Data Visualisation for Digital Marketing
Data visualisation for Digital Marketing is becoming an area of intense interest for Marketers.
This is because they need to be able to translate complex data taken from multiple sources into a clear and simple story about campaign plans, progress and outcomes.
The most effective way to do this is through charts and infographics that take an audience only a few moments to read and understand.
Data Visualisation Applications
Let’s look at platforms and applications before exploring data visualisation principles and practice.
1. Digital Marketing platforms
A good place to start is the Digital Marketing platform within which you can manage your Social Media campaigns.
And a good example is Sproutsocial . In addition to the tools needed for managing campaigns across multiple channels, it provides reports showing charts containing metrics such as Audience Growth, Message Volume, Impressions and Engagement.
These are immediately available and require no setting up. You are, however, restricted to a set range of metrics, and user customisation is extremely limited.
Sproutsocial has plenty of competitors. They will provide something very similar.
2. Data Integration & Dashboard platforms
The next group to mention are data integration and dashboard platforms with in-built links to all the major sources of data used by Digital Marketers.
A good example is Dashthis .
It has connectors for pretty much every Social Media and Digital Marketing platform plus the ability to connect to CSV files through a pre-prepared CSV template.
You can create multiple dashboards and choose from a range of chart widgets populated with the metrics available through the connectors. Some customisation of charts is possible. Custom calculations, however, need to take place outside the application and be imported through a connector.
Dashthis also has plenty of competitors, with a similar (in some cases more extensive) range of connectors, as well as similar levels of ease, flexibility and customisation.
3. Data visualisation applications
The final group to mention are applications which provide you with all the tools you require to build fully customisable visualisations with data drawn from a vast range of connectors. A good example is Microsoft’s PowerBI application – which is both a desktop application and an on-line application included within the Microsoft 365 platform.
There is, by far, the widest range of fully customisable charts – with additional ones available from Microsoft. There are also multiple tools available for data manipulation and custom calculations.
The drawback with such an application is that is takes time to learn.
Tableau is perhaps the only other application that can match PowerBI for versatility, functionality and customisation.
One additional application worth mentioning is MSExcel. As a tool for data manipulation and modelling, it is unparalleled. It also provides an extensive chart library along with a wide range of chart customisation tools.
Excel can also connect with data sources using the same connection and transformation tools used by Power BI.
However, if you are not familiar with using charts in MSExcel, it also takes time to learn.
Which platform to use
Your choice of platform depends upon your reasons for visualising data and who your intended audience is.
If you are the audience, and you want a quick check to see how trends are faring in, say, levels of engagement within a campaign, you will be comfortable with any of the platforms and applications available.
But if your audience is likely to be critical, perhaps with questions relating to campaign effectiveness and predicted outcomes from future spend, you will want a platform through which you can communicate as effectively as possible.
Say you are presenting campaign progress to the Board of an organisation. A chart showing an increase of 100% in impressions for a particular post or Ad is likely to be greeted with ‘So what? What does that mean for the business?’.
To use data visualisation well, there are some basic rules to follow. These rules will also help guide your choice of platform or application.
Basic rules for Data Visualisation for Digital Marketing
- Put yourself in your audiences’ shoes and figure out what questions they want answered – which might differ from the information you want, or feel able, to present.
- Before thinking about the data you have available, jot down the words you would want to use for the simplest possible answer (you might want to refer to a metric that would be ideal for the story you have in mind even though it’s not yet available).
- Using pen and paper (or pen and whiteboard) sketch a chart, or charts, that captures the answer you want to provide, with a design that makes it quick and easy for the audience to interpret. (Keep including metrics that might not be available). If there’s more than one chart, have the charts flow in line with the story you have scripted at 2.
- Locate all the data connections your charts require – and explore whether and how you can create any missing metrics.
It might seem counter-intuitive to include what might be missing data in your designs. But this is important. It ensures that you continue to be guided by answers that your audience will want rather than by the data that is easiest to include.
Once you have confirmed the need for missing data, you might then discover that it can be created from existing sources.
- Use the platform of your choice and create your charts – along with all the supporting text and labels needed for quick and easy interpretation.
This is when platform choice becomes important. If you don’t have a particular chart type available, or you can’t customise what you have in the way that you would like, don’t compromise. It is much more important that you communicate as well as possible rather than be hampered by technical limitations.
It’s easy for the Digital Marketer to forget that, for Employers and Clients, your insights may be vital.
They need you to explain how customers are engaging with their organisation and what choices they should think about as a result of your findings.
You need to create the best charts possible that speak to your Audience about the things that matter. So think about this as ‘communicating with data’.
- Build your charts into a narrative that includes introductions that explain the message that the charts are there to convey, in-chart headings and labels that direct the reader to the chart objects of interest, confirmation text below the chart that refers again to the message the reader needs to receive.
Use colour only for the data on the chart i.e. all axes and labels are in black or grey.
- Test to see whether your finished work passes the 5 second test
Assume (as many journalists do) that someone seeing a chart in an article, report or presentation will take about 5 seconds to decide whether to engage with it or not.
In that time their eye will pass over the objects on the chart in order to understand the subject and what the chart is saying, and to then decide whether it is of interest and worth engaging with.
Your role as a communicator with data is to make it as easy as possible for them.
And think like a journalist
The people who get data visualisation right are Data Journalists. These are the specialists typically found in major media organisations whose job is to catch the interest of a reader or viewer and to keep them engaged in a story.
It is highly recommended that you follow their work, and study how they present stories. The Author’s personal favourite is the data journalism team at the Economist.
Their approach is to be wholly story focused and design led. And because they seek to express the story as clearly and effectively as possible, they do not limit themselves to a particular data visualisation platform.
They instead opt for platforms that provide for the greatest degree of customisation – to the point at which they write bespoke computer code in order to create exactly the chart of choice.
Opt for the best platform
With all of the above in mind the Author recommends investing time in getting to know PowerBI or Tableau – as well as Excel for good measure.
When the message involves explaining, for example, how an uptick in impressions influences value to the business you may need to bring different sets of data together, create some new metrics and then present them using a combination of bars and lines not within the repertoire of most applications and platforms.
To help explain what might be required, have a look at our blog Econometrics in Digital Marketing.
This is where we can help
Digital Marketers’ super-power is creating compelling content that turns heads, sways opinions, creates clarity, motivates and moves.
At FiguringOutData.com our superpower involves working alongside you to bring your data alive through analytics powered dashboards. We can develop them for you, or train and support you to develop them.
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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.