Now that society has progressed well into the digital age, every industry is working to catch up. One thing that remains consistent is the need to update marketing tactics. Learning to understand digital marketing is a process that can take years to fully comprehend, and it is always evolving, so you are never done learning. There are hundreds of sites you can visit all around the internet to market your company digitally. Here are eight ways that data science can help you and your company to fully and functionally immerse yourself in the new and ever-expanding world of digital marketing.

1. Tech Tools

One of the best benefits of digital marketing is that the analysis of the results of the marketing can be done digitally. Machine learning models are now more advanced than ever, so they can account for variables that an unaided person would never be able to account for. Technological tools can collect data including how many people view a webpage or advertisement and how much they engage with that advertisement. Tech companies are only coming up with even more ways to gauge how engaging and effective ads are, so this is a great area to explore for your business.

2. Quick Feedback Collection

Because of how quickly and efficiently certain tech tools can process data, it can get that data back to you quickly as well. This allows you to proficiently adapt to what you know the average advertisement viewer responds to and adjust your ad campaigns accordingly. Start out by buying a small amount of ad space as a test run. Then, you can read the data and adjust from there. That way, as few people as possible see your first attempt, and the most people possible see your new and improved attempt.

3. Spreadsheets

For a generally cheaper and also more manual approach to data entry and analysis, you can try using some kind of spreadsheet software, such as Google Sheets, which comes free with every Gmail account. There is a rather large learning curve that comes with these programs as you learn how to input the formulas you need to crunch the numbers properly. However, there are several free resources online that can teach you what you need to know. Of course, you can also learn by playing around with the features yourself and learning through experiencing everything.

4. Customer Segmentation

One-size-fits-all, while a useful concept in certain circumstances, is not the case in the instance of online advertising. Because of the international nature of the internet, you will likely be dealing with potential customers from all over the world and from all walks of life. For that reason, you need to collect data on as many types of people as possible and adjust your marketing campaigns accordingly. Many of these tools use location as a factor in how people respond to your ads, which makes it easier than ever to separate your customers by demographic, region, or anything else you can think of.

5. Preparing for the Future

One of the primary functions of data analysis is teaching companies how to adjust for the future. In other words, it is useful to make use of predictive analytics. If you can predict the trends that your audience will respond to, you will have a better idea of how to bring in more customers without having to rely on educated guesses or trial and error. Being able to predict the behaviors and interests of your audience before they exhibit them can feel like you have psychic powers, which is a huge advantage in business.

6. Recommendation Technology

Once you get to the more advanced levels of data science technology, you can start recommending your customers goods and services based on their past purchases and interactions. This enters territories that would be nearly impossible to calculate with the human mind alone. The complexity that goes into successfully recommending products could only be done by a computer. That is why you, as a business person, are so fortunate to live in an era where this kind of process is possible. The best you can do is supplement the information the computer collects wherever you can.

7. Chat Bots

One advent that has risen to prominence recently are automated systems that respond to frequently asked customer questions. These chatbots are typically found on the front page of the website and begin with a greeting and a set of questions that the customer can ask. From there, the customer can either find the answer he or she is looking for through the bot or can be transferred to a customer service representative from there. More complex chatbots can remove the need for preselected questions and answer questions from a free chat box instead of a few select example questions.

8. Tutorials

Many people feel uncomfortable with or unprepared for life in a digital space, and one way to combat this is through teaching and tutorials. You can use tutorials to learn all the in and outs of whatever data analysis system you are using. All the tips listed above take skill and practice to master, so never be afraid to use any tutorials you can find. On the other hand, your customers can also benefit from short tutorials about how to use the features of your website. However, you need to keep these tutorials short, usually no more than a sentence or two, as your customers likely do not have the patience to sit through extensive tutorials that they will not use very often.

Artificial intelligence and digital data analysis are the future of marketing. Several companies have taken massive strides in the past few years to make new data collection and analysis software as comprehensive as possible, and it will only continue to improve in the years to come. The features listed above are useful today, but they could be rendered completely obsolete in the years to come with whatever innovations come next in the field of data analysis.