How to get more from marketing data with a marketing data platform on Google cloud platform – Part 1
The power behind today’s most successful online marketing programs is the sheer abundance of data available to drive strategy, engagement and activation.
But before you can use that bounty of insight to segment, target and engage prospects, as well as gain insights into marketing performance, you need to be able to effectively capture data from multiple sources and curate it to enable self-service consumption. And that’s not always easy.
Capturing data and transforming it into usable and trustworthy insights is a business challenge that, surprisingly, not many marketers have mastered. Just sorting through the tools available to meet the challenge can be daunting.
Many marketing organizations are turning to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to solve this challenge. But successfully getting better analytics insights using GCP requires you to design, build and manage a solution that meets your business goals and fully leverages the power of a wide range of available GCP services. While most marketing organizations are well versed in using Google tools like Google Ads, Google Ad Manager and Google Analytics for marketing engagement and measurement, they may not know as much about how to use GCP for taking their marketing programs to the next level. This cloud computing platform has the potential to help marketers reach the holy grail of targeting, hypersegmentation, and data-driven activation by effectively using more data types and much larger data volumes. But there are a number of considerations to keep in mind and some careful planning that needs to happen to mitigate risks, save on time and costs and ensure the best possible outcomes.
Issues can include determining a migration path that ensures that once the data reaches the data mart (or other destination for use by users and systems), it is organized in a way that aligns with the business. And the question of reliability needs to be addressed at the outset of any data project. A reliable data platform is often the result of following proven methodologies, performing careful planning and engaging experienced Google Cloud experts.
If you’re looking to put data to work for intelligent targeting and powerful activation on GCP, read on to find out how to accelerate your investment.
Designing your marketing data platform
As French writer Antoine de Saint Exupéry once said, “a goal without a plan is just a wish.” And in the case of building a platform for marketing data, the most effective plans combine the unique data needs of your business with hard-won best practices from cloud data veterans.
This is where it’s helpful to work with marketing data platform experts to define your use-cases, map them to data needs, and create a strategy and roadmap that defines success.
Our certified Google architects will assess your unique needs and design a data platform on GCP that makes sense for your business. Getting a service partner who knows GCP involved at this early stage is helpful when you need advice on when to use Dataflow vs. Dataproc or on the best data science and machine learning services for your use case.
Getting it right the first time – on time
Insight comes from a complete picture. But sources of customer activity and sentiment can come from far and wide.
Google Cloud lets you collect and unite all that data: from Google services like Ads and Google Ad Manager, but also from your own point-of-sale system, CRM, marketing automation, eCommerce, finance, and social media. And by leveraging the expertise of professionals who have brought marketing data workloads to GCP time and again, you can move much faster. For example, while you can take advantage of Google BigQuery, a serverless, low-cost data warehouse on your own, partnering with BigQuery experts means your environment is optimized from the time you begin your project, so you experience faster time to value while controlling costs.
The quickest path to building your data platform on GCP is by using a tested approach and a proven set of methodologies. So having your data platform built by Google-certified experts who have done this many times adds massive value.
By partnering with Pythian, you are benefitting from our experience building hundreds of systems that enable companies to use their data and ignite their marketing campaigns and sales programs. Our proven methods, operational workflows and automated process ensure your project is done right the first time — and on time.
Curate your data
You’ve got your data in one place. Now it needs to be prepared, deduplicated and integrated.
Automate your transformations with Google Cloud services like Dataproc and Dataflow by working with the people who lead the industry in implementing them. With the proper approach, you can set up lightning-fast cloud-native transformation pipelines. And with the right partner, this can happen in minutes instead of weeks. Pythian helps you get enterprise-scale data integration on a single platform while enabling governance, security, and PII protection.
Getting Your Data Analytics-Ready
With a regular supply of clean data, you’re ready to move on to the fun part: insight.
Google’s BigQuery lets you integrate with visualization, analysis, exploration and ad-hoc query tools, and develop machine learning models for predictions. You may even wish to automate data analysis. Share reports, dashboards and graphic representations with many different users on myriad systems.
The result: intelligent marketing segmentation and data-driven execution for email marketing, ad servers, and many other media. And, down the road, new customers and bigger sales.
Keeping it running 24×7
Keeping your marketing data platform running smoothly every day, all year can be a challenge.
Data isn’t static so we’ll support your platform to keep it working, and to keep your data flowing – even as your source schemas change.
Our decades of experience in managing business-critical systems means your Marketing Data Platform is in good hands – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our experts can make sure your warehouse is a well-oiled machine by:
- Automating data validation
- Monitoring data flows and their service levels
- Managing schema changes and evolution
- Monitoring Google Cloud platform infrastructure
- Optimizing performance and costs
Get there faster, without a hitch
Pythian has helped many customers quickly create effective and sustainable marketing data warehouses on Google Cloud.
We recently created a global marketing and sales data warehouse to help a century-old luxury fashion house and online retail giant gain insight from a complex new sales environment. But we have many more stories of improved campaign performance, intelligent segmentation and powerful activation. Learn more about our Marketing Data Platform.
When you work with Pythian, you get a secure, effective and easy-to-use solution; both for IT and for the many kinds of users who will be benefiting from insight for years to come.
