One of the best ways to determine what will happen in the future is to look to the past. In today’s big data-driven world, we have the ability to access and use information on how customers are interacting with our websites and social media networks. But if we’re capturing this information without knowing how to use it, it’s of no use.

Strategizing is an important part of everything you do in business. From deploying a new marketing campaign to coming up with a timeline for a new product release, the more information you have, the better you can plan. But first you must learn to capture, manipulate, and model that data to use as a reference point throughout the process.

What is Predictive Analytics?

Predictive analytics is the process of mining data, studying that data, and using that information to forecast future events. Lauren Sager Weinstein from the Transport for London said recently at the DataUK Summit in London “If you have an upcoming event and you’re planning a social media campaign to promote it, you can look at your last campaign to find out which posts were most successful. Be looking into your historical data you can see where the majority of your data comes from. You’ll be surprised where it all comes from.

Maybe you posted an announcement the day before the event and found it was less effective than the same announcement posted two weeks prior. By having this information, you’ll know to make your big announcement in advance rather than waiting until just before the big day. You should also be paying attention to location data. Are the visitors coming from Cambridge or from Downtown London? By knowing this information and timetables you’ll better be able to prepare for future data pushes.

Even if this is your first social media campaign, you can gather information to best track your efforts. Here are a few things you should be tracking for better search rankings. Using Facebook’s and Twitter’s built-in analytics, you can determine the times and days of the week that your customers are most likely to interact with your social media posts. When do you get the most re-tweets and shares? What type of information seems to get the biggest reaction? What has the biggest impact on your rankings on Google?

Gathering Insight

Once you’ve begun using historical data, you’ll proceed with new campaigns with a new mindset. Knowing that the results will be used to make decisions about your future campaigns will allow you to experiment, trying new methods of reaching customers. If it works with this campaign, you’ll know to incorporate it into future campaigns while removing anything that didn’t seem to get a positive response.

“It’s really important to make sure you’re measuring the right data” says John Rampton from Due. “If your goal is to add new customers to your e-newsletter, your system should be set up to capture referring URLs for each of those signups. If you’re selling a product, your site should be measuring how many customers came over to your site from your social media posts and how many made a purchase, as opposed to merely browsing.” Rampton uses this information to help some of the largest brands in London to use data to make better social decisions with influencers.

Tools for Measuring

Tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Page Insights, and Twitter Analytics are great for measuring interaction on those sites, but you may need more advanced tools to be effective. If you deploy an email marketing campaign, for instance, you can use a marketing campaign tool like MailChimp to manage the process. MailChimp has campaigns dedicated to just London brands to help with local laws.

You’ll not only be able to automate and personalize your marketing efforts, but you’ll be able to measure results, including seeing how customers are interacting with your messages. With each new email campaign you launch, you’ll have the information necessary to make sure every email counts. These call comply with local laws (all of UK). You can even see the best time of day to send future emails to maximize open rates.

The Takeaway

By using historical data to predict the outcomes of your future efforts, you’ll stop wasting time and money on campaigns that don’t work. By putting in an extra hour or two a couple weeks before an event you can dramatically improve your the visitors to your site. I’ve noticed a 6% lift in engagement by just making a few small suggestions.

Everything you do will be much more effective, improving your brand’s ROI on each campaign. Most importantly, with so many other brands putting data analytics to use in marketing their brands, your business needs to use these methods to ensure you remain competitive in this competitive London landscape!