10 Ways to Use Data to Grow Your Business

This post, written by Kalyan Lanka, originally appeared on the iStrategy blog on January 24, 2012. Click here to see the original.

Collating data has become a crucial part of today's digital media ecosystem. Not only that, but identifying crucial data points and managing them effectively is key for efficient audience targeting. Yet better data management has several other benefits beyond just audience targeting.

This post outlines 10 things digital stakeholders should consider while managing their valuable data assets. 

1. IDENTIFY VALUABLE DATA POINTS

Several publishers and advertisers (or agencies) have access to valuable data points that help uncover your audience behaviors, actions and interests. These data points (First-party data) are available from users visiting your sites, interacting with your creative, and visiting your brand’s microsite. To uncover the power of data, it is important to identify such data points with special emphasis on quality. Remember, GIGO. Check out this post from my colleague, Doug Pollack, highlighting the importance of collecting valuable data points and where to look for them.

2. EXPLORE NEW DATA COLLECTION AVENUES

In addition to the data collected from your websites and campaigns, explore all data collection avenues you have access to. Collect data from your mobile optimized pages and applications for cross-channel targeting. Data from your CRM solutions and offline transactions create new collection avenues and helps to improve the value of your data by providing additional attributes specific to your consumers.

3. CONVERT DATA INTO INSIGHTS

After collecting raw data points, it is important to convert such data points into insights about your audience. A user visiting a page on your site is a data point. You can gain useful insights about a consumer based on the content on the site they visited, what attracted the user to the site, content that was shared on your site, or comments made by the users.

4. USE INSIGHTS TO CREATE DETAILED TAXONOMY OF USER BEHAVIORS

 Whether you are working with a Data Management Platform or creating your own audience management platform, put more emphasis on classifying and arranging user behaviors into a repository of a detailed taxonomy. On average, there are 42 data points generated per page view, per site online. A detailed taxonomy of user demographics, content affiliation, interest and actions allows you to cherry pick and quickly generate complex audience definitions for targeting.   

5. USE INSIGHTS TO FINE-TUNE AUDIENCE TARGETING

 Create multi-dimensional profiles of your audiences to understand the affinity of your audience and identify lookalikes. For example, knowing that ‘Influencers’ on your site are also interested in ‘Entertainment’ and ‘Rock music’ helps you create specific audience targets that improve ROI of your campaigns. You can also use these insights to help your advertisers and their agencies in creating targeted content and creative.

6. INVEST IN THIRD-PARTY DATA

 Your first-party data is always the most valuable and easily accessible asset you have. But, remember that your loyal users exhibit different behaviors outside the digital assets you own and operate. Such behaviors could be the missing link you need to address specific advertiser requirements. Identifying these non-endemic user behaviors allows you to generate additional revenue, improve the efficiency of your targeting, and respond to more RFPs beyond content-based targeting and targeting based on endemic behaviors on your site.

7. DE-DUPE DATA ACROSS SOURCES

 If you are working with a Data Management Platform or creating your own audience management platform in-house, it is important to develop the capability to de-dupe data and uniques across sources to minimize ad wastage. Make sure you are not reaching the same ‘Health conscious’ users identified via your first-party data and purchased third-party data sources. Third-party data and external data sources are valuable only when they create incremental reach and uncover insights that you don’t already know about your audience.

8. MAKE DATA PORTABLE

 Make sure you can export your data and audiences to ad servers and other media avenues seamlessly for targeting. The last thing you need is a closed environment that creates rich data and audience targets that are not actionable. 

9. USE DATA BEYOND AUDIENCE TARGETING

 Data and insights derived from your data have several use cases beyond audience targeting. Use your first-party and third-party data to optimize content on your site and creative, to personalize content in real-time based on user interests, and to create content dynamically.

10. CLOSE THE DATA LOOP

 While executing a targeted campaign, make sure you collect data from these campaigns and use them as inputs for future campaigns. For example, collect valuable data points such as clickers and users interacting with your rich media creative. Use surveys to study the effectiveness of your campaign and bring those data points back into the data loop for real-time audience optimization to improve campaign performance.

In Conclusion...

The amount of audience data available to you is practically unlimited, and using it to better understand your consumers will only help you sell more and increase your ROI. Whether your goal is responding to more RFPs to sell more advertising space, or matching your creative and content to a user’s interests, an informed data management strategy is a requirement for successful  publishers and marketers.