Data for dummies: Four places to get started

It may be imperative to any marketing strategy, but collecting data is daunting to all the digital dilettantes out there. Here are four tactics to start off with.

Everyone knows what an important role data plays in marketing. From American Apparel creating custom audiences to Amazon somehow knowing everything about everyone, you constantly hear about brands using data in innovative ways.

But on the flip side, a Millward Brown Digital survey from the summer found that nearly half of marketers consider big data to be their biggest obstacle. According to that same research, only 14 percent are confident when it comes to utilizing data themselves.

We get it. Some marketers are data pros. But plenty aren’t. If you fall into the second category, here are four places for you to get started.

1. Determine

Part of why data is so daunting is because there’s so much of it. According to IBM, we as a society create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every single day.

That’s such a big number that when we tried to figure out how many bytes that translates to each second, even the calculator was like, “What the hell?”

To make it all slightly less intimidating, ask yourself one question before you start collecting data: What is your plan? Once your intentions are clear, you’ll have a better sense of where to begin.

But Ben Hookway, chief executive (CEO) of Relative Insight, points out the danger of being too inflexibly married to your plan.

“Quite often, you see people so obsessed with one specific thing. They’re looking so hard at that, that they miss other important, significant things,” he says.

2. Start small

Granularity is important. But there’s a fine line between knowing your audience and knowing your audience so well that you’ve freaked it out.

Brands like Google, Facebook and Amazon have become such a part of people’s lives that their creepiness is a bit more tolerated. If you’re not quite on their level, you won’t be let off the hook so easily.

If you’re at this, it’s best to start with simpler data sets, like location – weather dictates fashion, after all. Limit your behavioral marketing to things people have actually done on your site, not things you’ve gleaned about them elsewhere.

Don’t get too far into the weeds, lest you make someone feel like they’re being stalked.

“For a media company, asking your shoe size has no relevance to what your favorite radio station is. Asking for information that’d be appropriate based on what your business is and what your users expect from you is a good place to start,” said Fisher Fisher, technical product manager of Cox Media Group during ClickZ‘s most recent webinar.

3. Diversify

This ties in with point number one. Once your plan is in place and you’re collecting data, don’t just go for what’s the most accessible. Social listening is a perfect example of why you need to look at more than just the low-hanging fruit.

“There’s so much data on Facebook and Twitter that you’re bound to find whatever you think to look for,” says Hookway. “Just because it’s easy to get doesn’t mean it’s the right data to analyze.”

4. Unite

As you start collecting data, you’ll want to create profiles. Once you’re able to connect this person to this computer and that smartphone, you’ll be better at gauging individual customer journeys.

One pitfall during this stage is being 100 percent certain that you’re targeting the person you mean to. While social listening can be a lot of empty calories, social logins are a totally different story. Jamie Beckland, vice president of product at Janrain, points out that whatever you learn about someone from Facebook or LinkedIn is likely to be quality and accurate.

“There’s a lot of social pressure for those identities to be a real aspect of who that person is. It’s not going to tell you the depths of their soul, but there’s a high degree of confidence that someone is not going to lie to their friends and family about their age, their birthday and if they graduated from college,” he says. “If [social media] is something you can have the user opt into sharing with you, you have a higher confidence than you would with a disposable email address.”

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5 Online Freemium Tools for Start-Ups and Agencies

Freemium tools are the basics needed to get things going for free – here are five to help start-ups on their way.

Do you want tools that will grow as your business does? If so, freemium is the way to go. Freemium tools allow start-ups to use the basics needed to get things going for free, while also offering paid plans. This way, as businesses evolve and needs change, the tools can grow and adapt too. In this post, we're going to look at five of the top freemium online marketing tools businesses can use at every stage.

