FUNDAMENTALS OF DIGITAL MARKETING: MODULE 23/26

Turn data into insights

Knowing how to turn digital data into actionable insights can improve your online
campaign results and help you meet your goals. In this topic, you'll learn about the
data cycle, how to draw actionable insights from raw data, and which tools can
help you manage digital data efficiently. We'll also cover how to present
information in a way that will make the most impact with a target audience.

1. Using data to understand audiences

Key Learnings
Collecting and analysing data can offer many benefits to online businesses. To
take advantage of these benefits, it's important to first understand the types of
data available to you as well as the best way to gather it. In this lesson, we'll
explore: * the differences between quantitative and qualitative data * how online
data can be used to complement your offline business approach * common ways
to collect data.

Video Transcript
Years ago, the only way to get to know your customers was to ask them questions
face to face. Today, the internet provides a wealth of information right at your
fingertips.
In this lesson we’ll explore how online data can be utilised to develop your
business as well as how to combine online and offline data to maximise results.
Collecting and analysing data should be a key part of your business strategy, and
should regularly factor into your overall approach. The better you understand your
customers and business, the more targeted and efficient your marketing efforts
can be.
Because we are surrounded by so much information, it’s important to have a
targeted strategy to get the answers you’re looking for. A good way to do this is to
break down your digital data into the two groups: quantitative and qualitative.
Quantitative data is anything that can be numerically measured, like the number of
people visiting a website or the amount of sales a site makes in a month.
Qualitative data is essentially any descriptive information that you can't put a
number to. This could be people’s opinions about a new product, or the sentiment
and language people use on social media when talking about a brand.
The right approach will vary depending on what information is most relevant to
your business scenario. If you want to know how people feel about your products
or service, take a qualitative approach and ask them directly. If you want to know
something quantitative, such as the amount of time someone spends on one of
your blog posts, use an analytics tool to review that specific metric. Often,
combining quantitative and qualitative data will provide you with a richer overall
picture.
So where can you find all this data? Quantitative data can often be pulled from
tools such as Google Analytics or from the analytics features offered by most
social media platforms. This can be great for finding out information about
demographics, search habits, and the journey a customer has taken across your
digital assets.
Alternatively, qualitative data is often gathered through connecting directly with
people, such as having a review section on your website or asking customers to fill
out an online survey.
Combining different forms of data is a great way to identify what is working and
what isn’t, and can give you valuable insights about who interacts with your
business.
Online data can also be used to complement your offline business approach. For
example, offline data like in-store customer surveys, can be combined with social
media poll results to give you a more detailed picture of customer needs and
opinions. This allows you to make informed business decisions - from deciding
the time of day to post on social media, to understanding how to improve products
or services.
In your own business scenario, try using a mix of quantitative and qualitative
approaches to help build a clear summary of your activity. Have a think about the
benefits of digital data and make sure you are collecting the relevant data you
need to help inform those big decisions.

2. Understanding the Data Cycle

Key Learnings
One of the benefits of working in the digital world is the amount of data and
information available. This data can help you continuously improve what you do,
allowing you to meet your goals. In this lesson, we'll explore: * how the data cycle
can help improve your efforts online * which tools can be used to capture your
data * best practices to help you get the best results from the data collected.
Video Transcript
When it comes to evaluating what’s working in your online strategy, knowing what
to measure and how to interpret your marketing data is a useful skill have.
In this lesson we’ll explain what the data cycle is, its benefits, and how you can use
it in day to day activities to help achieve your goals.
The data cycle is a popular way to help you make the most of the information
collected from various online marketing activities. Use it to help you prepare,
action, and inform your business decisions online. The four main stages of a data
cycle are: Plan, Do, Check and Act.
Let’s explore the data cycle in action. Imagine a marketing team working at the
local town hall want to organise a digital advertising campaign to encourage
people to cycle to work.
In the “Plan” stage, the team would identify their goal for this campaign and outline
how they plan to promote it. They decide their goal is to see a 25% reduction in
commuter traffic over the next three months using search advertising and social
media marketing.
Next up is the “Do” stage of the cycle. This is when the team designs the ads and
launches the campaign.
A few weeks after the campaign has ended, the team measures how many people
clicked on the ads and assess whether the campaign had an impact on the
number of people cycling to work. They notice that while the search ads drove a
substantial amount of new traffic to the website, very few people saw or engaged
with the social media campaign. This insight highlights that the town hall’s social
media campaign should be reassessed and optimised for improvements. This is
the “Check” stage of the data cycle.
Finally, the “Act” stage reveals where a business can use their findings to improve
future campaigns. In this case, the marketing team could decide to vary the social
platforms used, review the content they’re publishing, or post at different times of
the day and see if these changes help improve engagement.
Now that we’ve discussed the data cycle, let’s look at some tips to help you get the
best results from the data you collect.
Don’t get overwhelmed trying to collect as much data as possible. Focus your
efforts on the data sets that are most relevant to your goals and work to capture
the right information at the right time.
Review the information you gather at periodic intervals. This will help you stay
aware of any data anomalies that may appear during the year, such as spikes or
drops in sales due to seasonal dates like national holidays.
Utilise online tools to help you gather the data you need and draw out the relevant
insights. Tools such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics and Webtrends can
provide data on website visits, including pages visited, time spent on site, and
whether users have completed a target action, like completing a contact form.
Finally, if you have access to historical data or data of past trends, use it and learn
from past experiences.
When it comes to your business scenario, think about how you can apply data to
inform your decisions. How could the data cycle support you in optimising future
marketing campaigns?

