During an interview with Mike Gastin for his podcast the Currency (you can listen here: 65 Minutes of Outdoor Event Promotion Insight), the topic of data leveraging and analysis was broached. Specifically, the importance of keeping data analysis as simple as possible. My thanks to Mike for the great opportunity and asking thought-provoking questions!
During the interview, we talked about data and how to analyze it. Overall my recommendation is to keep data analysis as simple as possible. Especially when working with clients.
What follows is a bit of an abstract concept and should help you look at your data in a structured way. For clarification, this isn't an attempt to deep dive into mountains of raw data and engage in pattern analysis. I leave that to the experts! The goal here is to keep things as simple as possible.
My recommendation is to think of data in terms of "what, when ... and why?"
Every time a user or customer takes action in response to your marketing or advertising, "what and when" become applicable. Think of an action taken as the"what." e.g., A person visited your website or purchased a ticket to your event." What the user did is a measurable action. That's one piece of your data set.
"When" denotes an exact moment, or during a particular course of time, when an action (the "what" occurs. e.g., After seeing an online banner ad, the user clicks on that ad a 14:23 and is taken to your event website. Depending on how deep you want to go down the rabbit hole, "when" could be sliced in several different ways.
Asking "why?" the user took the given action, at a specific time, is an essential part of your data analysis.
Frame "why" as a series of questions. "Why did a person visit your event website?" Or, "why didn't someone buy a ticket to your event?" In essence, answering why a person or a group of people take action (s) allow you to connect all the dots.
Over time, identifying the "what, when, and why" of your attendees can lead you to some surprising insights about your event. It can also lead you to extraordinarily powerful marketing and advertising for your event.
To be continued ...
Here's some additional info: