Once you have all the data in one place, it’s time to put it to use. Here are 3 tips on how to set up your visual data stories to drive business growth.
In our previous webinar, part of the “Path to Successful Marketing” series, Adverity’s Joseph Caponsacco led you through the basics of the data integration process, explaining what ETL is and how you can use it to get all the data you need.
However, getting all your data cleaned, harmonized, and in one place is only the first step towards becoming more data-driven. Next, it’s time to start using that data to tell a story that helps generate insights and make better decisions.
In the latest Adverity bitesize episode, Joseph talks through his 3 top tips on how to set up visual data stories that drive results.
Keep It Simple
If you work in a large or even a mid-sized company, the amount of data you have at your disposal can be overwhelming. So the best course of action is to take it one step at a time and start small, with a single brand, product, or region. Once you have cleared all the dilemmas and mapped the potential pitfalls, it would be much easier to scale this approach to a wider dataset.
“Stay away from vanity metrics!” says Joseph. The reports that you want to identify are the ones that all team members, clients, and executive staff can rely upon to make good, everyday business decisions, not the ones that just look nice, but have no clear and immediate effect on the business.
Move Towards Agile Practices
In the traditional marketing approach, the bulk of strategic decision-making occurs in the “pre” and “post” analysis stages. In the new, more digital-focused marketing model, your decisions don’t have to wait for predefined cycles to end. You can adjust budgets, allocation, messages, creatives, and other campaign elements “on the fly”, making your marketing operations much more agile and responsive to fast and frequent changes on the market.
But to move to this agile approach, you need the right data shown to you and other decision makers in your company. With up-to-date dashboards that monitor how certain campaigns perform, decision-making is made much easier, and you can create new stories based on insights brought by historic data.
Don’t Be Afraid of Negative Results
“People tend to try to hide or gloss over negative results. Don’t do that!” emphasizes Joseph. Negative information is just as important as positive results, if not more critical to understand and strategize against. Your ability to work transparently with your stakeholders and solve those harder issues can speak volumes about your capabilities as a marketer or a data analyst, and the value you can bring to the business.
This can make you a superstar in the organization, rather than just reporting that everything is great, and stumbling for an excuse for the lackluster results in your post-campaign reporting. Everyone wants rainbows and unicorns in their reports, but sometimes you need to walk through the dark multi-channel data forest and dig for the illuminating insights, to get the results you want.
To hear the remaining advice Joseph had for aspiring marketers wanting to make effective visual stories out of their data, watch the complete on-demand webinar.
