See the Human Side of Your Data with Our Data-Driven Storytelling
Why is Storytelling Important?
Storytelling is one of the oldest ways we have to pass along our traditions, values, hopes, and fears. Stories move us, give us a reason to believe or not, a reason to act or not, to take this road or another. Who doesn’t love a good story?
We all love stories, but in our fast-paced, data-driven world, we are faced with so much data that making sense of it all would probably scare even Steven King. Enter Data-Driven Storytelling.
Data-driven storytelling as a communication form is not new. We have always put together assumptions based on the data we have at hand. However, today’s marketplace is so full of data that we can sometimes be sidetracked. A story can help us see the forest for the trees. As Jean-Luc Goddard said, “Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form.”
“At its best, data storytelling can provide universal truths that everyone can understand and not only empower those within the business to make data-driven decisions, but also bridge the gap between numbers and their real-world impact.” Exasol
How You Can Use Data-Driven Storytelling
The classic storytelling principles are also effective in the area of big data and can bring about understanding, emotions, and action. How can customers and users be reached most effectively? With an interesting story. Data itself has a story worth telling, but not every data set requires a story.
Data-driven storytelling can be used in various ways. It can be used to:
Add value to your data and insights.
Interpret complex information and highlight essential key points for the target group.
Add a human touch to your data.
Provide added value and potential impact for your audience and industry.
Storytelling allows us to market to our customers and users by creating personalized, brand-related moments on the one hand. On the other, storytelling gives us visual insights into our data which empowers us. As Mathematician Jon Tukey put it, “The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.”
Data-driven storytelling is the ability to communicate insights from a dataset. It’s the ability to blend hard data into human communication. Data are facts, but data has story potential. Critically it’s through the narrative that data can be woven into a story. The problem is that the way data is often used means it lacks empathy and emotion, which are critical to a good story.
Are You the Only One in the Room Who Sees the Data Elephant?
The difficulty in storytelling with Big Data is that you may be the only person who can understand the content of the data because you have probably dealt with the data volumes alone over a long period of time. So how can you prepare the data in such a way that even a layperson can understand it? How can you find and explain the important, key moments the data is telling us? How do you go from insights to customer success?
You can create data-driven stories in three steps: data, visualization, and narrative.
First, you need to understand the data. What’s happening here? What is the data telling us?
Second, you create your story. This sounds difficult at first, but the dog didn’t really eat your homework, did he?
Third, visualize the data. We do this all the time. I just need to say PowerPoint, right?
“Rather than presenting your team with a spreadsheet of data and rattling off numbers, consider how you can engage multiple parts of their brains. Using data storytelling, you can evoke an emotional response on a neural level that can help your points be remembered and acted upon.” Harvard Business School
What are the Benefits of Data-Driven Storytelling?
Data-driven storytelling has a wide variety of uses. It can be used internally to communicate the need for improvements based on customer data or externally to help sell the right product to the right customer.
Data-driven storytelling can help to fulfill a number of purposes:
Improve Customer Reach
Personalize communication
Provide content that is relevant to users
Increase customer service, satisfaction, and loyalty
Increase Your Efficiency
Accurately measure campaign results
Measurably increase campaign ROI
Cost savings through the targeted use of budget
Increase Your Performance
Increase the success of marketing measures
Generate purchase decisions through individual offers
Predict certain events (predictive analytics)
Data-driven storytelling helps you meet your customer at every point along their customer journey. It helps you meet them at various touchpoints along the way, for example, when they are intending to make a purchase.
“If you want people to make the right decisions with data, you have to get in their head in a way they understand. Throughout human history, the way to do that has been with stories. It’s hard for a dashboard to explain why something is happening.” Miro Kazakoff, MIT
What are the Most Important Elements in Data-Driven Storytelling?
Data without a story backing it up is meaningless. The process of combining data, emotion, and empathy as part of a story is essential. Data-driven storytelling is often associated with the visualization of data. For example, in the form of infographics, dashboards, or data presentations. But it is much more than that.
A good story activates, emotionalizes, inspires, and binds. And like any other story, the data-driven story requires a problem to be solved, a reason to solve it, and a call to action.
Why is your data of interest to the customer or user?
