These days there is no dearth of data that marketers can lay their hands on. Data about diverse brands is generated every day both within and outside the organization. Utilizing this data to give direction to future initiatives is the new way of doing things.
Data leaves little room for ambiguity and sets decision making on the path to success.
Data is now at the heart of every thriving business. The reason for it is the simple fact that data minimizes risks as it relies on factual evidence. Data leaves little room for ambiguity and sets decision making on the path to success. Here’s how data can be used by marketers –
By visualizing it
If you can see it, you can feel it. We are naturally inclined towards instantly processing visual data. Brand marketers now have a host of data visualization options at their disposal through social media networks and tools. Dashboards are particularly helpful for marketers.
Visualized data from dashboards aide real-time decision making. Current strategies can be improvised and future ones can be formulated using them.
Dashboards can be customized to track brand specific key performance indicators and also for simplifying reporting tasks. Social listening tools for instance can collate and present data from multiple social networks, blogs, discussion forums, news sites and review sites.
By churning it
Just the way churning cream gives you butter, churning data gives you valuable information. Marketers need to periodically study their brand data to keep finger on their audience’s pulse. After all, there are a number of things that are outside a marketer’s control.Pop culture icons, events & competition stimulate change in behavior and preferences.
The closer a brand is to complementing the attitudes and behavior of its audience, the more consumers want to buy it.
Marketers need to keep their eyes on emerging patterns by monitoring data volume, categories, types of engagement and response time. How frequently this needs to be done will vary from brand to brand. But as a rule of thumb marketers should evaluate brand data no less than twice a month. They can also use such evaluation exercises to assess the impact their previous adjustments have made on sales.
By comparing it
It’s now easier than ever to study your competition. Social listening allows marketers to track how effective other brands are in reaching out to their audience. It’s just a matter of feeding the right keywords in the social listening tool and mapping the relevant social profiles.
The amazing thing is that you don’t need your competitor’s credentials to do so. Social profile handles or URLs are all one needs to get going.
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