3. Creating actionable insights from your data

Key Learnings
Actionable insights give you tangible actions to take away, and can be used to
improve your website or online campaigns. In this lesson, we'll explore: * what an
actionable insight is, and how it differs from a regular insight * how to take action
based on the data you've analysed.

Video Transcript
Website analytics can offer a wealth of information about who is visiting your
website and where they came from. But while collecting data is important,
knowing what to do with this information is what can truly add value to a business.
In this lesson we will explain what an actionable insights are, how to identify them,
and how you can use metrics to turn your data into a story that can help improve
your business.
So, how do we define an insight? To put it simply, it’s analysing ‘why’ something
has happened. Insights are critical to determine actions and help you focus on
what is important to your business goals. An actionable insight takes this analysis
one step further and determines what to do next, so that you can successfully
improve and refine what you’re doing.
To uncover your own actionable insights, try following these six steps:
* define your goal: Clearly outline what your campaign aims to achieve
* collect the data. Gather and organise any statistics or information relevant to
your goal
* interpret the data: Analyse trends and any deviations from those trends to see
how this has affected meeting your goals
* develop recommendations: Provide justified suggestions on how to improve
business practices based on what you have learned from your data analysis
* take action: Put your recommendations into practice and create an action plan to
test your assumptions, and finally
* review your outcomes: Evaluate whether your actions have had the desired
impact and make note of how you can further optimise to improve results.
Let’s look at an online example that explores how data can lead to actionable
insights.
Susie is part of a team responsible for planning a charity fun run, and this year her
goal is to get 250 people to register. As her goal is to increase attendance, the
data she collects from her analytics software could include how many people
completed the sign up form, which online channel they used to register, and how
many people shared posts on social media.
Analytics reveal that social media channels are the main source of sign ups, so
next Susie wants to determine which social media posts were most effective at
driving registrations.
When interpreting the data, the trend emerges that registered runners who shares
the charity’s social media posts on their personal accounts generated the highest
number of new registrations.
By looking at these insights, Susie can conclude that registered runners become
powerful ambassadors and are able to spread the word of the race quickly and
efficiently, encouraging more sign-ups.
So, to turn this into an actionable insight, Susie now needs to combine the data
gathered with an action that can put her research to good use. For example, she
could design a series of social media posts that provide easy instructions on how
registered runners can promote the Fun Run across their own social network.
Let’s look at a case study from a real business that used actionable insights to
help them reach their goals.
Now that we’ve explored how to draw actionable insights from data, think about
how you can use your online data to help make a decision you're currently facing.
What would you like to learn from the information you have available and how can
an actionable insight help bring you closer to your goals?

4. Managing numbers using spreadsheets

Key Learnings
Sometimes having so much data at your disposal can seem a little overwhelming.
Using spreadsheets gives you a way to manage this information and make the
most of the data provided. In this lesson, we'll explore: * what a spreadsheet is,
and how you can use it to collate and analyse data * basic spreadsheet formulas
that can help make life easier.

