With the number of data sources increasing every day, it is easy to get lost among all of the available data.

Analyzing your data to get actionable insights is key for your business. You need to understand what the numbers mean for your business and how to improve those that matter.

Tip 1: Set Clear Goals and KPIs

In order to get actionable insights from your data, you first need to know what your company’s business goals are (the desired outcome) and set KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. These are metrics that measure what success looks like and can indicate if your performance is sufficient to achieve your goals.

An important tip is to ensure your goals are achievable are to make them SMART. See below for the key factors in a SMART goal.

Your business goals and KPIs must be part of a well-developed overall business strategy. They are a valuable tool to manage your business performance and provide the framework that guides your day-to-day operations.

Tip 2: Know Your Audience

Getting to know your audience is at the core of your strategy. Asking yourself the right questions will help you understand who your audience is:

• What problems is your audience trying to solve?
• What are the goals your audience wants to achieve?
• How can my business help my audience achieve their goals?
• What am I offering that brings value to my audience?

Creating personas will help you answer those questions and build a user-centric strategy. If Facebook is one of your channels, Facebook Audience Insights will also give you valuable information about your audience.

Once your audience is well-defined and you start collecting audience data, create segments by grouping customers that have common attributes and behaviours. Google Analytics is a helpful tool to define your segments and understand how your audience behaves on your website.

Tip 3: Measure What Matters

Collect data that is aligned with your business goals. Focus on what you need to know to achieve those goals – which channels drive the most traffic, leads and conversions?

Gathering meaningful data (quantitative and qualitative) will allow you to:

• Get meaningful insights
• Improve customer experience
• Increase your ROI

It is important to constantly monitor your data on the different platforms you are using. You will be able to notice if something is wrong and adjust accordingly. Data is an asset, analyze it and it will bring benefits to your business.

Tip 4: Define the Context Behind Data

Context gives meaning to your data. Understanding the context from which your data has emerged will help you define actionable insights and avoid possible false positives and false negatives. While analyzing data, focus on trends, not data points and search for strong correlations between variables. By framing your data through a contextual lens, you can make sure your insights are relevant to your business goals.

Once you’ve gathered all the relevant data, follow these four steps:

1. Filter – Focus strictly on the most relevant data.
2. Sort – Rank the data by importance.
3. Group and segment – Put similar data together.
4. Visualize – Bring data to life by creating charts or graphs.

Defining the context behind your data will allow you to get more relevant insights and ultimately more compelling actions. The better the context, the better you will be able to understand your customers and offer them what they need.

If you can, try different perspectives – you can’t see everything. Invite a colleague or a friend to look at the data. Compare key learnings.

Tip 5: Take Action!

Forrester reports 74% of firms say they want to be “data-driven,” but only 29% are actually successful at connecting analytics to action. Be part of the 29%!

Now that you have translated your data into insights, it is time to put them into motion.

Based on the insights you’ve discovered, here are possible actions you can take:

• Refine your target audience
• Build a specific campaign
• Test out a new audience
• Focus on a specific channel

Recap

Your data is full of useful information for your business. Collecting and analyzing data can take quite some time but it is necessary to get actionable insights and reach your goals.

Always test, try new things and learn to improve your content, strategy and ultimately grow your business.

Here is a quick recap of the top tips to get actionable insights from your data:

Tip 1: Set SMART goals and KPIs and always keep them in mind.
Tip 2: Know exactly who your target audience in order to align your strategy to their needs.
Tip 3: Data is everything but focus on what matters. Pinpoint the best techniques that work for you in your data analysis.
Tip 4: Always know the context behind all of your data.
Tip 5: Use data to drive actions. One valuable insight is equal to one action or more.

Next Steps

You now have everything to start getting more actionable insights!

We hope that you’ve found this blog helpful and that you’re ready to get started.

If you’re interested in working with financially-focused brands, we can certainly help and welcome you to sign up for our network by clicking here!