Reading an opinion piece in Advertising Age by Steve Rubel entitled “Gmail points to possibilities of the coming data decade,” I was caught by the simple and straightforward statement above. It just resonated and made sense. As a company with its roots in online advertising (MovingOffCampus.com), Off Campus Media shares a natural affinity for being “data driven.” We have been exposed to all kinds of data for years that pertains to our visitors, advertising performance and more. Although this level of analysis is typical across websites (with varying degrees of complexity/granularity), it has yet to truly cross over into mainstream marketing practices.

Tracking impressions and awareness are undoubtedly important. However, if you aren’t correlating it to revenue, then what does it really mean? 100 million people can be aware of your product but if no one buys it, what’s the point? Of course, actually tracking the data and making meaningful connections is the challenge. Entire companies have been created to track a particular element of a marketing program – consumer behavior, sales conversions, mobile interaction and plenty more. All of this is challenging enough for companies with significant resources, but a particularly daunting task for a small business owner. From my experience, however, there are some common principles that can be applied to any marketing program (big or small) to get things started. Simple yet even at their most rudimentary levels effective:

1. Examine. Before all else, analyze your marketing tactics individually and ask a simple question. What is this producing? If the only answer to that question is a feeling rather than a specific data point, then you have identified an opportunity to improve. Quantifiable data is most important.
2. Create tracking mechanisms. Its important to explore your opportunities to capture data. Simple ways to do this typically revolve around incentives. For example, install the free Google Analytics tool on your website and start getting real data about your traffic.
3. Always monitor performance. Not everyone that came into your venue will directly mention advertising. But some will. And seeing that impact, no matter how big or small, can help you make decisions about allocating your precious marketing dollars. Seize the opportunity whenever possible
4. Create touch points. Developing a greater understanding of your customer will only provide benefit. Gather demographic, psychographic and behavioral information at every chance. And do it by creating incentives for your customers to share information.
5. Create connections and draw conclusions. With data in hand, it’s time to analyze. You’ll be surprised how easily you can learn and how much it can benefit your business. Think critically to connect the dots. And if you can’t quite make that deduction? Then start all over, its an active process after all.