Data has become a large part of our everyday lives, insinuating itself in everything from our workplaces to our homes and everything in between. Data is how we track health and wellness from our wearables, enjoy suggested music and movies, and report on campaign performance and effectiveness, especially in marketing.
Data abundance and ubiquity make all these functions possible is the abundance of data. Yes, data is everywhere, and more of it is being generated every day. At the same time, this information proliferation certainly powers our lives in many ways everyone appreciates, it can also be overwhelming when communicating it to an audience. Call it “too much of a good thing.”
We also know that a picture is worth a thousand words, so that axiom can help us deal with the constant tidal waves of new data. In this context, we need data visualization.
This article explains data visualization and provides several outstanding examples. We’ll also define the term and explain its advantages. It also shares an online data science bootcamp that gives professionals practical training in data visualization tools and techniques.
So, what’s data visualization?
What Is Data Visualization?
Data visualization is the process of developing visual assets to represent data, making it easier to visualize and understand the information. The process typically involves using bars, charts, and graphs, with current examples incorporating graphics, icons, and infographics.
Today, data visualization in marketing is frequently used in reports, white papers, case studies, website content, social media, and e-mail marketing. The process quickly communicates facts to external audiences, internal teams, and management.
Also Read: What is Exploratory Data Analysis? Types, Tools, Importance, etc.
Five Advantages of Data Visualization in Marketing
Data visualization brings many advantages to the table. Let’s take a closer look at its benefits.
- It’s valuable for analyzing patterns. Data visualization is vital for revealing patterns in vast datasets. Fulfillment teams typically store thousands of SKUs in warehouses, tracked on one extensive, all-encompassing database. In this particular instance, it’s hard to do inventory management without employing visual aids like graphs to show stock level fluctuation by season. Now, marketers work with thousands of customers, so why shouldn’t they have access to the same techniques? With data visualization, marketers can rapidly spot relationships and trends that would otherwise be overlooked. This advantage lets them better identify areas of opportunity. Marketers can gain better insights into market trends, customer behavior, and other valuable data points they can conveniently show to management and other teams through regular reports, presentations, or real-time dashboards.
- It boosts sales. Data visualization helps marketers boost their sales by supplying valuable insights into their customers’ behavior. Through data visualization, marketers can quickly identify critical patterns and trends in customer data and then use the insights to adjust their marketing strategies in real time. For example, marketers can easily plot shipping addresses on a map to find where their most valuable customers are located. This information would show the marketers where to allocate resources to conduct more effective, targeted advertising. Marketers can also use data visualization to identify customer buying trends over time, using these insights to optimize pricing and promotional strategies based on factors such as the customer’s lifetime value or seasonal trends.
- It facilitates creative decisions. Data visualization helps marketers make better-informed creative decisions by giving them a better view of customers and what they want. By letting customer data guide the content strategy, marketers can brainstorm better ideas relevant to their target market. Marketers can easily and rapidly identify which channels are performing better or underutilized using data visualization. Marketers can use these results to justify investments in specific channels, performing tasks such as editing videos better to optimize their content’s impact on the platform.
- It yields better reports. Data visualization tools such as Power BI create unique reports with intuitive data representation, transforming marketing data into an understandable format. These tools enable marketers to draft clear, concise reports that exceed traditional charts and graphs. With data visualization, marketers can access intuitive layouts and interactive features that help readers focus on key metrics and trends. These reports include drill-down capability, dynamic filtering, and interactive maps, offering a deeper understanding of the data. Additionally, marketers can easily customize these reports, tailoring them to specific needs and helping them make better-informed decisions.
- It breaks down complex data into manageable, useful pieces. Data visualization breaks down complex data into a format that everyone can reason about. For instance, it’s a challenge figuring out how to forecast your inventory if you have several dozen variables to contend with simultaneously. These variables could include seasonal trends, current stock levels, and changing consumer behavior. Data visualization tools and practices can quickly sift through this information to find the most meaningful trends and relationships. These things might otherwise be difficult to spot simply by looking at numbers on a spreadsheet.
Also Read: What is Data Wrangling? Importance, Tools, and More
Five Inspirational Data Visualization Examples in Marketing
Whether you have storehouses of data you want to communicate or a smaller amount of complex and demanding information, you can ease the burden on your readers by generating simple, easy-to-digest visuals to represent it.
Here are five marketing data visualization examples that engage your brain and inspire you.
How Americans Eat
Infographic
KIPP Bay Area Public Schools
Annual Report
When creating their annual report, KIPP Bay Area Public Schools wanted to highlight their outreach to the school system’s children. The design inserted playful graphics to represent the audience and iconography to symbolize the services offered to that audience.
Without the benefit of visual assets, readers may be less likely to read and grasp the information. With that visual advantage, it’s easier to communicate the impact of any report.
Gender Pay Gap
Online Article
Data visualization is used for more than just official reports or business plans. The following online article found an excellent example of data visualization in marketing. The graphic displays the gender pay gap, with the circle sizes aligning with the number of people working those jobs, including men and women. It’s also a highly interactive visual asset highlighting and emphasizing information as you scroll. Check it out using the link above.
World Vision
The Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Business Plan
World Vision WASH put together a business plan showcasing its impact on a global scale. Although the data accumulated was enormous, the organization successfully used its data visualization talents to showcase the information in exciting, compelling, and engaging ways.
For example, the design incorporated icons representing water, sanitation, and hygiene facts. The article uses graphs to communicate ratios in the brand’s color palette, and symbols make another appearance to demonstrate the different sectors impacted.
Spotify Culture Next 2021
Their Web Design for Global Trend Report
Spotify created a highly interactive website design that relied on data visualization to tell the story of its global trend report. For example, in this screenshot, notice that the front level represents how listeners view music’s health factor. The various spaces of the design allow you to explore the various roles music plays in people’s lives. Plus, you can’t ignore the coolness factor of the accompanying music on this site. This design is for Spotify, after all.
Also Read: What is Spatial Data Science? Definition, Applications, Careers & More
Do You Want to Learn More About How to Incorporate Data Visualization into Marketing?
If this article has you interested in creating your own data visuals for marketing, then take the next step and enroll in this post-graduate program in data science certification program. This 44-week course offers a high-engagement learning experience that teaches the concepts of data analysis and predictive modeling, including tools like Generative AI, Prompt Engineering, ChatGPT, DALL-E, Midjourney, and other popular tools.
According to Indeed.com, digital marketers earn an annual average of $64,898. Check out this intense online certification course and bolster your digital marketing skills to meet the challenges of today’s online economy.
FAQs
Q: What are some examples of data visualization?
- Pie charts
- Line graphs
- Area charts
- Histograms
- Pivot tables
- Boxplots
Q: How is data visualization used in marketing?
It aids decision-making, improves retention and engagement, Increases accessibility, identifies areas that need attention or improvement, enables predictive analysis and real-time monitoring, reveals patterns and trends, and simplifies complex data for all stakeholders.
Q: Why is visualization important in marketing?
Data visualization improves storytelling by curating data into forms that are easier to understand. Good visualization tells a story, filtering out the useless noise from data and highlighting helpful information.
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