{"id":383,"date":"2023-03-14T16:20:35","date_gmt":"2023-03-14T16:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/?p=383"},"modified":"2023-03-22T18:31:50","modified_gmt":"2023-03-22T18:31:50","slug":"save-your-gut-for-food-embrace-data-driven-decision-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/save-your-gut-for-food-embrace-data-driven-decision-making\/","title":{"rendered":"Save Your Gut For Food: Embrace Data-Driven Decision Making"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The following is a guest post by\u00a0Victor Echevarria. If you\u2019d like to contribute thinking here, please\u00a0read the guidelines.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>My gut is good for digesting food, telling me when I\u2019ve eaten too much, and groaning loudly when I\u2019m about to get hungry. Never, despite efforts to the contrary, has it helped me pick stellar stocks, win a poker tournament, or find the perfect product-market fit.<\/p>\n<p>Yet how often in our professional lives do we catch ourselves saying \u201cmy gut tells me that \u2026.\u201d (fill in the blank with a massively self-biased view of the world) as a justification for a critical decision, be it personal or professional.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing, however, can substitute good, old fashioned data as a structured way to guide your thinking. Gut checks certainly have their place \u2013 very few open up Excel to determine whom they should marry \u2013 but we tend to overly rely on gut because, let\u2019s face it, collecting and analyzing data is hard.<\/p>\n<p>Gut feelings have also led to world class companies \u2013 however, I\u2019d call that form of gut feeling, \u201cvision,\u201d and most visions are wrong anyway. \u00a0Gut feelings may lead to ideas, but those ideas are hypotheses and should be tested rigorously and abandoned if the data indicate that you were wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Basing a course of action on data involves two steps: collection and analysis.\u00a0 And there are now many ways to collect illuminating data that are within the reach of\u00a0<em>all<\/em>\u00a0digital professionals:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Internet research<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 dig deep into Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo finance, company financials, blogs, etc.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Surveys<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Ask your constituents the kinds of questions that will help guide your next actions.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Inexpensive experiments &#8211;<\/strong>\u00a0Run AdWords campaigns or other\u00a0paid tactics\u00a0to gauge interest around an idea (the web makes this easy and affordable).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Collect data in your product<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 track a user\u2019s clickstream, observe what they buy ask them about themselves, figure out where they came from.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Third party services<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Google Analytics is your friend. \u00a0Or look at someone like Rapleaf or Qwerly that can give you additional insight into your individual users.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Look at the data you\u2019ve already collected!<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Even if your product\u2019s database isn\u2019t structured to collect tons of data, you already have tons of data like shopping carts, product reviews, or locations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Analyzing data is a bit more nuanced, but you can still be systematic about it.<\/p>\n<p>Some trends will be obvious, like finding that all your customers are concentrated in a single zip code or that every public company that specialized in subprime mortgage backed securities is in the dump.<\/p>\n<p>Some trends are more subtle, and you can\u2019t statistically analyze every data field in some magical multivariate linear correlation whozamawhatchit flux capacitor machine.<\/p>\n<p>Rather, you have to hypothesize (i.e. use your gut feel) as to what trends you might spot and then analyze the data to prove or disprove your theory. Pivot tables and regression tests are invaluable tools to this end. Graph the data in case the side of your brain that likes pretty pictures is better suited to spotting trends. Use those trends to form new hypotheses and test them the same way.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll all be better off in the long run\u00a0using data\u00a0to guide our thinking instead of throwing darts with our gut feelings.<\/p>\n<p><em>Victor Echevarria is head of customer acquisition and retention for TaskRabbit where he builds strategies around a data driven customer discovery process. \u00a0He is a firm believer that a quantitative approach to product and marketing can generate tremendous word of mouth awareness.\u00a0Follow Victor on Twitter, and check out the\u00a0TaskRabbit Blog\u00a0for more ideas from the TaskRabbit team.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is a guest post by\u00a0Victor Echevarria. If you\u2019d like to contribute thinking here, please\u00a0read the guidelines. My gut &#8230; <\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more-container\"><a title=\"Save Your Gut For Food: Embrace Data-Driven Decision Making\" class=\"read-more button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/save-your-gut-for-food-embrace-data-driven-decision-making\/#more-383\" aria-label=\"More on Save Your Gut For Food: Embrace Data-Driven Decision Making\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz","category-digital-marketing-and-pr","resize-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}