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<h1><span style="color: #808080;">No one will dispute the fact that information about consumer trends, attitudes and behaviors is necessary and useful to gain insight on determining the basis of planning marketing tactics. Like a sharp knife, data is both useful and dangerous.</span></h1>
Marketers love data. They can’t get enough of it even as they drown in it. And there is no shortage of resources for marketers to get more and more data on consumer trends they believe will influence their marketing effectiveness. It may be time for marketers to recognize data as too much of a good thing. Paradoxically the more data marketers gather on consumer behavior, the more removed they are from knowing what really matters to people.
<h2>Data (in and of itself) has no value whatsoever. Add to that consumer’s growing resistance to providing information to marketers, and its easy to see why the proliferation of data driven marketing is reaching a tipping point where so much data simply becomes useless white noise in the background of a crowded marketplace.</h2>
<strong>Consumers believe data tracking is stalking.</strong>

Tracking the behavior of consumers online is an activity marketers love. Placing ads as a result of contextual browser behavior is all the rage right now for marketers. Trouble is consumers resent the fact that their browser behavior can be tracked by marketers seeking to dish up advertising that reflects their so-called interests.

According to a recent Consumer Reports study, the majority of consumers don’t want to be tracked online. Here are some statistics to think about:

78% of American consumers are uncomfortable receiving ads based on their internet browsing and online purchasing behavior.

67% think the government should protect their online privacy.

75% regularly erase cookies to thwart marketers who want to track them.

40% believe their personal information is shared with marketers without their consent.

<strong>Brands are built on trust not data.</strong>

You can gather all the data in the world about consumers and it won’t help you one bit if people don’t trust what your brand represents. Trust is something so basic and fundamental to building relationships with people, it’s difficult to understand why so many marketers ignore this fact in their data-gathering tactics?

The way to build trust is to contribute something of value first. If your marketing activities do not have trust baked in, then you will be alienating buyers. Contributing value starts with building a community by contributing to the community. For the most part, consumers are deaf and blind to marketing. Marketing has a smell to it that evokes a response “oh yeah, they’re trying to sell me something and it’s annoying”. Nobody wants to be sold anything, but people love to buy things. People buy things that matter to them.

<strong>In the long run, those marketers who invest time, talent and money contributing value to their tribe rather than obsessively collecting data about them are usually the market leaders.</strong>