{"id":2042,"date":"2020-08-22T04:32:59","date_gmt":"2020-08-22T04:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.britopian.com\/?p=2042"},"modified":"2023-08-28T06:17:07","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T06:17:07","slug":"data-insights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britopian.com\/influencer-marketing\/data-insights\/","title":{"rendered":"How Actionable Data Insights Can Improve Your Digital Marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"
According to the latest Deloitte CMO Survey<\/a>, investments in digital marketing have increased since 2021. More importantly, investments in data insights are now a priority, rising almost 40% from 56.5% in February 2021 to 77.5% in February 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why this matters:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Data takes out the guesswork. Actionable insights can inform everything you do in marketing and public relations. It can also inform critical business decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gartner<\/a> breaks down the budget investment by marketing function, detailing that CMOs are allocating almost 30% of their budgets to uncovering actionable insights:<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are healthy budget allocations. Everyone talks about having an actionable data strategy, but I would be that most struggle with finding an actionable insight. But don’t frown; I had the same challenge early in my career. It wasn’t until I took a step back and rethought my approach to data that I uncovered insights that drove results. And I will share those actionable insights with you in this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actionable insights are data-driven recommendations that can make intelligent decisions\u2013a campaign, a process, messaging, customer relationship, marketing strategy, etc. They are data insights that have the potential to drive change within an organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The key word here is “potential” because not all insights are equally actionable, and it’s up to you to determine which insights are most likely to lead to positive business outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several factors can influence how actionable the insight can be, including the data quality, the findings’ relevance, the context, and the feasibility of implementing any recommended changes. Ultimately, actionable insights have the power to transform your brand – but only if they are put into action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Data is information that has been collected and organized in a specific format. When analyzing the marketing performance of a given campaign, the metrics displayed in a social media dashboard<\/a> are forms of data. Impressions, clicks, click-through rate, conversions, engagements, reach\u2013all data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Insights result from analyzing data to discover patterns, trends, or relationships. In other words, data is the raw material that insights are built from. It’s great that your conversion rate is skyrocketing. You’ll score some brownie points when you share it with your manager. But it would help if you were prepared to explain why it’s so high and how to keep it elevated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To generate insights, data must be analyzed. This can involve using statistical methods, visualizations, or other forms of data modeling. Insights are always more actionable than data alone, as they can give decision-makers a deeper understanding of the underlying issues, opportunities, or white space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, it’s a best practice for digital marketing teams to collect data about customers’ perceptions of the brand, purchase behavior, media consumption, top interests, or how they interact with the website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This data can be analyzed to generate customer insights<\/a> about what motivates their motivations, what frustrates them, and where there are opportunities to improve the experience. These insights can then inform marketing decisions about messaging, creative, audience targeting, and website UI\/UX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another way to think about this is that data provides the foundation for understanding, and insights are what allow us to see the bigger picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s semantics, and it depends on who you ask. In my experience, data analytics is a term used by data science, business intelligence, and engineering teams. It’s turning raw data into useful information, similar to finding actionable data insights. The steps are identical too. It involves:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In marketing, we do the same thing. We call it turning data into actionable insights. It sounds better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another critical component of using data to uncover actionable insights is measurement and reporting, which can be described as analyzing performance and determining whether it has met the campaign goals or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Measurement and reporting apply to all media\u2013paid, earned, owned, digital, and integrated marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once the media and performance data have been analyzed, it can improve the campaign by changing different variables\u2013bid strategy, target audience, messaging, or even the media mix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A critical distinction between measurement and reporting is that the data insights are “after the fact.” In other words, you won’t know what you can do to improve your marketing campaign until it’s over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This contrasts with real-time data analysis, which can be used to make “in-flight” adjustments to improve performance while the campaign runs. Real-time marketing<\/a> analysis is a critical component of programmatic advertising, where algorithms are used to buy and place ads in real time based on various factors\u2013including performance data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This actionable insight informs a program, campaign, narrative, or messaging. The process involves an audience or media landscape analysis to understand the current cultural context and what certain customer groups discuss on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Data-driven storytelling<\/a> uses analytics and data insights to inform a story, media plan, content, headline, blog post, ad copy, or all of the above. Remember, there\u2019s data, and then there’s insight. Data is just a number or percentage. It\u2019s not actionable. An insight is a discovery or a conclusion based on analytics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s assume my Facebook ads generated 5,000 clicks to my business website with just a $500 investment. On the surface, this seems to be a pretty solid ROI. The metrics look great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what if I were to say that after a few A\/B tests, we saw a 125% increase in clicks when the creative has a red CTA button instead of a blue CTA button, resulting in 5,000 clicks? This would be considered an actionable insight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s a step-by-step example of how a media analysis can deliver actionable insights using free analytics tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
What are Actionable Data Insights?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Difference Between Data and Insights<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
How Does Data Analytics Play Into this?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Using Media Measurement and Reporting<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Actionable Insights That Inform Data-Driven Storytelling<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Examples of Actionable Insights<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n