Data is everywhere. It’s quite literally in our DNA, and it powers everything we do. Needless to say, it’s kind of a big deal, especially in the world of digital marketing.

All that being said, data isn’t all that useful if you don’t pay attention to it. Whether it’s related to our health, personal finances, or marketing efforts, it’s critical that you spend time with that data and learn to analyze it in order to inform your future decisions and actions.

Why Use Data in Digital Marketing?

One of the biggest pros of digital marketing is the ample amount of data at your disposal. Tags, pixels, and browser cookies (for now) make it relatively easy to track the direct impact that your online ads have.

On top of this, Google, Facebook, and other ad platforms know a lot about what we do on the web. From search history to shopping behaviors, these ad platforms are able to bucket us into a myriad of predefined audiences.

This user data, though not entirely explicit, is a powerful tool in any digital marketer’s toolbox--especially in the agency world. This is because data allows marketers to create highly targeted ad campaigns. Older forms of advertising, like print, radio, and TV are much less targeted.

Outside of highly targeted campaigns, tracking data allows for optimization based on results. If certain keywords or audiences have a horribly bad Cost-Per-Action, it’s easy to see this and react accordingly, since ad platforms report on these metrics.

 

Four Tips to Maximize The Impact Of Your Digital Marketing Data

1. Set goals and track KPIs

Before investing in digital marketing, it’s important to have clearly defined goals. On top of this, it’s also critical to look at the right data and metrics, or key performance indicators (KPIs).

If your goal is brand awareness, you might come up with a goal around monthly impressions or clicks (or both!). If you’re wanting to drive more purchases and revenue, then you’ll likely have a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS) goal.

Whatever the purpose, these goals will make your data more meaningful, as you or your agency will be able to track them over time and optimize marketing efforts accordingly.

 

2. Reach the right audience

As mentioned above, the data available in digital marketing makes it much easier to hit a specific audience. But in order to do so, you need to have an understanding of what your audience looks like.

From the Audience Insights tool on Facebook to the Audience info in Google Analytics, there are a lot of ways to figure out who interacts with your business online. These tools, among others, will provide the data you need to then target similar users across the web.

 

3. Adopt a data-to-insight-to-action workflow

Again, data isn’t all that useful if you don’t pay attention to it. Collecting data is one thing -- actually analyzing it and acting upon it is critical to your success. A truly data-driven marketing strategy is built on this data-to-insight-to-action approach.

Keep in mind that the data-to-insight-to-action is a cyclical process. Testing and optimization shouldn’t stop when the tests are over. Growth and improvement comes from continuous testing, analyzing, and implementing. This approach is often baked into a digital marketing agency’s workflow, as they’re able to present findings and test ideas consistently based on the compiled data.

 

4. Embrace AI-powered strategies

The presence and importance of machine learning and automation in digital marketing have exploded over the last few years. More and more, advertisers are relying on machine learning to optimize campaigns in the moment.

No matter how much data you feel you’ve been collecting, Google and Facebook’s algorithms have a lot more. So our recommendation? Embrace machine learning, because it\'s not going anywhere.

On Google, don\'t hesitate to test Target ROAS, Smart Shopping, and Smart Display. As an added benefit, these smart campaigns are incredibly easy to set up.

On Facebook, use Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) to let their algorithm do the heavy lifting when it comes to allocating budgets across ad sets.

About the author: Quinn, a Notre Dame alum, hails from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin (A.K.A. BROconomowoc, A.K.A. The Real OC). Though he’s not afraid to admit that he wants to swim in a pool of spaghetti noodles, his guilty pleasures are shower beers and The Bachelor.