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The availability of data may be both a blessing and a curse. While marketers today have lots of data to back up their strategies and plans, this also means they must sift through a sea of data to uncover what they need to evaluate success and what may help them build a case for their work's worth. This may quickly lead to analysis paralysis when people get so overwhelmed by facts that they are unable to make any decisions.
This is where data visualization comes into play. It makes the information easier to process and comprehend by presenting the most important elements in a visual manner. In this post, we'll go over data visualization in detail, including why it's important and how you can use it in your business.
The process of converting big and complicated datasets into a visual representation is known as data visualization. This not only makes the material easier to grasp, but also makes it more appealing to the eye, which aids in capturing people's attention.
In our material, Sprout Social frequently includes data visualization examples with supporting infographics. This helps us to quickly highlight the most relevant facts while the rest of the article delves further into the findings.
Other data visualization examples may be found across Sprout platform reports, such as this analysis on Facebook rivals. The comparison line graph shows you how your Facebook page relates to your competitors in terms of daily audience growth.
The following are just a few examples of data visualizations:
These can be used as stand-alone visualizations in analytical reports, to show text material, or to contribute to a wider data storytelling project. It's critical to understand the ideal use cases for various forms of data visualization so that your imagery explains and highlights your data's insights instead of further confounding viewers–keep reading for ideas and best practices.
Data visualization is vital in any industry that can leverage data gathering and analysis, but it is particularly important in digital marketing to guarantee that your marketing expenditures are spent wisely. Data collection is simply one aspect of the process. What good are datasets if you don't do anything with them? It's the same as putting together a solid digital strategy and then putting it on the rack to collect dust.
Digital marketing solutions like Google Analytics and HubSpot capture a lot of useful data right out of the box. The quantity of data grows rapidly when you integrate your CRM or add custom events utilizing tools like Google Tag Manager. Data visualization is crucial for a variety of reasons, but most significantly, it turns all of your raw data into something meaningful and actionable.
Apart from making data easier to handle, data visualization may help you fuel and improve your marketing efforts in a variety of ways. Let's take a deeper look at the benefits of data visualization so you can see how it may benefit your company:
1. Provide Greater Insight
The most obvious benefit is that it aids in the discovery of patterns and trends by connecting the dots between disparate information, thereby improving comprehension. It gives your data additional context and meaning, allowing you to better grasp its significance in the actual world and how you should use it. Rather than overloading you with data, data visualization organizes the most important pieces in a logical manner for you or your target audience.
Data visualization helps you illustrate the differences between seemingly identical datasets, which you can't achieve with standard descriptive statistics. The Quartet by Anscombe is a famous example of this. This graphic depicts four datasets that have identical descriptive statistics, such as for a numerical average or significance variance, but when displayed in visual graphs, tell four distinct stories.
2. Improve Your Decision-Making Process
Data visualization aids the decision-making process by providing better insight and comprehension. Because important decision-makers won't have to comb through data to get the information they need, they'll be able to avoid tunnel vision and make more informed judgments much faster.
That's why data visualization is so important in marketing: it allows you to create effective ideas and campaigns before your competitors do.
3. Engage the Audience
Visuals that are properly designed are undeniably appealing and engaging. Data visualization paired with data storytelling can assist you in attracting and engaging your target audience. It might help you convey your message more successfully by giving greater weight to the facts you wish to offer.
It's no wonder, therefore, that the most popular story ever published online by The Washington Post is a visual interface piece about the coronavirus simulation. The most popular online article published by The New York Times in 2013 was a dialect map.
4. Easily Repurposed
One of the most appealing features of data visualization is its adaptability, which allows you to use it in a variety of ways for different parts of your business–from social media to content marketing. It enhances comprehension of critical metrics at all levels by assisting in the translation of data into a format that is easy to handle. As a result, it's ideal for internal and user reporting, and also content generation.
The Sprout example at the start shows how data visualization may be used as content for your company. Adding visualized data to your material makes it simpler to read and share, especially on the internet, where the visual content reigns supreme.
With what you've read and learned so far, it's apparent that data visualization is important in many parts of your organization. Data visualization is required not just for marketing, but also for improved internal communication and speedier decision-making. It also helps your content marketing efforts in a variety of ways because of its adaptability to different forms.
