Marketing stopped being about intuition, creativity and a pinch of luck a long time ago. Ever since the digital environment became the main source of new customers, data has become a central element of marketing and its decisions.
Data-driven marketing decisions are the guiding light that should steer all digital businesses today. Following analytical criteria allows any company to be more agile, strategic and effective in its daily operations.
To achieve results in your business, you need to embrace marketing that responds to facts. That is: to your business's data. And in this post we're going to explain how to do that, so you can stop being guided by your gut feeling.
Data-driven marketing means making any decision exclusively based on your digital analytics. Or put another way: letting the data tell you which direction to move in.
Data-driven marketing decisions are the only ones that guarantee objectivity and make sure everything is aligned with reality. Results from other campaigns, market trends, changes in consumer behaviour… All are rational and demonstrable criteria.
But marketing wasn't always like this. In fact, the starring role of data and digital analytics is something relatively new in this sector. Until just a few years ago, marketing was guided by much vaguer approaches and more intangible considerations.
From the era of intuition, marketing decision-making has gone through two more stages and is now mutating towards a new one. The 4 eras of marketing demonstrate that, over time, data has proven to be a key growth driver for all digital businesses. And with the arrival of AI, it seems everything will only accelerate further.
For many decades marketing operated on the basis of very broad information, limited empirical validation and generic results that couldn't always be attributed to specific campaigns. Intuition set the pace and creativity did the rest.
Knowledge of users was minimal. Vague demographic data, the occasional focus group, lack of evidence… User-understanding was a non-existent concept and, logically, this was reflected in the kind of decisions made and the results obtained.
For many, unlike data-driven marketing decisions, intuition means agility, greater reactivity to changes and opportunities. And that's true (partly).
Going with personal intuition involves fewer steps and less control over decisions. In fact, it's an almost emotional and passionate matter that doesn't need to follow specific processes or established criteria.
But there's a catch: the impossibility of validating that this decision was really what triggered the results. For better or worse, there's no evidence or way of measuring the correlation between the two and, ultimately, there's no way to learn and improve.
According to a recent study, the ability to differentiate between one's own personal preferences and those of consumers is one of the most important skills for marketing workers. Something that makes complete sense in a sector so full of biases.
There is a real and undeniable human tendency to be guided by personal biases and preferences even when dealing with third parties. In the case of marketing, many experts tend to project their own needs onto their consumers.
Data-driven marketing decisions avoid (or significantly reduce) this tendency. Being guided by facts, they don't allow the strategy to tilt towards criteria that have little or nothing to do with reality.
Beyond the objectivity that comes with data-driven marketing decisions, there are also a series of indirect benefits that show up in companies' performance and financial results.
One of the main advantages of basing your decisions on data is the ability to understand your consumers much more deeply. Their behaviour and needs are always reflected in your digital analytics. You just need to know how to read between the lines.
In addition to identifying problems in their experience, preferences when choosing and even their reaction to your campaigns, data gives you the ability to further segment your customers. That means the ability to aim more precisely and design much more personalised campaigns and experiences for each of them.
One of the great challenges in digital marketing is correctly attributing results to the different initiatives you run. Knowing which platform, message or customer is truly generating revenue isn't always easy.
That attribution difficulty makes it hard to make decisions about budgets or initiatives to invest in. But thanks to data it's easier to trace the origin of each conversion, backing campaigns that actually deliver results and channels that make better use of your money.
The digital ecosystem moves at a vertiginous pace. Changes on the internet, new trends, new competitors… Everything moves very fast and our decisions need to be able to keep up with what's happening around us.
To gain agility and be more precise, it's necessary to closely monitor your business situation. And nothing beats data for helping you achieve this. Correct data visualisation through a real-time dashboard can help you know what's happening at all times and identify changes before it's too late.
Discover how to make more agile decisions with actionable dashboards →
Data doesn't just reflect your business reality at a specific moment. It can also help you get ahead of changes of all kinds: in consumer behaviour, in your environment or even within your own operations.
Introducing AI into your data-driven decision-making will help you predict trends and adjust your actions in real time to a new, constantly changing reality. Predictive models can be of great help in modifying prices, pausing campaigns or even heading off business crises before they occur.
The first thing you need to do to make data-driven marketing decisions is define which metrics and information are valuable for your business. That is: which data points you'll take into account when choosing between multiple options.
