I love data… and I think market analysis is some of the most important tools a marketing Executive has to support their decisions. It helps when presenting a marketing concept where one can use analysis to build a strong case for doing something new or just building support for what you are doing is the right thing.

I have tweeted and retweeted a lot of examples of data that would be of great interest for a marketer.

But I also spend some time to read the section often called “about the data”.

If there is no such section I get suspicious. Or, like in this case, where they compare European and North America I at least expect a rather big selection of respondents.

But then it turns out that they have only 279 respondents in 8 European and US/Canada. This equals about 28 respondents for each country.

And then there is the headline: “Most Marketers See Web Data as Very Important” or “6 in 10 Marketers Perform Interactive marketing”.

And the respondents are “Online and direct marketing professionals”.

Then it is interesting to read that 11% have no interactive marketing plans. 11% sound like a lot in these days – right? Well its 30 respondents in 10 countries, or (if equally divided); three in each…

There are around 733 millions people in Europe and about 350 millions in North America. Yes I know. They are not all  “Online and direct marketing professionals” – but it puts it into some perspective anyway…

So lesson learned: At least be critical when you read statistics! There are so many companies out there trying to establish a content strategy and data is always good content. At least when it is used right…

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