Marketers typically make 4 types of decisions…

1. Tactical decisions
Frequently made decisions using low volumes of data. Things like campaign budget allocation, keyword targeting, or reach and frequency monitoring to optimize ROI.

2. Optimization decisions
Less-frequently made decisions using low volumes of data. Things like A/B testing, CRO experimentation, or on-page SEO performance.

3. Operational decisions
Frequently made decisions using high volumes of data. Things like outlier detection, inventory based advertising, or internal historical benchmarking.

4. Strategic decisions
Less-frequently made decisions using high volumes of data. Things like audience segmentation, demand forecasting, and annual budget allocation.

For the first two types of decisions, you need on-demand data that is accessible in raw format. This is typically low data volumes in a spreadsheet or dashboard.

For the second two types of decisions, you need centralized data for longer-term historical and seasonal analysis. This is typically high data volumes from your marketing data warehouse.

Working with marketing data is all about improving the quality and speed of decision making. And combining on-demand and centralized data is the best way to do that.

What kind of marketing decisions do you mainly make and how do you work with data to support those decisions?