Every business is unique and its needs can vary depending on the moment. But whatever the case, you should always have your main priorities clear when it comes to digital analytics.
Here's a guide to understanding the most important KPIs at each stage of the business →
To make agile decisions you can't waste time checking data from your different information sources, nor spend hours making sure they're consistent. What you need to do is unify your data in a single tool.
By combining all your data you'll not only avoid errors and inconsistencies, but you'll also be able to identify much more precise opportunities by combining different information sources.
Don't stop at the surface. Data hides great opportunities and insights that allow you to take actions with real impact on your business. You need to be able to cross-reference different information sources and identify those opportunities.
In this case, AI plays a very important role. Its data processing capacity lets it analyse much more information and compare it with other sources, identifying opportunities that often go unnoticed by the human eye.
Having information is worthless if you can't turn it into decisions with impact on your business. For that, you and your teams need to be able to interpret the data and have access to it at all times.
Nothing beats a data visualisation dashboard to make the right decisions. With it you can check the business situation at any time, dig into metrics of interest and even interact with them to draw better conclusions.
The potential of data-driven marketing decisions goes far beyond solving one-off issues. To get the most out of them you need to turn this strategic approach into a company culture and a way of understanding the business.
To do this, you need to think in a circular model. Think of data as a living process in which you need to constantly learn, going back to review it and drawing new conclusions from it. That's the only way to turn your analytics into a long-term growth engine.
There are many types of data and many ways to interpret them. In fact, your digital analytics draws from so many information sources that you may need to turn to different tools to interpret them depending on their nature.
User observation, data cross-referencing, automations… There are many ways to make data-driven marketing decisions. Here are some tools that can help you:
Google Analytics 4 and the role of behavioural analysis — These tools work like an "X-ray" of your digital business. They let you see at all times what's happening with your website and your customers so you can identify areas for improvement or new opportunities.
BI platforms like Power BI, Looker or Tableau — These services let you turn data into quality insights for your business. Thanks to them you can cross-reference different metrics and information sources, approaching your business problems from a different perspective.
Machine Learning and marketing results prediction — To go beyond and turn your data-driven marketing decisions into a growth element, you'll need to take advantage of these types of tools that help you identify new trends with projections and predictions for your business. Something like an estimate before it happens.
Reporting automation and intelligent dashboards — Actionable, interactive and automated dashboards are a great ally for you and your teams. By designing models adapted to each need you'll be able to draw better conclusions and, if you embrace automation, their value will be even greater.
In our recent project with Grandvalira, the largest ski domain in the Pyrenees, we implemented a system for tracking the last clicked promotion before each purchase, allowing Grandvalira to understand which ads and offers had the most influence on conversion.
This helped the team optimise their advertising budget, enabling them to allocate resources to the promotions with the greatest conversion impact. It ultimately translated into an improvement in their online conversions.
Discover the full Grandvalira case →
At Boost, we designed and implemented a comprehensive solution for DogfyDiet based on BigQuery and Power BI, ensuring an efficient, reliable and decision-optimised data flow.
Thanks to this, DogfyDiet can now make decisions based on up-to-date data, optimising their investment in acquisition channels that actually work and identifying growth opportunities for their business.
We explain how Boost helped DogfyDiet with their analytics →
When Iomob reached out to us, they were looking for support to solve certain data-related challenges. During the analysis, in addition to the initial challenges, we identified other areas for improvement that were affecting performance and decision-making.
Our work focused on giving visibility to these critical points to establish a solid foundation for analysis and continuous improvement. We developed real-time situation maps, analysed user engagement and trained their team in data interpretation, laying the groundwork for more precise and effective decision-making.
You can read the full Iomob and Boost case here →
Marketing data is the most important ally for your digital business and your decision-making. The challenge to turning it into a competitive advantage lies in knowing how to get value from it and turning it into a growth lever for your entire team.
At Boost we help you transition to a data-driven business model. We turn your information sources into useful insights and design interactive dashboards so you can consult them at any time with full confidence. Reach out if you want to make the leap to a more strategic digital culture.
You have approved the budget, designed an incredible ad on Meta or Google Ads, and the CTR (click-through rate) is the envy of the industry. But when you...
You have invested thousands of euros in acquisition campaigns. You have made the user fall in love with your product, add it to their cart and... at the...
Artificial intelligence has gone from being a technological promise to becoming a key element in many business decisions. When AI enters the...
