Data Analysis Concerns: What They Are and Why They Matter

Because data is crucial to a good marketing strategy, tech companies have changed data privacy laws. Today, how you get your data and what you do with it are both vital to your marketing success.

Here are seven concerns that every analytics company in Chicago considers top priority:

1. Using high-quality data in analysis.
2. Sourcing data using ethical practices.
3. Consolidating various data sources.
4. Avoiding personal bias in analyses.
5. Ensuring correct and accurate interpretations.
6. Choosing the right metrics for data.
7. Managing and protecting your data.

There is a lot to discuss, so get ready to take notes.

Let’s go!

7 Critical Data Analysis Concerns You Should Know

Data is not the lone factor that drives marketing success. Still, it offers critical strength and utility to strategies that require precise targeting to work properly or to reach major milestones. Data enhances your marketing strategy and allows customizing your approach for better results. 

For instance, with data to support how your target market is divided, you can craft campaigns that focus on appeal and intent to effectively draw more leads and raise conversion rates. It is fundamental to planning, and any reliable analytics company in Chicago highlights data in its services.

With the right data sets, you are able to unlock the potential of your business, products, and services. On the other hand, concerns about data analysis may hinder progress. Here are seven major concerns you should be aware of when conducting data analysis:

     1. Using High-Quality Data in Analysis

The data you use determines how accurately you understand the state of your business and its position in marketing, which means quality is a major factor in data gathering and analysis. For example, the data becomes useless if you survey the wrong group or ask the wrong questions.

How you gather data is just as relevant to the process as the data you aim to collect. It means carefully planning every step of your strategy and not just focusing on analysis as the end goal. Take it one step at a time to ensure that you have taken all of the necessary precautions.

     2. Sourcing Data Using Ethical Practices

Another main data analysis concern is how well you understand data privacy and protection. This means not only working with your target market to gather high-quality data but also helps you avoid serious damage to your brand’s reputation that affects marketing.

For instance, after news of Facebook’s unethical practices in gathering and using personal data reached mainstream media amid legal controversies turned away many users. This, in turn, has given rise to several user protection laws and practices that companies currently enforce.

     3. Consolidating Various Data Sources

Effective research and data analysis methods do not rely exclusively on any one source for all of their data. That means you need more than just website analytics and traffic data to get a meaningful look at your marketing strategy’s results. Other channels provide crucial information.

For instance, your social media page’s engagement can tell you a lot about how effectively and strongly your brand appeals to and reaches your target market. The challenge is aligning the data to allow processing them together. Foresight in data gathering is important.

     4. Avoiding Personal Bias in Analysis

Bias threatens objective data analysis because it makes you prone to skewing the data and any interpretation that you draw from it. The problem is that this can cloud your judgment and lead to making choices that you otherwise would not have made.

For example, if you heavily emphasize views or impressions as a significant mode of engagement, you may end up with a misguided strategy that prioritizes numbers over conversions. The result is that you start to focus on content that gets attention but has no benefit for sales.

     5. Correct and Accurate Interpretations

Biases aside, misinterpretation can also come from how you organize and analyze data sets, what tools and software you use, and how well you understand the process. For instance, even when you use tools, data entry or conversion mistakes greatly affect results. 

Missteps in what, when, how, and why of data analysis can throw off and skew any valuable insights. You also do not want to assign tasks that can break your marketing success to someone lacking experience. This is why the skills and expertise like those of an analytics company in Chicago are critical to accurate interpretations of data.

     6. Choosing the Right Metrics for Data

As mentioned above, the data you use in your analysis significantly affects the value of your findings. Tracking the right metrics is vital to generating insights that matter for your marketing campaigns. Knowing what are and are not the correct metrics benefits your goals.

For example, when setting up tracking for PPC analytics, it is important to understand that not all conversion actions have the same value for your business. You ideally want to track metrics tied to analytics for high-quality leads, such as people contacting your business after seeing your ads.

     7. Managing and Protecting Your Data

Your data is a precious resource. Just as it helps when properly used for the sake of your business, when placed in the wrong hands, it can harm your business as well. How you store and manage your business data is a concern that goes beyond security, as breaches can cause real damage to your brand and overall reputation of your business.

Another important point about management involves your system for classifying and marking the validity of your data. For example, one good survey does not extend over long periods of time. Fresh data works best because recency matters for keeping your analysis relevant. 

Summing Up

Many factors influence the outcome of data analysis, affecting the quality, accuracy, and validity of its results and insights. Not all of them are tied to the data itself, because personal biases have just as much of an influence on the analysis. Each and every part of the process matters.

If you are concerned about making costly mistakes during data analysis, taking small and careful steps is a good strategy. Hiring local experts, such as an analytics company in Chicago, also helps you safeguard your process while simultaneously learning data analysis.

Need help improving your approach toward data analysis? Contact Digital Authority Partners (DAP) to learn how we can help.