The challenge
Dan King, President of King Marketing, runs a boutique marketing company for high-growth e-commerce brands. Dan has a tenured background having led marketing and growth for brands such as Ritual and MeUndies. He now works with brands between $2 - $50 million in revenue at the intersection of e-commerce, marketing, and strategy.
For Dan to help brands grow, he needs to understand their current position and set a culture around decision-making. Having trusted data is central to this. But as Dan worked with more and more companies, he realized he was "spending unnecessary time trying to figure out where the data was instead of sourcing actual insights“.
Dan bucketed the problems he was experiencing as follows:
- Lack of data infrastructure: Brands had messy data infrastructure, meaning it was difficult to bring data together and slice data in different ways for analysis.
- Fragmented KPIs: Key KPIs lived in different places. Multiple Google Drives, sheets, and Data Studios, using mental math to come up with a story.
- Lack of technical resources: Brands needed technical help but weren’t ready for a full-time engineer or analyst.
Apple’s ios14 compounded these issues. Before, brands could get away with using platform data because it gave directional insights.
“Now you have to focus on your data; the stakes are much higher; you just can’t rely on third-party data tools anymore.”
The problems became so significant that Dan considered not working with brands that had not figured out their data infrastructure and reporting.
