At least once a week, I receive invitations to webinars with clickbait-worthy headlines extolling the demise of data-driven marketing. I can also list a dozen B2B influencers on a crusade to banish complex marketing reports.

But despite the popularity of the advice, the last thing marketers should do right now is "rely on gut instinct."

Marketing data is #complicated. The explosive growth of marketing tools and the unique way each system collects information has resulted in many confused executives, frustrated analysts, and marketing leaders caught in the middle.

A staggering one-third of CMOs say they don't trust their own data, and you better believe a much higher percentage of CEOs also don't trust marketing data.

But just because marketing data is complicated doesn't mean making sense of it is impossible. Moreover, the marketers who can decipher their systems will miss fewer opportunities to connect sales to interested customers, and they will have a competitive edge in the job market.

Before we can discuss how to marry data-driven decision-making and the art of marketing, let's understand how we got into this mess in the first place.

Where We Started: Arts and Crafts

When I think of marketing, I think of Santa Claus. More specifically, the image people (particularly in the US) have embraced: a chubby, cheery guy with rosy cheeks and a red suit.

But that collective vision of Santa Claus didn't exist until Haddon Sundblom's take on the holiday icon as commissioned by Coca-Cola. By 1964, so many movies, television series, donation stations, and visual formats had recreated Sundblom's vision for St. Nick that people became angry when creators deviated from Sundblom's prototype.

Even though we can't tell how many bottles of soda the illustration sold, it achieved "iconic resonance" and was considered a success.

Traditionally, marketing was nearly impossible to track. The channels advertisers relied on—magazine slicks, newspaper advertisements, billboards, television commercials, radio slots, and direct mail—were a data vacuum. People thought most effective advertising struck an emotional chord with their audiences. If something went "viral" enough to be replicated across every media channel and parroted by people advertisers knew in their community (like Santa Claus), the ad was an "undeniable success" whether it translated into sales or not.

In the past, executives selected agencies because their pitch was compelling. However, agencies retained the contract only if sales drastically spiked or they achieved "iconic resonance." Otherwise, they struggled to provide business leaders with proof that the money spent producing and publishing the ads led to a positive return on investment.

Eventually, business leaders grew frustrated, and Marketing was "affectionately" dubbed the "arts and crafts department."

The Tipping Point: Digital Marketing

Over the past 15-20 years, digital marketing has moved to the forefront of marketing.

Although some companies still strive to hit "iconic resonance" via a commercial slot on the Super Bowl halftime show or a viral social campaign, most of us focus on incremental improvement using digital platforms. We tinker with our websites to improve SEO rankings, experiment with digital ad copy and creative, and pray that our efforts across dozens of channels lead to ever-increasing contact requests.

A lot of great things came out of digital marketing. We learned that collecting data was fairly simple, using a funnel to track progress helps identify sticking points in the buyer journey, and multitouch attribution can estimate how each interaction with a prospect helps us close a deal.

But there will never be a silver bullet marketers can use to say what percentage of revenue they contributed. We can get close, but we will never be able to measure mindshare (word-of-mouth, public opinion, referrals, etc.). And mindshare will always be critical.