What’s the Difference Between Data Points and Data Insights?

Market dynamics promote techniques that are guided by data. There are efforts to grasp the concept, although it often seems overwhelming.   As such,  entrepreneurs who are the driving force behind their businesses need to gain a deep understanding of the relevant terms associated with data.

This article will briefly explain the distinction between two such terms: data points and data insights and help you identify the impact of actionable insights. Let’s continue.

What are Data Points?

Data points refer to the collection of data for analysis to understand the bottom line of business.

“A data point is a discrete unit of information. In a general sense, any single fact is a data point. In a statistical or analytical context, a data point is usually derived from a measurement or research and can be represented numerically and/or graphically. The term data point is roughly equivalent to datum, the singular form of data.” 

According to Robert Vorhoff, “Price is a powerful data point—what a customer is willing to pay for a product or service in a competitive market. Having customers, people that have made that decision is a valuable thing.”

Understanding Data Insights?

Data Insights look at the results, and the conclusions, that is, what is to learn after analyzing the data. There will be no opportunities without data. Therefore, there will be no insights to obtain. Insights and Data work in conjunction to help businesses make strategic decisions.

Data Points Versus Data Insights

Data must be processed to become meaningful. To clarify, if you plan on conducting marketing research to learn about consumers’ behavior, you may decide to drive traffic to your website to get highly qualified and targeted leads. Now you position your site with quality content that identifies with the needs of your visitors so that they will provide you with their details, such as emails, names, and as you specify. You can store this information in a database without processing the data. But how valuable would that unprocessed data be for your business? It would be like purchasing a car and parking it in your garage without knowing the value of how this car can get you to your destination.

In the given example, the collection of the bare-bones emails, names, and addresses are considered unprocessed data. You will need to organize and analyze the data, but don’t be confused, as that is not insights. Analyzing the data will help you identify critical information such as where your leads are coming from, why they visited your website and provide you with their details, along with other variables that you need to measure. The deeper you dig into the data, is the more information you will unveil. That will then help you to gain powerful insights into how to better market to your target audience while addressing their needs. The ability to learn about your leads and understand their needs, to appropriately communicate with them, and reach them at their pain points leads to insights.

How to Turn Data Points Into Actionable Insights? 

“Actionable insights appear to be the missing link for companies that want to drive business outcomes from their data,” reported by Forbes. You may collect data about a specific project that you find essential, but remember that if that data is not processed, it is raw, although it may seem pleasing to the eye. For you to gain actionable insights, such data points need to turn into contextual information. Not all insights are actionable, so don’t be dismayed if you gain insights and not able to use them.

Let’s look at a pilot test with a simple questionnaire distributed at random to a small group of people to assess the likelihood of purchasing a product. You can see a table with partial data as your eyes scroll down this page; this is the raw, or unprocessed data obtained. The data was then compiled and illustrated via visuals showing the data points. One may believe that females are more likely to buy the product than males. In Excel, the data was analyzed using a simple t-Test formula. The analysis reveals that the information was not statistically significant and confirmed by the p-value of 0.598.

While the data indicates women are more likely to purchase, after analysis, it was discovered that there is no substantial difference. With that experience, you now have actionable insights for your company to make an informed decision, such as carving out your marketing campaign.

From the information presented, if you’re not able to get actionable insights to drive your business decision, then based on your research objective, you may decide to conduct another research with a larger population sample.

Simple steps to follow to get actionable insights:

1. Define your research objective and question
2. Conduct your survey
3. Collect your data
4. Analyze your data with the aid of visuals such as Tableau 
5. Understand the information presented from your analysis so you can gain insights
6. Take those insights gained and implement the right actions for your business to meet the needs of your customers and remain competitive.

Conclusion

Understanding data and insights are crucial for your business decisions. Once you have your data collected, organized and analyzed, you can gain powerful insights to optimize your customer experience, and more, although not all insights are actionable.

Now that you understand the difference between data points and data insights, are you ready to take action?

Learn the secret of marketing analytics to help you with analyzing your data and building your brand. 

Take a look at my last article.

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