Online marketing success hinges on one critical factor: how you handle data. It is not really about data collection. Web companies and digital marketers have never lacked data to work with. But as data collection and analysis capabilities have increased, marketers have found themselves overwhelmed. So today, it’s not about data collection. It is about data consolidation.
If you are working with a web company or digital marketer to improve your online presence, the shift from fragmented to consolidated data impacts your business. The shift is no longer optional, by the way. It is a competitive necessity.
The Great Data Divide
Fragmented data has been the state of the industry for many years. Data gets fragmented when information is trapped in silos. A typical scenario presents social media metrics in one dashboard, email marketing metrics in another, and still another dashboard displaying ecommerce data.
Data separation might make things easier for business owners to understand, but there is an inherent trap to the siloed approach: systems do not communicate with each other. Fragmented data is more likely to provide a disjointed view of what marketers are trying to accomplish.
Consolidated data is different. It is unified. By definition, data consolidation pulls information in from every touchpoint to create a single source of truth. The perfect example of data consolidation is the Unified Customer Profile (UCP). Forward thinking web companies and digital marketers are using this tool to get a holistic 360-degree view of a customer’s interactions across all touchpoints.
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Why It’s Becoming the New Standard
A casual observation of how web companies are using data reveals that consolidation is becoming the new standard. At Pixsan, an SEO company in San Diego, CA, it is about two things: marketing organization and online survival in a world now dominated by AI.
Pixsan points to three specific reasons explaining why consolidated data is now the standard:
- Personalization – The introduction of AI has created an environment of hyper-personalization. Customers expect personalized experiences as they travel across the internet. However, personalization is nearly impossible if a marketer is working with silo data. Consolidation fuels personalization by way of anticipatory marketing.
- Attribution – Data consolidation reveals not only which channels are working, but how they are working as well. Marketers can see the exact path to conversion, allowing them to allocate resources accordingly.
- AI Integration – Machine learning requires the largest, cleanest, and most centralized datasets possible. Fragmented data does not serve that purpose well. So any web company or digital marketer hoping to use AI tools needs to be able to feed them with consolidated data.
Making the transition from fragmented to consolidated data requires a change in thinking. It requires that SEO and marketing teams get on the same page – and then welcome the web development team into the fold. All three teams need to work together as a cohesive unit that not only shares data, but benefits from the unification.
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Data Sources Matter
Note that consolidated data doesn’t necessarily mean more volume. In fact, continuing to apply the big data principle only generates a ton of unnecessary information web companies can find themselves chasing without purpose. In short, data sources matter.
High-quality data suitable for consolidation typically comes from three primary sources:
- First-Party – Data collected from an organization’s channels.
- Zero-Party – Data voluntarily offered by customers through things like poles and quizzes.
- Server-Side Tracking – Data collected directly from servers.
Being able to consolidate data opens the door to humanizing the digital experience. That is what the drive toward AI-powered SEO and digital marketing is all about. When the experience is humanized, it reaps tangible results.