[in-sahyts ih-kon–uh-mee]
Noun: All activities related to the production, consumption, and trade of insights.
If you are reading this, chances are you have probably chosen already to contribute to the Insights Economy, and by the end of this discussion, I hope you will see that the Insights Economy is something really important to marketers.
Let’s start with something we know well: the industrial economy.
In the industrial economy, we deal in physical goods. Firms source raw materials such as oil, timber, and ore, manufacture them into products, and exchange them. In the Insights Economy, data is the raw material. People, applications, and artificial intelligence process the raw data into insights, which are more valuable than the data alone. The Insights Economy are all the activities related to the production, consumption and trade of insights.
Usually, insights reveal patterns between different sets of data and explain what they mean and why they matter.
We have entered into an era where deriving rich insights from your data is an extreme necessity. Companies who struggle to do so, will be left behind and those who can extract valuable information from their data will step forward as industry leaders.
Company management often takes pride in being “data-driven.” If you, as a marketer, take pride in being “data-driven,” you may need to reevaluate this claim. These buzzwords can often provide us with a false sense of comfort as we lose sight of what it really means to be data and insights-driven.
I’ve used the analogy in the past that most of us would rather be driven in an UberBlack than an UberX. But what if I told you that a teenage permit driver was piloting this UberBlack as opposed to an experienced professional driver behind the wheel of your UberX? Would your choice still be the same?
Data, and the insights derived from them, vary in quality when we look beneath the surface.
As a marketer, you must take ownership of the quality of your insights and prove their value. Insights are valuable when they affect business revenue and costs, but unfortunately, most data solutions and their insights have no impact whatsoever.
Fortunately, the Insights Economy is growing and maturing so there’s an opportunity for you to harness your data and turn it into valuable insights to drive revenue growth for your company. Insights help improve products and services which attract more customers, which ultimately generate more data. And the cycle continues.
The Insights Economy is powered by four pillars which work in marketing and many other arenas. Planning. Achieving. Optimizing. Evaluating. These pillars are the Full Circle Method and by mastering the four combined with your data-diving, you can open a window to increase the quantity and quality of your data, improve your insights, and emerge as an industry leader in the Insights Economy.
To master the four pillars of the Insights Economy, start with visiting the marketing guide.
