What is data-driven marketing?

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“Show me the data.” Marketing leaders have said this to their teams more times than they can count. That’s because data is critical to gaining support and proving the value of your initiative.

But with social media, data collection is complicated. Teams that struggle to share meaningful insights often a) don’t have enough data, b) don’t have a way to turn large amounts of raw data into actionable business greece b2b leads intelligence (BI), or c) understand how their work fits into the bigger picture.

Can you imagine when you receive a social team report that only contains one-off metrics (like follower count and impressions) with no clear business goals? Or when a report contains so many numbers that it’s impossible to decipher, and you feel dizzy as you try to process all the metrics and what they mean?

Data-driven marketing is more than asking each team to submit a dashboard or spreadsheet with KPI updates on a regular basis. This is to empower your team to uncover impactful performance and audience insights. This requires investing in training, the right tools and improving data collection processes. But by leveraging the wealth of social data available, you’ll unlock a gold mine of insights for every part of your organization.

At Sprout, we believe social data has the power to transform every part of an organization, whether it's leveraging insights to transform customer service processes, revamp recruiting plans or create new product lines.

Alicia Johnston

Senior Director of Content and Events at Sprout Social

In this article, we’ll explain how to find and use social data so you can outperform your competitors, improve your content strategy, iterate on new product development, and create more impactful long-term marketing campaigns. We also look at common data-driven social media marketing challenges and how to overcome them.