It’s not Dirty Dancing. It’s Dirty Data.

I hate to break this to you kids. It’s the biggest needle to your balloon of hope. Here’s a reality of marketing today: It’s not about your amazing creative. It’s not about your ingenious idea to make a big splash at the event. It’s not about your polished, creative copy-writing. IT’S ABOUT YOUR DATA. I know; it’s sad. But it’s true.

Let’s examine why.

Define Data:

I mean your database. Your email list. Your customer profiles. Your systems of record. Your CRM, be it BuzzStream or Salesforce.com. Your e-Commerce database. And/or all of the above.

Know your audience:

In today’s world, all the information you know about your audience is most likely stored in your database – or worse, databases. (Trust me. I live this daily.) When you have dirty data, you will struggle to find your audience, and to find the niche messaging which that audience wants to hear.

Powerful Stories:

Data, when clean, is the source of amazing power. It tells you an important story. The story of when your customers last purchased, or who opened the last email. (More importantly, it tells you who didn’t open your last email.) When data is dirty, you will struggle to see the story.

Metrics, Metrics, Metrics:

Success is defined by metrics. And the devil is in the details. Often, if the metrics are not consistent, clean or remain convoluted, you are screwed. Guess what builds the metrics? The data.

All is not lost.

Dirty data is a reality. But, just like a dance, there is strategy and creativity in figuring out your next move, and the final results can be amazing.

Reminder: “Data” is plural.” Datum” is singular.

I’d like to acknowledge one of Austin’s coolest start-up companies, InfoChimps , who aim to build one of the largest aggregated data set. Talk about data – these guys got it.

With data and dancing, the results can be fabulous.