Using data analytics effectively in marketing

When it comes to marketing businesses in a digital age; data analytics in marketing is everything. If data isn’t analyzed in the right way, it’s impossible to understand your customers. This means if you can’t understand them, you can’t reach them. So, if data is good, more data must be better, right? Not necessarily. As Rishad Tobaccowala puts it: “We have huge lakes of data that are filled with dead fish”. Whether you’re designing a mailing list or training a neural net, you should never start with data first.

Many businesses gather as much data as they can, pile it all in a database, then start to think of ways to use it. This is akin to buying an encyclopedia and then wondering what to look up in it. As marketers, the first task is to work out what questions we need to ask about the data. This can be much harder than it sounds.

What answers can data analytics provide in marketing?

Remember that data can only ever answer with numbers. For example, it can tell you exactly how many people visited a website in the past month and where they came from – but it lacks any qualitative insight. Marketers, therefore, need to break questions down to a point where they can be answered with numbers alone.

For example, you might be looking to increase traffic to your website. No matter how much data we have, it can’t tell us how to do this. For the marketing function to be effective in analyzing data, it will need to design questions that, once answered, might point out how it can be achieved, such as:

· How many people visited our website last month?

· What demographics do we see the most of?

· Which sites did they arrive from?

· Which web pages are the most visited?

This process of establishing questions needs to happen before the data has even been looked at.

Selecting the data you need

With the list of questions in hand, marketers can start the process of finding some answers. Think about what information you need to know to answer the question. Next look at how you can get it. For instance, if we want to know where website users have arrived from, some form of tracking system will need to be set up. If instead, we wanted to know about the types of products that are often bought together, we could gather the information from our sales database instead.

Quality is important, and you’re often better off getting detailed, relevant information on a targeted audience than casting your net as wide as possible. Customers are often willing to give you their data if they trust you, so you should use this to build up a nuanced picture of your audience. Consider too, what data does google analytics prohibit collecting? What data analytics KPIs do you need?

Insight and creativity – the human element

Once you know how many people use the website, which pages are most popular, where referrals come from, and so on. Now it’s possible to interpret them: Tobaccowala highlights the importance of human insight using what he calls ‘The Four P’s’: Perspective, Provocation, Point of View, and Plan of Action. It’s our job, as humans, to turn the dry data into useful perspectives.

Digital marketing data analytics can tell us that our website is getting a lot of referral traffic from Facebook – our insight is that this may be an area to focus marketing spending on. This insight generates further questions – how much should we spend on Facebook advertising? Which demographics are the best ones to target? Can we produce better content for the platform? Go back to the start and repeat the same steps we’ve just been through until you have specific actions you can take to achieve your overall goal. This process is a crucial cycle in making informed decisions about your marketing strategy.

When data-driven research works in practice

Take the example of Sinan Aral’s work with Jet, an online sales platform. His goal was to improve overall sales. Rather than dive into the data, he came up with specific questions to ask – “which products are often purchased together?”, and “which products are rarely purchased together?”. Simple questions with quantitative answers, which he could answer by turning to sales data. A simple tweak to the ‘suggested products’ algorithm improved the likelihood of displaying shoppers products they’d be interested in purchasing, ultimately improving sales.

This approach is efficient, and cost-effective, and it makes use of marketers’ most important asset; their minds. The cycle of data-driven research delivers consistent results, and allows marketers to demonstrate real value to clients and management:

· Set a high-level goal.

· Identify specific questions with quantitative answers – “how much”, “how many”, “how long”, etc.

· Acquire data that can answer these questions.

· What do these answers tell you? If there are further questions, begin the cycle again.

In the digital age, brands must be able to use data effectively and efficiently to effectively market themselves and increase sales. It’s not just a case of hoarding data, it’s about understanding the questions that your business needs to know the answers to and then heading into the data after.

The role of PR serves an ever-increasingly digital one.

The relationship between PR and clients should be more than just a service provider. A fully optimized PR client relationship is one of fully-fledged strategic oversight, the kind of specialist skills and knowledge that a great PR agency can bring to a business, should never be underestimated.

Sarah Woodhouse director AMBITIOUS PR

Sarah is a seasoned public relations & communications professional with over 20 years experience working in the UK and Asia.

Birmingham Unveils the UK’s Best Emerging HealthTech Advances

Kosta Mavroulakis • 03rd April 2025

The National HealthTech Series hosted its latest event in Birmingham this month, showcasing innovative startups driving advanced health technology, including AI-assisted diagnostics, wearable devices and revolutionary educational tools for healthcare professionals. Health stakeholders drawn from the NHS, universities, industry and front-line patient care met with new and emerging businesses to define the future trajectory of...

Why DEIB is Imperative to Tech’s Future

Hadas Almog from AppsFlyer • 17th March 2025

We’ve been seeing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) initiatives being cut time and time again throughout the tech industry. DEIB dedicated roles have been eliminated, employee resource groups have lost funding, and initiatives once considered crucial have been deprioritised in favour of “more immediate business needs.” The justification for these cuts is often the...

The need to eradicate platform dependence

Sue Azari • 10th March 2025

The advertising industry is undergoing a seismic shift. Connected TV (CTV), Retail Media Networks (RMNs), and omnichannel strategies are rapidly redefining how brands engage with consumers. As digital privacy regulations evolve and platform dynamics shift, advertisers must recognise a fundamental truth. You cannot build a sustainable business on borrowed ground. The recent uncertainty surrounding TikTok...

The need to clean data for effective insight

David Sheldrake • 05th March 2025

There is more data today than ever before. In fact, the total amount of data created, captured, copied, and consumed globally has now reached an incredible 149 zettabytes. The growth of the big mountain is not expected to slow down, either, with it expected to reach almost 400 zettabytes within the next three years. Whilst...

What can be done to democratize VDI?

Dennis Damen • 05th March 2025

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) offers businesses enhanced security, scalability, and compliance, yet it remains a niche technology. One of the biggest barriers to widespread adoption is a severe talent gap. Many IT professionals lack hands-on VDI experience, as their careers begin with physical machines and increasingly shift toward cloud-based services. This shortage has created a...

Tech and Business Outlook: US Confident, European Sentiment Mixed

Viva Technology • 11th February 2025

The VivaTech Confidence Barometer, now in its second edition, reveals strong confidence among tech executives regarding the impact of emerging technologies on business competitiveness, particularly AI, which is expected to have the most significant impact in the near future. Surveying tech leaders from Europe and North America, 81% recognize their companies as competitive internationally, with...