Tableau_-_Bollinger_Bands_example

During last week’s MarketingProfs B2B Forum, Tim Washer asked forgiveness on stage from me and other analysts in the crowd for lambasting over-analysis of data as one of the top obstacles to creativity in business. The thing is, he didn’t have to apologize: he’s totally right.

The logical followup question then is, how do you know when you’re overanalyzing marketing data?

The answer to this comes from what I call the Marketing DAIS.

Data is the stuff.

Analysis tells you what happened.

Insights tell you why.

Strategy tells you what to do next.

You are overanalyzing when you keep going back for more data, and more data does not change the analysis substantially.

You are overanalyzing when you know what happened and you haven’t made progress on knowing why.

You are overanalyzing when you haven’t made the transition to what to do next.

That’s it in a nutshell. You are overanalyzing when you keep treading water, when you fail to move forward beyond the data and the story it tells you. We all love a good story, but if that’s all you ever do, then you’re overanalyzing.


You might also enjoy:


Want to read more like this from Christopher Penn? Get updates here:

subscribe to my newsletter here


AI for Marketers Book
Get your copy of AI For Marketers

Analytics for Marketers Discussion Group
Join my Analytics for Marketers Slack Group!


Subscribe to My Free Weekly Newsletter

Subscribe to My Free Weekly Newsletter

Sign up now to the free Almost Timely Newsletter, released every weekend with the latest news about marketing, technology, analytics, data science, and AI.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

You have successfully subscribed to the Almost Timely Newsletter!