The problem with data — Michelle Robbins // Clearlink

About the speaker

Michelle Robbins

Clearlink

- Clearlink

For more than 20 years Michelle has lived at the intersection of technology, marketing, and data. She is an accomplished marketing, technology, and media professional with deep experience as an analyst, engineer, digital marketing, search and content strategist, editor and writer. At Clearlink, Michelle leads Consumer Brands' data and analytics team, leveraging her deep technology and analysis experience to oversee the development of a holistic end-to-end reporting and analytics system, and accelerate the organization's machine learning and statistical capabilities. A member of the digital marketing and search community since its beginnings in the late 90s, Michelle founded her own web development consultancy, worked agency-side at Aimclear, and spent 12 years at Third Door Media, serving as SVP, Content & Marketing Technology while also Editor in Chief for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, and MarTech Today. She is a frequent keynote speaker, webinar presenter, and podcast guest on topics spanning martech, data, product development, content strategy, and search marketing.

Show Notes

  • 01:42
    The problem with data
    The problem with data has to do with quality. While we are extremely reliant on data, we still need to balance it with intuition.
  • 02:44
    Common data quality issue
    Transparency. You cant be entirely sure that your data is coming from a reliable source or that it is even 100% correct.
  • 03:46
    Data quality from large companies
    A lot of people dont realize that the data we get is aggregate data. Data has a lot to do with content, so it should be looked at with respect to trends instead of hard-and-fast.
  • 06:01
    What to do when you have problems with your main data provider
    Analyze your result to see if the data lines up with the results of your website. While you might lose out in some areas, dont neglect other areas that might have seen improvement.
  • 07:43
    Its normal for data systems to have issues
    Even if youre getting your data from Google, you could still face issues. However, data providers generally work quickly to resolve these issues.
  • 09:15
    Figuring out if youre first
    First-party data isnt perfect. You still have to evaluate, clean, and transform it to make it work for you. Data will always change because search is always changing.
  • 11:32
    How move past data issues and perform
    You need to be able to look back at past data. So make annotations from your data pipeline and your data warehouse. Also note when you have any issues with your data source.
  • 14:28
    Data accuracy
    Data is not an exact science. You need to also be aware of the elements that affect it such as trends.

Quotes

  • The problem with data is that we rely too much on it. And that's a problem because too much of it is not good. " - Michelle Robbins, Senior Director of Data and Analytics, Clearlink

  • "Regardless of your job, everyone's dealing with data all the time and using data to make business decisions. And the amount of scrutiny that data gets is lacking." - Michelle Robbins, Senior Director of Data and Analytics, Clearlink

  • "We're very reliant on using data for making just fundamental decisions, but we're not necessarily sure if that data is correct." - Benjamin Shapiro, Host of VOS podcast

  • “There's not a tremendous amount of transparency around data sources from some of these data providers.” - Michelle Robbins, Senior Director of Data and Analytics, Clearlink

  • “So a lot of people don't understand that some of the data points are aggregate data.” - Michelle Robbins, Senior Director of Data and Analytics, Clearlink

  • “Most datasets shouldn't be looked at as ground truth, but should be looked at with respect to trends.” - Michelle Robbins, Senior Director of Data and Analytics, Clearlink

  • “For your first party data, you should always be engaged in a process of evaluating and cleaning, transforming it to make it useful.” - Michelle Robbins, Senior Director of Data and Analytics, Clearlink

About the speaker

Michelle Robbins

Clearlink

- Clearlink

For more than 20 years Michelle has lived at the intersection of technology, marketing, and data. She is an accomplished marketing, technology, and media professional with deep experience as an analyst, engineer, digital marketing, search and content strategist, editor and writer. At Clearlink, Michelle leads Consumer Brands' data and analytics team, leveraging her deep technology and analysis experience to oversee the development of a holistic end-to-end reporting and analytics system, and accelerate the organization's machine learning and statistical capabilities. A member of the digital marketing and search community since its beginnings in the late 90s, Michelle founded her own web development consultancy, worked agency-side at Aimclear, and spent 12 years at Third Door Media, serving as SVP, Content & Marketing Technology while also Editor in Chief for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, and MarTech Today. She is a frequent keynote speaker, webinar presenter, and podcast guest on topics spanning martech, data, product development, content strategy, and search marketing.

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