Importance of Data Governance in Marketing Agencies

When it comes to marketing, data is everything. It allows us to track the effectiveness of our campaigns, measure our ROI, and make informed decisions about where to allocate our resources. But in order for data to be useful, it needs to be accurate, consistent, and up-to-date.

That's where data governance comes in.

Data governance is the process of developing standards and procedures for how data is collected, stored, accessed, and used within an organization. In a marketing agency, this includes everything from how media buyers enter data into purchasing platforms like FreeWheel's Strata to how CMOs report on the effectiveness of campaigns to clients.

Developing strong data governance practices is critical for any marketing agency that wants to be successful. Here's why:

Provide Visibility into Agency Operations

As the CMO or owner of a marketing agency, it's important that you have visibility into what's happening across all of your clients and media vendors. This includes understanding how often campaigns are being run, what type of media is being bought, and how much money is being spent.

Is the agency team making the best advertising decisions with the client's marketing budget?

Without visibility into these details, it can be difficult to manage a client portfolio effectively. Data governance provides a framework for collecting and storing this information so that it can be easily accessed and reported on.

Ensure REPORTING Accuracy & Consistency 

One of the most important functions of data governance is ensuring accuracy and consistency in reporting. This is especially important when you're dealing with large amounts of data from multiple sources that don't inherently connect with each other.

Frequently different media buyers will enter data differently into systems like FreeWheel's Strata platform, which can cause issues when you want to automate reporting to your clients. By developing standards for how data should be entered and stored, you can avoid these problems and provide accurate and consistent reports that your clients can trust.

Make SMART Decisions ON Marketing Spend

Another benefit of data governance is that it helps you make better decisions about your marketing spend. By having accurate and up-to-date information about your campaigns, you can more easily identify areas where you're wasting money or not getting the results you want. This allows you to redirect your resources to more effective channels and achieve a higher ROI for your marketing efforts.

Establish EFFECTIVE DATA GOVERNANCE

It's critical to start the process today of ensuring that the data you are using is complete, accurate, and consistent. This may seem like a daunting task, but it's essential if you want to be able to trust your data, make sound marketing decisions, and ultimately delight your customers.

Here are tips for establishing effective data governance in your business:

Develop standards for data entry

This will help ensure that all of your data is entered in a consistent format, making it much easier to aggregate and analyze.

Train your team on these standards

Once you've developed standards for data entry, make sure that everyone on your team knows and understands them. This will help reduce errors and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Audit your data regularly

Even with standards in place, errors can still happen. That's why it's important to audit your data regularly to catch any potential issues. By doing so, you can be confident that the data you're using is accurate and up-to-date.

Strong data governance practices are critical for any marketing agency that wants to be successful. Data governance provides visibility into agency operations, ensures accuracy and consistency in reporting, and helps agencies make better decisions about their marketing spend.

By developing standards for how data is collected, stored, accessed, and used within an organization, marketing agencies can set themselves up for success now and in the future.  And if you are looking to take the next step into Marketing Customer 360 views with both descriptive and predictive analytics, reach out to our DataDrive team to learn how we are strengthening agency customer relationships with insights. 

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