Video Transcript
Dealing with data related to your business can feel a little overwhelming when
there’s so much of it. Spreadsheets allows you to break this data down into useful
information, and can save you a lot of time in the process.
During this lesson we will cover the benefits of using spreadsheets, introduce
basic functions, and explain and these functions can be used to help you manage
specific data.
So let’s start with the basics: What is a spreadsheet?
A spreadsheet is defined as an interactive software application designed to help
organise, analyse and store data. Put simply, spreadsheets create a grid of data,
using a principle of rows and columns. Once numbers are added into the
spreadsheet, you can use automated tools and functions to analyse the
information and find the answers you are looking for.
Spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets and Apple Numbers are
incredibly useful when dealing with large amounts of data, such as financial
budgets, project plans and databases.
For example, if you were in charge of collating census information for a town, you
could use a spreadsheet to keep track of addresses, names, dates of birth, and
how long residents have lived in the town. You could then apply a filter to work out
how many people are under the age of four; which would be valuable information
to consider when planning school capacity.
Here are some key features that make spreadsheets beneficial:
Information can be presented in different ways. For example, you could produce a
graph highlighting the population of the town based on gender or a table showing
the different age groups that attend local sporting clubs.
Filter tools allow you to quickly organise your data into a specific order, whether
that be alphabetically or by date.
Not everything in a spreadsheet is just a plain number. Percentages, currency,
dates and duration are just some of the common formats you can use depending
on your data.
Functions can be used to instantly recalculate values based on a change. Applied
to the census example, you could create a formula that would automatically work
out the average age of the town at any point in time.
There are many functions and formulas built into spreadsheets - with many of the
basic ones available in all popular spreadsheet software. Let’s take a look at some
functions that could help you to organise and make sense of the census data.
The function SUM() allows you to calculate the total of two or more spreadsheet
cells. This is handy if you wanted to know the total number of people in the town.
Average, or “AVG()” returns the average of the numbers selected. It could be used
to work out the average age of the town’s population.
The COUNT() function counts how many times a certain value occurs. For
example, the number of people who have lived in the town for three years or less.
This might give you a good indication of the amount of people moving to the town.
Now that we’ve explored how spreadsheets can help you manage and analyse
your data, spend some time considering how you could utilise them in your
business scenario. Explore which functions can save you time, and which
spreadsheet features can put your data and insights to good use.

5. Presenting data effectively

Key Learnings
Once you've gathered and analysed your data, the next step is knowing how to
present it in a way that will resonate with your audience. In this lesson, we'll
explore: * how to present your data in a clear and understandable way * popular
visual formats to use when presenting data * how to match your data to the right
format, based on your audience's needs.

Video Transcript
With so much data and information at our disposal, presenting it in a way people
understand is essential to getting your message across successfully.
In this lesson, we’ll explore how to present information based on the specific
needs of your audience, and introduce you to popular presentation formats. You’ll
also learn how to select the right visual format based on the type of data collected.
We all interpret things in different ways. Some people like colourful image-based
visuals, likes graphs and infographics, whilst others absorb numbers and text
more easily in tables or lists. Because of this, it is important to base the
presentation of your information on the needs of your audience.
Ask yourself the following questions to help you identify your target audience:
- what roles or positions do people in my audience hold?
- what level of knowledge does my audience have? and,
- which industry does my audience work in?
For example, let’s consider a town’s census data. If you were presenting this data
to the Mayor, the key stats could relate to the number of residents eligible to vote
in the next election year. This means you would focus on presenting this in a way
that the Mayor could easily and quickly understand - perhaps in a bar chart,
representing how many people from different age groups are registered to vote.
For a meeting with the transport director, you would probably want to highlight
different areas of the census data. Their focus would be the transport methods
people use to get to work - which could be presented in a pie chart, showcasing
the number of people who walk, or take a train, bus, car or bicycle to commute to
work.
Regardless of whether the data is being presented in a meeting or published in a
report, overwhelming your audience is the fastest way to lose their attention - so
avoid packing in too much information and aim present it in an easy-to-digest way.
So, now that you know why it’s important to understand your audience, how do you
decide which format to display your data in? When it comes to presentation,
aways choose a visual format that best displays the story you are trying to tell. For
example, if you wanted to present a trend over a period of time, consider a line
graph, which makes it clear to an audience how things have progressed or
changed over a given period. Here are some other visual formats to try out, and
the data that works best with them:
Tables can be used to display smaller data sets, allowing for comparisons to be
made quickly.
Pie charts are useful to display percentages or proportional information in an
easy-to-digest way.
Bar charts, are great for comparing related items in a group, where the length of
each bar is proportionate to the value it represents.
Line graphs are useful for understanding how data changes over time, for
example, whether your website traffic has increased over the past month.
Heat maps are often used to represent performance by area, such as which parts
of your website people are clicking on most.
We have now covered why understanding your audience is such a big part of
presenting data, and how once you know the needs of your audience, you can then
shape the visuals to tell your particular story. Go online and explore the different
ways information can be displayed, and see which formats would work best for
you.