The real power of data

I've always been obsessed by technology and gadgets. I am the type of person that usually buys the latest phone, downloads the newest apps, tries out new technologies. My other passion is marketing and communications, and in the past few years, these two passions have become one.


Technology currently defines everything in marketing. It is not only a channel, but a medium, a relationship platform, and in many cases, the only point of contact of your brand with a customer. But one of the best things about technology, is that there is always data underneath each gadget.


For marketers this means the access to a whole new world of data points that seems overwhelming and difficult to understand. Nevertheless, this is the first time for us as marketers that we can give exact results of a campaign we do, and in some cases, even demonstrate how many sales it achieved.

During the past three years I have been involved in several projects and had always pushed for measuring results based on data. But the more and more I go through data, the more I understand that data doesn't mean anything if you're not going to do anything with it. There is no point in measuring for the sake of reporting, if you're not willing to look beyond for more and if you don't learn from it.

Here are a some tips I have learned from my work on this subject, and that you can use when trying to gather data about your online channels and campaigns:

1. Determine what is it you want to understand. Data is just the means to an end. If you're just doing it to impress your boss, that is acceptable, but it won't help you be better at what you do. Some examples of this are: Who is visiting my website? What are they looking at? Where are they dropping off? How did they get to my website? What is the best medium to drive traffic to my site?
2. Accept the limitations. The more campaigns I do, the less I get frustrated with the limitations of the reporting systems. Reporting systems and data are not perfect. Sometimes we have different platforms, and they provide different types of data. Some things need to be setup to be tracked, and when you're starting, you won't have the whole picture. But... something is better than nothing! Any kind of data can help you improve your understanding of your customer, their use of your channels, etc. And you can start making decisions on these. Also, once you identify where the data gaps are, you can make a plan to bridge those gaps.
3. Look at different periods. Diving into the current results will give you an accurate view of how you are doing now, but looking back a couple of years may help you identify what you did well, not too well and what you can build on. Also, comparing current month with previous month, or with the same month last year, provides a good benchmark to see if you are really using the data to improve your results.
4. Do it regularly. Gathering data and analyzing it shouldn't be something you do at the end of your financial year. It is definitely an ongoing exercise that you use as a tool to see how your campaigns are doing, make changes to your plans, and to reshape future strategy. With technology changing all the time, so do the users, the platforms, the customers. A specific medium where you're advertising can be good today, but irrelevant in a couple of months.
5. Look at the big picture. When gathering data, many organizations focus on the campaign level and become obsessed with this only. Sometimes, you just have to look at the big picture. How is your overall web channel growing? Where? How does your consolidated map of social media accounts look like? Who is using mobile and for what?