketing is the data, the worst thing about digital marketing is the data.”
There is a massive difference from having data and actionable insight. This still confuses businesses still to this day.

One of the big problems is when non-marketers start looking at the detail, they tend to fixate on the detail. The challenge is for them to determine the LEVERS in their business. What is the data you need to allow you to act on?

Advice?

Tier how you report data, depending on the role a person has.
Get visualisation tools, don’t just rely on spreadsheets. This helps you show what that data MEANS.

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