How to Tell a Story with Data?

Data now narrates stories altogether

Every company strives to make the best judgments possible and excellent knowledge is required for smart judgments. However, how you convey that knowledge is critical.

This is why it's critical to comprehend data and turn it into actionable insights. If you don't link that knowledge to your audience, though, they won't be motivated to act on it. This is when data storytelling enters the picture.

Data stories enable you to convey critical findings in a clear and engaging manner, resulting in corporate transformation and action. You're not alone if narrating a narrative doesn't come easy to your analytical mind. To tell a good narrative, you don't need to be an English major.

To create engaging data stories that inspire, convince, and drive your team and business, follow the suggestions and actions below.

What is Data Stories?

Data tales are narratives that use graphics to illustrate why and how data evolves over time. Making amazing charts and data slides isn't the only part of data storytelling. It's all about sharing information that has actual worth.

There are three essential components to good data stories:

• Data
• Visuals
• Narrative

Why is Data Stories important?

Telling a compelling data-driven narrative may benefit both your stakeholders and your consumers, allowing you to make better decisions inside your company and increase customer conversions. Data visualization may aid lead creation and client retention by allowing you to make crucial insights about your consumers and their desires.

How do you do it?

To begin, you must first determine which data is most significant. If you don't filter out the irrelevant data, statistics might be daunting to examine. You may turn your decision into a graphic once you've decided what's most important to emphasize.

One of the most crucial elements of marketing is knowing who you're talking to, and data may help you do that. Who precisely are you conversing with? This will help you decide which elements of the tale to focus on and which are the most significant. If it's a shareholder, generating leads and how you convert them is a fantastic topic to discuss, as is providing them insight into what they should keep doing and what they should stop doing to stay successful. If it's a consumer, how did you improve their experience and how are you assisting them in getting through this tale and keeping them happy?

However, before you can understand your audience, you must first understand how to read and apply your data. What problem are you attempting to solve or what question are you attempting to answer?

Where to Start?

Starting with data collection is an excellent place to start. This includes information from your first, second, and third parties. You may determine what information you want to gather for your story after you have all of your data in one place, such as a Data Management Platform (DMP).

As an example, let's pretend you're in the banking sector and you're checking out your online banking app. According to your theory, millennials are more inclined to use the app to do banking transactions rather than visiting a branch. You then utilize 1st party data and see how many youngsters vs. baby boomers walk into the branches each week, 2nd party data to see just what transactions they're performing on the application, and 3rd party information to track how many youngsters vs. baby boomer generation use the app every week to your 1st party data.

If your data show that youngsters download and use the application more frequently than they visit a location, you can use it to persuade your stakeholders to spend more money on the app rather than branch-based programs or services.

Using data visualization to present such insights can help the company make more impactful and actionable decisions.

Data tales can also be inspired by unrelated data. Whirlpool's recent ad is one real-life illustration of this. They discovered statistics indicating that over 4,000 children drop out of school every day, with those who do having a 40% higher joblessness rate a 70% higher likelihood of using government assistance, and 8-fold increased risk of ending up in jail.

This research also revealed that one of the most prevalent reasons for kids dropping out of school is because their families couldn't afford washers and dryers, and they were ashamed to come to school with unclean, unwashed clothes.

With this information, Whirlpool began a campaign to put washers and dryers in schools so that kids could do their clothes. According to the study, the initiative was able to wash 2,300 loads of clothes in its first year. The children that utilized the appliances had a 90 percent increase in school attendance and an 89 percent increase in class involvement as a result of this.

It doesn't have to be as complex as Whirlpool's ad to be effective. A budget allocation proposal from one sector to the other based on measurable past performance for X reason might be a powerful insight. You may also utilize data and prior, current, and prospective stories to forecast future patterns in your company or to display previous and present trends.

Decide if you'll use charts, graphs, or infographics to show the data. Consumers prefer visual components over statistics in presentations, according to research, and will recall information more quickly if given in visualizations.

However, don't make it into an art piece; keep the data and analytics in mind. Simple visualizations, whether they be for stakeholders or customers, may have the most influence on your audience.

Conclusion

It's not easy to convey a story using data, but it's crucial. Telling a narrative with data may help your company succeed in the digital world and stay ahead of the competition. We hope that you have found this article informative, and if you did, make sure to share it with your friends and colleagues.