Getting the Most Value from Your Data

01 Jul Getting the Most Value from Your Data

Posted at 17:46h in Contractor marketing, Data-Driven Marketing, Digital Marketing by Jim Oborny

Data is everywhere.

Data is now the most valuable resource in the world, but it is only valuable to your business if you embrace it.

Your company can use data to grow your leads, sales, and profits.

In order for your company to maximize the value of your data there are several key issues to address. We have outlined them below. There is no default dashboard that serves all companies in the best way. Different companies need different data. For each of the topics we will also explain how we deal with each for our clients.

One Central Place

In order to logistically use data with ease you need to have it in one central place. You do not want to have to check your data by accessing different sources. If you do not have a central dashboard then logistically pulling the data together will be impossible.

The way that we do this is to build each of our clients a custom dashboard. Their dashboard contains data that is valuable to their business. We provide our clients with 24/7/365 access to their dashboard. This makes it easy to use. It also saves them time.

Data Visualization

Data visualization is important if you want to extract the most value from your data. Having data from different sources in one central place allows you to use the data to better analyze the data. This is important for many reasons. Each data source, by itself, may not be enough to draw conclusions from. Your data needs to be in one central place and presented visually so that it can be easily analyzed.

Working with client data we want to be able to optimize their various marketing channels. To do this we need data from Google Analytics. We also need lead and sales data as well. In order to accurately determine the value of their various marketing channels we need to understand how people progress through the sales process. Having all of this data in one central, easy to visualize place, makes the process easy.

Keep Historical Data

Not all data is always going to be available to you. Some data sources may only provide the data for a limited time before it is lost. When this is the case you need to have a way to may an archive of this data. Therefore, the sooner you start collecting data the better.

Some data may only be available for a short period of time before it is lost. With our contractor clients a good example of this is data from Houzz.com. Houzz provides Pro+ clients with a dashboard that includes data for 30 days, 90 days and 1 year. But their is no way to reference the data for specific months. We have developed a process to record that data each month. This allows us to be able to manipulate the data for any time frame that we desire. Plus, we now have an archive of that data.

The Right Data

You need to determine what data is valuable to your business. The process of determining what data is valuable to you is a tricky one. Our approach is to think outside-the-box. Forget the data sources and the data and first think about if there were no restrictions on the data that you could have what would it be. We always try to think “actionable data” and not just “measurement data”. Determine what you need and figure out a way to get that from the data that you pull in from all of your data sources.

In order to get the most value from your data you need to figure out ways to manipulate the data in ways that it translate in actionable data. This is what we are constantly doing for our clients. Actionable data supported by real data is the best thing in the world of data.

Data Automation

Some data, such as data from Google Analytics, may be easy to pull into your dashboard. Other data may not be so easy. Again you need to think outside-the-box, and figure out ways to automate the process of acquiring the data that you need and storing it so that it will automatically flow into your dashboard.

Unless you think a little outside-the-box you may not have all of the data that could be helpful to your business. Data sources, by themselves, may not be easily and automatically integrated into your dashboard. You need to figure out how to do it. One secret weapon that we us is called Zapier. Zapier allows you to create conditional logic apps. If something happens do this. For example, if I receive an email with a particular subject line, copy dataX to a Google Sheet.

Analyzing Data

This is important. Now that you are collecting all of this important data into your dashboard you need to be able to analyze it. Obviously, I cannot go into specifics other than to say that if you have created your data visualization tool properly and you are pulling in the best data then this should be an easy process.