A few years ago, Dove, the personal care products brand from the house of Unilever, was in massive trouble for a not so vaguely racist advertisement. In the first frame, a dark-skinned woman appears in a bathroom with a bottle of Dove body wash in the lower right hand corner of the frame. In subsequent frames, the woman reaches down and lifts up her shirt to reveal a smiling white woman apparently, the rest of her skin/costume comes off too. Unilever eventually apologized for the advertisement, saying it should “never have happened” and that they “missed the mark.”

It’s a no-brainer that you can’t miss the marks with your advertisement. Given the power of the online world and social media, a small overlook can cause grave dangers to your brand. Marketing professionals should take the bus from the times when they worked off assumptions or gut feelings. Today, they need to turn to the most reliable source of information Customer data. It goes beyond doing the right thing or being politically correct while publishing an advertisement.

By now, we all know that Data helps to gain better clarity about the target audience and equips organizations with the ability to build stronger connections with potential customers. Most importantly, when the entire consumer market demands unique experiences with every transaction, marketers can offer consumers personalized suggestions relevant to them. This leads to higher conversion rates, greater customer loyalty, more new customers, increased customer satisfaction, and more.

However, the challenges are equal to it. Having a large number of data sources at your disposal makes pulling the relevant data together an arduous challenge. None theless, investing in an inhouse data team would be an excellent place to start.