The three critical thinking skills marketers need to excel at for impactful data storytelling

Data democratisation means marketers have ever-greater access to data to help inform decisions. No longer in the hands of specialists, data is more readily available to use than ever before. However, despite increasing access to data tools, capabilities within marketing teams have not kept up with the pace of change. Investment in data tools will not lead to better data-enabled decision making unless supported by the right marketing capabilities. Critical thinking skills are often overlooked in data storytelling best practice, with more emphasis on visualisation and creative communications. However, it is the critical thinking skills that enable marketers to extract the value from data to ensure the stories both stand up to scrutiny and stand out from the noise. This paper focuses on the needs to build capabilities in three core areas:identifying the ‘so what?’ insights from the data, distilling insights into a few salient points of view and clarifying the ‘now what?’ recommendations.