<div class="gn-article"><div class="gn-hero gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-hero__image"><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687a235da6861294eec73166/68fa12364fe1aac24b0c3410_651d3d5881ca6a30f02483cf_63ef3d2f92f26d2959d442d1_Smarter%25252C%252520not%252520Harder%252520-%252520Driving%252520Stronger%252520Data%252520and%252520Insights%252520from%252520your%252520Marketing%252520Strategy%252520(1).png" alt=""></div> <div class="gn-hero__head"> <span class="gn-kicker"><span class="dot"></span>Intelligence</span> <h1 class="gn-title">Round-up: 5 Ways to Get More from your Marketing Data</h1> <div class="gn-meta"> <strong>The GO Network</strong> <span class="pip"></span> <span>17 February 2023</span> <span class="pip"></span> <span>7 min read</span> </div> </div> </div> <div class="gn-body"> <p class="gn-lede gn-reveal">Whether it's informing wider business strategies, or just presenting the positive results of your activity, <strong>marketers are under more pressure than ever to demonstrate the true value of their efforts</strong> with <a href="https://www.marketingweek.com/measurement-roi-5-interesting-stats/" target="_blank"><strong>48.4% stating ROI</strong></a> as the most treasured metric to their C-suite, followed by the delivery of business outcomes.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">In our latest workshop, 'Driving Stronger Data and Insights from your Marketing Strategy', experts <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukeathertonvisualsoft/" target="_blank"><strong>Luke Atherton</strong></a>, Director of Affiliates at <a href="https://www.visualsoft.co.uk/" target="_blank"><strong>Visualsoft</strong></a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickgassman/" target="_blank"><strong>Nick Gassman</strong></a>, Senior Manager, Research, Design &amp; Tech at <a href="https://daydot.agency/" target="_blank"><strong>Daydot</strong></a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolm-clifford-2381971/" target="_blank"><strong>Malcolm Clifford</strong></a>, Customer Experience Director at <a href="https://www.jaywing.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Jaywing</strong></a> share <strong>how to leverage your existing performance data and analytics to drive valuable insights</strong> for your team, and wider business alike.</p> <div class="gn-stats gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-stat"><span class="gn-stat__num">87<em>%</em></span><span class="gn-stat__label">of marketers rank 'data' as their company's most under-utilised asset.</span></div> <div class="gn-stat"><span class="gn-stat__num">5–8<em>x</em></span><span class="gn-stat__label">more ROI driven by businesses using data-driven strategies vs. those who don't.</span></div> </div> <h2 class="gn-reveal"><span class="num">01</span>Properly Using your Data and Insights - The Main Challenges</h2> <p class="gn-reveal">Organisations today effectively generate and capture a vast amount of data yet <strong>turning that information into valuable insights has proven to come with its own set of obstacles</strong>. From poor quality of data to a lack of expertise, <strong>Luke</strong> runs through the main challenges facing in-house marketing teams when it comes to levering their data effectively.</p> <figure class="gn-fig gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-fig__media"><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/799576834" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></div> <figcaption>Workshop excerpt: Luke Atherton on the main challenges facing marketing teams when using data effectively.</figcaption> </figure> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Data Being Siloed Across Teams and Platforms</h3> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"I think the single biggest challenge we see with our clients is that <strong>most people don't have a single viewpoint for all of their marketing data.</strong> It's all kind of siloed and spread around - that's something that we deal with quite frequently."<cite>Luke Atherton · Director of Affiliates, Visualsoft</cite></blockquote> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Knowing What to do with the Data you do Have</h3> <p class="gn-reveal">According to <strong>Malcolm,</strong> the real challenge doesn't lie within gathering the data - but knowing what to do with it.</p> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"<strong>You should have a strategy to gather and use data proactively to manage customer experiences and make business decisions.</strong> There's a lot of <strong>first party data</strong>, particularly around websites – where you can find information about your customers, how they're interacting with your products and services, where they come from, how often they return, and which products they're interested in."<cite>Malcolm Clifford · Customer Experience Director, Jaywing</cite></blockquote> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Issues with Internal Alignment and Buy-In for Data-Driven Decision-Making</h3> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"I think the key blocker is the <strong>ability to integrate</strong> the quantitative data driven side with the voice of customer qualitative data. You also get <strong>a lack of buy-in from managers who are just numbers driven, and don't appreciate necessarily the value that you can get from the qualitative side.