Choosing the Right Tools

Before we get started, here are a few questions to ask when choosing freemium marketing tools for your start-up:

• Will the tool save you time in your day-to-day marketing efforts?
• Does the tool help you do tasks that have a direct result on your bottom line?
• Does the free version of the tool offer all of the features you need to get started?
• Will the free version's limitation lead you to paying for the premium version? If so, would you be better off going with a non-freemium tool?

These are good questions for any business to ask before choosing a tool. They are especially important for start-ups so you don't end up investing time into things you may not necessarily need.

Now, let's look at some of the top freemium tools that marketers use in businesses of all sizes. I have selected these tools based on popularity, freemium or free usage options, and their unique applications throughout your marketing campaign.

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a powerful social media management tool that allows you to manage various aspects of your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, and WordPress accounts. Through the app directory, Hootsuite offers even more solutions to connect with additional social networks and platforms beyond the defaults. This allows you to manage your accounts in easy-to-browse columns all in one place.

Hootsuite's freemium model allows you to start with three social media accounts and basic features for free, which is more than enough to get your start-up's social media presence moving on the top social networks. Paying for The Pro Level Plan increases your account to 50 social profiles and includes more advanced features, such as team members, advanced scheduling, unlimited RSS feeds, and additional security. Companies that need more can request a demonstration of the full-feature Enterprise Level Plan. 

2. SEMrush

SEMrush is a powerful search marketing tool that allows you to research your competition's paid search tactics, organic keyword visibility, and much more. You can use it for a variety of tasks, including backlink research, keyword research, search engine traffic volume, and previewing paid search ads.

While SEMrush does not have a freemium pricing model, I think it is an important tool because it still allows guests to perform a limited number of searches that increases once registered for a free account. A paid account gives businesses access to full reports and additional features. Larger businesses can consider a more substantial paid plan that includes access to unlimited projects, broader data, branded reports, and a larger number of users.

3. Fruition's Google Penalty Check

Whether you know you've been involved in shady search engine optimization practices in the past or not, it never hurts to keep an eye on your website's health, as far as Google is concerned. Fruition's Google Penalty Check lets you to see how various Google search and algorithm updates have affected your website.

Fruition's freemium model lets start-ups review the effects of Google search and algorithm updates over three months old and add up to two domains for free. Paid accounts have access to more recent data, or an option to analyze more websites.

4. Zapier

Want to connect the social networks, apps, and tools you use for marketing and general business tasks all together? Zapier offers a service that allows you to do just that. It has the ability to integrate over 400 platforms to create custom, automated workflows. These tasks, referred to as zaps, allow you to do things like save Twitter search mentions to an SQL server database - a relational database management system. Additionally, you can post a user's tweet to Yammer and other automations, as shown in the image below. 

Zapier's freemium model allows you to create five tasks, also known as "zaps," for free. From there, you may buy a plan based on the amount of additional zaps you may need. If your business needs more automated tasks, you can also request more information about large corporate level plans.

5. Cyfe

Cyfe is used to track analytics and data from a variety of sources. This all-in-one business dashboard solution enables you to bring your website analytics, social media analytics, SEO metrics, and more into one shared and easy-to-read dashboard. In the example below, you can see widgets pulling in data on year-to-date revenue from Salesforce, website visitor locations and funnel paths from Google Analytics, tweets from Twitter, keyword rankings from Google, and email marketing analytics from MailChimp.

Cyfe's freemium model allows limited usage of their platform, and you are allowed up to five widgets. To earn additional widgets, you can refer friends to Cyfe - one new widget per referral. Purchasing a premium package provides unlimited usage and complete functionality of all features, like exports and regular email reports. Enterprise level users can contact Cyfe for additional features like white labeling.

The key to finding great tools that will go the distance for your business is to ensure they cater to everyone, from small businesses to large enterprises and agencies. This means you never have to worry about outgrowing your favorite tool and start from scratch as your business scales in size. Begin by identifying areas in your marketing strategy where you think a tool might be beneficial for saving you time. From there, you can research the options to find the program that best compliments your professional needs.

*Homepage image via Shutterstock.

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