Data-driven marketing and marketing data insights

Greetings, fellow marketer 👋! Since we are building a data-driven marketing assistant that will help you with the decision-making process, Gretel, we thought it would be appropriate (and somewhat necessary) to cover FAQs for data-driven marketing, data-driven decision-making, and marketing data insights alike in order to better understand these concepts. Usually, our articles are written with a bit more personality, but these FAQs and their responses are pretty cut and dry in an attempt to get in Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and specifically in the “People also ask” section of the organic search (hopefully 🤞).

So, without further introduction, here are a number of FAQs specifically for data-driven marketing. It’s a bit of "data-driven marketing 101", if you will.

What is data-driven marketing?

Data-driven marketing is the fusion of using data and statistical information to make informed decisions (data-driven decisions). This could be the decision based on when it is best to send an email campaign or post on social media, or on what channel to focus your energy or investment to drive more traffic to your website. It basically uses data to make data-driven decision-making.

What are the benefits of data-driven marketing?

The benefits of data-driven marketing are that you are using proof, with metrics, statistics, and qualified data, to justify certain marketing actions or business decisions. There is always some sort of trial-and-error involved in detecting the right data, but once you find a formula that works, it is evidenced by the stats of your campaigns. Decisions based on data are measurable and calculable wich makes success.

How do you analyze digital marketing data?

You analyze marketing data by collecting specific data points, preferably over time (so you can have a wider perspective), and you then use that data to tell a story about what is going on with your marketing campaigns.

Depending on the type of campaign or data analysis, you will consider measuring one data point or another. Probably, if you are running a campaign based on conversion, you’d like to check the conversion rates. Common data points used on digital marketing campaigns are impressions (the number of people who see your digital campaign, mostly in ads), clicks (the number of visits/actions taken from the campaign, used in ads or email), and CTR (click-through rate, that is the ratio of users that click to the number of total users impacted) but metrics analyzed can vary. You can also use data visualization on your data analytics, this will help you to make data-driven decisions and explain across the organization or your team your decisions.

What are marketing data insights?

Marketing data insights are the accurate and profound understanding of marketing data and, furthermore, the use of such data to guide your marketing decisions.

Marketing data insights are the next step in data-driven marketing because you are using data to then drive a decision. Data-driven refers to the use of the data, and data insights are the next step in using that data. The decision maker is the one in charge of converting data or big data into insights. Insights are the hypothesis that will lead your business to become a data-driven organization and follow a data-driven culture.

What is the difference between data insights and data?

The difference between data insights and data collection or data is essential that data is the pure information and numbers that explain the situation and show us the performance of a campaign (in marketing). Analytics is the process of understanding this data and interpreting it to then generate data insights. Data-insight is the last step, this is about applying data to your business, not only knowing that pageviews are 2k per day, but also interpreting this data and understanding how it’s increasing or decreasing, so you can make the right decision with the presented statistics to your business leaders.

Why are data-driven insights important?

Data-driven insights are important because they actually provide actionable events, not just raw data. It’s the ‘then’ portion of the statement, “if x, then y." You are going a step further with your data and applying conclusions or actions to the statistics. 

Using data-driven insights can help you identify new business opportunities, improve your relationship with your customers, improve your internal operations, increase sales, engage your community, create better, more focused marketing campaigns, align your team, and solidify your company objectives. Only using insights data scientists can convert this data to inform other teams about what is happening across your organization and it's a must must-steps in creating a data-driven culture and driving businesses to rely on the importance of data.

What are the benefits of data insights?

Data insights can help your business accomplish its goals or OKRs (link to OKRS). Some of the benefits of having this data culture are:

1. Reduce costs: Data insights can help you streamline your business operations, saving time and money.
2. Improve efficiency: Data insights can help you and everyone in your organization improve your overall efficiency by helping you spot inefficiencies and areas where you can improve.
3. Increase revenues: By understanding your customer base, data-driven organizations are able to create targeted marketing campaigns that generate more leads and sales.
4. Improve customer satisfaction: Data and analytics can help you improve your customer service, leading to happier customers and improved customer
5. Save time: By understanding your data, the modern businesses can save time on things like market research, trend analysis, and making decisions.
6. Make better decisions: Data insights can help you make more informed decisions by giving you a better understanding of your customers, your data, and your industry so you can make better decisions for your business.
7. Identify new opportunities: Data insights can help you identify new opportunities for your business, such as new markets to enter, new products to develop, or new ways to reach your customers.
8. Gain a competitive advantage: By understanding your data better, you can develop strategies that give you a competitive advantage over your rivals.
9. Mitigate risk: Data insights can help you identify and manage risks more effectively, minimizing the impact of potential problems and using data to drive success.
10. Align your team: Data insights can help you align your team members and your entire organization around a common goal, improving team cohesion and communication.

What is an example of a marketing insight?

A decision-making example situation from a marketing insight could be this scenario:

Running A/B tests on a home landing page, you can see where the best location for a CTA (call-to-action) might be, if you set it on the top right, on a flotant button, pop-up, on the center, etc.

You can also test what words to use on the CTA button, or what color, etc.

After running tests, the data may help you to generate the insight that choosing a particular location, set of words, or button color that is going to be the best bet for conversions.

What is insights-driven marketing? Source

Insights-driven marketing uses marketing data to draw conclusions, make decisions, and ultimately act upon them, using statistics as a roadmap to become more data-driven.

What is an insight-driven business? Source

An insight-driven business is one that uses statistics and analyzes data to drive decisions and actions moving forward. Basically, use analytics in the decision-making process. They go beyond simply gathering and reviewing data and actually utilizing all possible stats to properly decide the best course of action moving forward. This could be within marketing, sales, internal operations, or across the board of their business activities.

What are the main types of marketing databases?

Two main types of marketing databases within organizations are 1) business databases and 2) consumer databases. Generally, both databases correspond to B2B and B2C businesses, respectively.

How are marketing insights used to optimize buyer personas?

Marketing insights are used as a means of optimizing buyer personas by taking specific data points, analyzing them, and drawing conclusions about customers. This is very much a moving target, as data can change, consumer trends can evolve, and ultimately buyer personas will need updating. Using marketing insights and data to drive these changes is ideal, as decisions can be backed up by statistics. 

How can marketing insights influence a customer journey?

Similar to how marketing insights can be used to optimize buyer personas, they can also be used to influence or enhance a customer's journey. One example is a website and the journey from entering the page to completing a purchase. There are generally a few steps, if not several actions, that must be taken in order to place an order. Using data (marketing insights) to adjust and improve that process is essential to the overall success of a business (particularly an e-commerce business in this instance).