</strong> This may be a result of a lack of cross-departmental working as you have one part of the organisation responsible for the use of research and another part responsible for the data."<cite>Nick Gassman · Senior Manager, Research, Design &amp; Tech, Daydot</cite></blockquote> <div class="gn-divider gn-reveal" aria-hidden="true"></div> <h2 class="gn-reveal"><span class="num">02</span>5 Ways to Get More from your Marketing Data</h2> <p class="gn-reveal">Our experts share 5 ways you can maximise the use of your performance data to inform <strong>a more sophisticated channel strategy, wider audience behaviours, and customer insights that are beneficial to business growth.</strong></p> <figure class="gn-fig gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-fig__media"><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687a235da6861294eec73166/68fa12354fe1aac24b0c340a_63ef410fc320f6fbac0ecb1e_malcolm%2520(1).png" alt="Malcolm Clifford, Customer Experience Director on pushing your data further."></div> <figcaption>Malcolm Clifford, Customer Experience Director at Jaywing, on pushing your data further.</figcaption> </figure> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Translate your Wider Objectives into Consistent, Specific Performance Metrics</h3> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong>Luke</strong> highlights the importance of measuring individual channel efforts against their own set of KPIs and tying this with your wider business goals to improve customer experiences.</p> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"There aren't any necessary must-haves across the wide spectrum of all the marketing channels. <strong>Every channel must be viewed with its own set of KPIs, its own set of objectives.</strong> Whatever your goals and objectives are - whether it's article views, digestion of content on the website - <strong>those are all things that tools like GA4 can help to analyse and predict using machine learning and AI.</strong> Overall, you could have an objective of increased online sales by X percent, from the marketing side, it's about breaking that objective down into the individual channels. So, your paid search, your affiliate marketing, will have much more quantifiable KPIs and targets, but then from a social perspective, <strong>look at what you can measure in the touchpoints where customers really expect their journey to seamlessly continue from one experience to another</strong>."<cite>Luke Atherton · Director of Affiliates, Visualsoft</cite></blockquote> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Get your Business-Wide Data into One Place</h3> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"Omnichannel is a huge challenge to align - but just tackling marketing spend between something like Paid Search and Facebook Meta is a good place to start with. In most cases, you have your social team reporting, and you have your PPC team reporting in siloes, and then we use GA, as we think that's a solution to bring together those two channels, <strong>but it's still ultimately working on a last-click attribution model.</strong> Utilising tools like <a href="https://cloud.google.com/bigquery" target="_blank"><strong>BigQuery</strong></a> to get much of that marketing data into essentially a central database source is the starting point. <strong>Regardless then of the team or reports you're building; the data can then be taken from this central source of truth</strong>."<cite>Luke Atherton · Director of Affiliates, Visualsoft</cite></blockquote> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Find different formats for presenting your data</h3> <p class="gn-reveal">Being able to collect the right data and present it in a way that is understandable to stakeholders is one thing, but extracting useful insights from this requires a particular analysis skillset – one that <a href="https://www.prophet.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Altimeter_2019-State-of-Digital-Marketing_PDF.pdf" target="_blank"><strong>41% of businesses</strong></a> <strong>are prioritising when hiring digital marketers</strong>.</p> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"Reports are good, they tell you things, that's fair enough but it's important to push the data further. Typically, within the spreadsheet or report, the key piece of news or information is hidden away. <strong>When trying to connect your insights into tangible outcomes</strong>, this is where I think it's really bringing that out and saying this is the customer story, this is why it matters."<cite>Malcolm Clifford · Customer Experience Director, Jaywing</cite></blockquote> <aside class="gn-quote gn-reveal"><q>There's a range of materials that you can get imaginative about to have a real impact.</q><cite>Nick Gassman · Senior Manager, Research, Design &amp; Tech, Daydot</cite></aside> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong>Examples of different ways to present key data:</strong></p> <aside class="gn-callout gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-callout__label">What this means for you</div> <h4>Different formats for presenting key data</h4> <ul> <li><strong>Infographics.</strong> Visual formats that surface the key numbers quickly.</li> <li><strong>Video footage.</strong> For example from 1:1 customer interviews.</li> <li><strong>Storytelling in reports.</strong> Bringing out the customer story and why it matters.</li> <li><strong>Finance-driven frameworks.</strong> Connecting insights into tangible outcomes for the business.