The first thing you need to do is choose what details you want to collect. You’ll need to decide what topics the information will cover, who you want to collect it from and how much data you need. Your goals — what you hope to accomplish using your data — will determine your answers to these questions. As an example, you may decide to collect data about which type of articles are most popular on your website among visitors who are between the ages of 18 and 34. You might also choose to gather information about the average age of all of the customers who bought a product from your company within the last month.
Next, you can start formulating your plan for how you’ll collect your data. In the early stages of your planning process, you should establish a timeframe for your data collection. You may want to gather some types of data continuously. When it comes to transactional data and website visitor data, for example, you may want to set up a method for tracking that data over the long term. If you’re tracking data for a specific campaign, however, you’ll track it over a defined period. In these instances, you’ll have a schedule for when you’ll start and end your data collection.
At this step, you will choose the data collection method that will make up the core of your data-gathering strategy. To select the right collection method, you’ll need to consider the type of information you want to collect, the timeframe over which you’ll obtain it and the other aspects you determined. We’ll go over various methods you can use in the next section of this article.
Once you have finalized your plan, you can implement your data collection strategy and start collecting data. You can store and organize your data in your DMP. Be sure to stick to your plan and check on its progress regularly. It may be useful to create a schedule for when you will check in with how your data collection is proceeding, especially if you are collecting data continuously. You may want to make updates to your plan as conditions change and you get new information.
Once you’ve collected all of your data, it’s time to analyze it and organize your findings. The analysis phase is crucial because it turns raw data into valuable insights that you can use to enhance your marketing strategies, products and business decisions. You can use the analytics tools built into our DMP to help with this step. Once you’ve uncovered the patterns and insights in your data, you can implement the findings to improve your business.