Using Data in Digital Marketing – desired outcomes
Digital Marketing is all about data. Every Marketing channel you use will be able to provide a comprehensive set of records and granular counts for every type of activity performed.
But more data doesn’t necessarily mean better insights. Exploring and analysing data can be hard work. Sometimes there isn’t the time to make sense of everything available.
In this series of blogs, I will be walking through the main sets of data that are available, and describing how they can be used to deliver the Marketing outcomes you need.
1. Start with desired outcomes
You invest time and money in Digital Marketing to achieve a desired outcome – e.g. attract visitors to your website to, say, make a purchase, apply to study, become a member, sign up for a newsletter.
Data can help guide your efforts so that you get the best return for the time and money you invest.
But you need to be clear about the outcomes you want. The clearer you are, the easier it is to find the right data to help you stay on track.
2. What is the right data?
This is the key question. The right data is whatever can explain the outcomes achieved so far and guide your use of channels and content for the best result going forward.
3. A simple example
I have an on-line store selling umbrellas. I want to increase sales.
Looking back over the past year I can see there was a significant variation in sales – some weeks were great, others less so. I want to know the reasons for this variation to see what I can learn. So I start collecting some data.
Unsurprisingly, I discover that some of the variation in sales can be explained by the weather i.e. when it rained, sales increased. But some can also be explained by the number of paid adverts posted on Facebook as well as how visible my website was whenever people used Google or Bing to search for on-line umbrella sales.
This is using data to help to explain outcomes. It may not explain all the historical variation in sales, however it helps identify some of the key influences over sales – information that I can use in my Digital Marketing programme going forward.
4. Narrowing down choices
Once you are clear about the outcomes you want, the process that follows involves understanding and exploring data from the channels and platforms you use for Digital Marketing. E.g.
- Google platforms and services, for data about website activity.
- Social Media & Networking platforms , for data about Posts and Adverts.
- Video platforms, for data about views and viewers.
- CRM platforms, for digital records such as emails, chatbot records, SMS records.
The first set of data to identify is the one that reflects the outcomes you want.
E.g. if the outcome I want is a click on a web page to buy an umbrella, the data that reflects this outcome will be a timestamped record of clicks.
The datasets that follow are those that can best explain the number of clicks made.
E.g. did people come to the web page because they responded to an advertisement, or performed an on-line search, or saw a comment on a social media post?
If I know what the possible influences might be, and if I can collect records for each, I can figure out what has led to the clicks so far, and how to keep them coming.
5. Setting a budget
Keeping the clicks coming is going to cost money. But once I know what to do – perhaps post more Ads, plus keep my web page visible, plus put out more of the posts that attracted the right comments – I can figure out what I now need to spend.
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Paul Clarke is the Director of FiguringOutData.com, a Data Analytics Service Provider supporting teams make the best use of data to guide Digital Marketing and Social Media management.
For information about our services and for guidance in the use of data to support Digital Marketing please get in touch using the contact information above.