</li> </ul> </aside> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Complement the 'What' of Quantitative Data with the 'Why' of Qualitative Research</h3> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"<strong>Quantitative data will tell you what's happening, but not why.</strong> For example, with emails - you know that you're getting a response or not a response yet, you can see that in the numbers - But why? And if you knew why, <strong>would you be able to come up with better hypotheses for what approach to take next?</strong> You can always do experiments driven off the data, but you might just have two bad alternatives. Whereas if you ask people, "<strong>what do you think of this design that I'm testing here?</strong>", you're going to get more informative feedback."<cite>Nick Gassman · Senior Manager, Research, Design &amp; Tech, Daydot</cite></blockquote> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Keep a Consistent Process for Feeding Data Out - and Actions In - to your Strategy</h3> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"Ultimately, <strong>you don't know anything until you've tested it</strong>. It's always good to have hypotheses, great ideas, but they must be tested. For example, with a lot of targeting you may do, you ask yourself questions such as – should we go a bit more that way? should CPA be decreased? How do we make that work best? <strong>Structure those tests so that whatever activity you're taking, you always learn something valuable from it.</strong> That's the critical part of the whole cycle - <strong>gather the data, understand what it means, and then test it.</strong> That's the route to really achieving value over the long term."<cite>Malcolm Clifford · Customer Experience Director, Jaywing</cite></blockquote> <div class="gn-divider gn-reveal" aria-hidden="true"></div> <h2 class="gn-reveal"><span class="num">03</span>Final considerations for your data &amp; insights</h2> <p class="gn-reveal">As businesses begin to up the ante on their use of marketing data, here's a few things to ask yourself:</p> <aside class="gn-callout gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-callout__label">What this means for you</div> <h4>Questions to ask yourself</h4> <ul> <li><strong>Where is data being sourced across the business?</strong></li> <li><strong>What metrics do I need to consistently track to feed into wider objectives?</strong></li> <li><strong>Who in the business do I need to share this with?</strong></li> <li><strong>What formats will work best for each internal audience?</strong></li> <li><strong>How often am I iterating my strategy?</strong></li> <li><strong>Where could qualitative research complement the numbers?</strong></li> </ul> </aside> <h3 class="gn-reveal">The Importance of Working Together</h3> <p class="gn-reveal">Finally, <strong>Luke</strong> stresses the key to a stronger strategy.</p> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"It's important that everybody is involved in the collating of data – and <strong>it's designed in such a way that is user friendly.</strong> So, everyone can dive in and run reports whatever way they see fit. That keeps it always on, always fresh. <strong>Data shouldn't just be a monthly thing; it should be a consistent thing throughout the business at all times.</strong>"<cite>Luke Atherton · Director of Affiliates, Visualsoft</cite></blockquote> <p class="gn-reveal"><em>If you're investing in a data-driven strategy this year, make sure you're getting the most from your time. The GO Network offer cost-free agency recommendations, pitch management, and more,</em> <a href="https://www.thegonetwork.com/get-in-touch" target="_blank"><strong><em>get in touch</em></strong></a> <em>to get started.</em></p> </div></div> <aside class="gn-related gn-reveal" data-auto="related-reading"> <div class="gn-related__label">Related reading</div> <ul class="gn-related__list"> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/smarter-not-harder-driving-stronger-data-and-insights-from-your-marketing-strategy" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Driving Stronger Data and Insights from your Marketing Strategy</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Agency experts share how to frame, translate, and automate analytics, turning overwhelming data into strategy-shaping insights that prove ch</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/round-up-how-to-get-more-from-your-creative-strategy" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Round-up: How to Get More from your Creative Strategy</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Agency experts share how to align creative campaigns with business goals, break down silos, and prove ROI on every activation.</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/round-up-how-to-leverage-ppc-insights-to-support-your-wider-marketing-strategy" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Round-up: How to Leverage PPC Insights to Support your Wider Marketing Strategy</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Agency experts reveal how PPC data can sharpen SEO, deepen customer understanding, and prove measurable business value beyond the click.</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/ai-powered-personalisation-at-scale" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">AI-Powered Personalisation at Scale</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Agency experts reveal how to combine data, creativity, and automation to deliver smarter targeting and prove ROI from AI-driven personalisat</span> </a> </li> </ul> </aside>