What is the reason for dealing with these numbers?
Which findings have an impact on my company, the customer, or the user?
Do the results possibly challenge previous assumptions?
How does the data presented affect the company or the customer - what is my message?
Data-driven storytelling is understood as a structured approach to communicating data insights and is composed of the following three key elements: Data, Visualisation, and Narrative. To create an interesting and meaningful story, it is most important to understand how the elements are interdependent and need to be combined. In concrete terms, this means putting the data in the right context.
“Data-driven stories not only allow marketing analysts to convey content and provide context but they have been shown time and time again to increase recall. People don’t remember numbers on a spreadsheet; they remember stories. And people repeat stories.” Shift Paradigm
Data-Driven Storytelling: 2 Useful Examples
As we already said, whether you want to generate leads from your key audience, build customer engagement and loyalty, or create brand awareness, data-driven storytelling helps you meet your customer at every point along their customer journey, so they are always your focus. Effective data-driven storytelling places your target group at the center of the story.
Example 1: Data-Driven Storytelling for New Movers and Young Families
A home is all about personal stories. We raise our children in our home; we may retire there, too. Our lives are played out on many stages, mainly in those places we have lived. A purchased home is probably our largest financial investment. Moving from one rental property to another might be a part of our journey as a military family or a traveling consultant. Real estate, in all its forms, tells a story.
What market data should you be looking at to build a story around your New Mover or Young Family?
Property Price Indexes
Automated (Statistical Property) Valuation Models
Time Series Forecasting
Cluster Analysis (of property groups)
Geographic Information Systems (especially important as ocean levels rise)
What target group data should you be looking at modeling?
Demographics: a persona's age, gender, current marital status, current place of residence, and household size.
Socioeconomics: education level, occupation, and income.
Psychographics: including the motivation, opinion, desires, values, and lifestyle.
Buying behavior: defined by price sensitivity, satisfaction, purchase reach, and media usage.
Data drives stories -- especially in an important market like real estate. In 2018 almost 50% of the KPMG PropTech Survey participants believed that big data and data analysis were likely to have the biggest impact on the real estate industry.
Example 2: Data-Driven Storytelling for Millenials
We often view Millenials as one group, but they consist of two unique parts -- the early (1977-1989) and the late Millennials (1990-1994). You don’t need to be a data scientist to understand there’s a difference between someone born in 1977 and someone born in 1994. Technically, they could actually be a young parent and child!
Millennials, and their counterparts, Generation Z, are often seen as the “right now!” generations. Mobile devices have made “micro-moment” decision-making immediate, fast-pasted, and challenging. A micro-moment is that millisecond when we consciously or unconsciously reach for our mobile device. Not to make a phone call, but to find out more about a particular brand or product.
Data-driven marketing is necessary here much more than in the slower-paced decision-making of a property rental or purchase.
While the micro-moments are actually changing the rules of the game, the mobile generation is leaving a huge digital data trail behind them for us to follow. This is perhaps ironic as Millenials and Generation X are both interested in a reduced digital footprint.
What questions are important to understand about your Millenial audience?
They want to matter, and they want recognition.
Millennials value experiences, and they want to participate.
They want choices -- and are budget-conscious.
Eco-friendliness, diversity, and healthy living.
What are some of the data you should be looking at building a story around?
Shopping data -- what is bought, where, and when.
Geo-location data -- what actual paths are being taken.
Social Media data -- topics and information interest and exchange.
Financial data -- transactions made online are quickly decided upon.
Health and Fitness data -- life choices are a culmination of decisions.
Data is Always Happening. Start Looking at Yours Today.
Start with your analytics and customer data in your storytelling. This data, including your social media, email, sales, and content analytics, give you a picture of the prospects and customers you’re trying to reach or serve better.
At AWI, we can deliver first-party customer data, second-party hand-raisers, and the third-party sourced data required for insights and acquisitions. We can do it through any channel and for just about every use case. We specialize in delivering data that is: multi-sourced, timely, and high-performing.
Are You Ready for Data-Driven Storytelling?
We specialize in delivering data that is: multi-sourced, timely, and high-performing. AWI offers In-Market, Purchase, Specialty Data, Trigger, and many other categories.
