New Year Business Guide - brought to you by APL Media • Wednesday 14 January 2026


Tech, Software & Marketing • 15 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE


Readers can claim a Make data decide


Ambitious brands have more marketing data than ever, but don’t feel any clearer


Dashboards multiply. New platforms are added. Reports get longer. Yet the same questions keep coming up in board meetings: Which activities are genuinely


driving growth? Where’s the overspending happening? And how should decisions be made about what to do next? Many leadership teams feel


they should be more data driven, but reality hasn’t caught up with the ambition.


THE DATA ERA HAS RAISED THE BAR What counts as effective marketing has changed. From Google Analytics 4 and privacy regulation to complex customer journeys and AI tools, brands need clear, end-to-end visibility of what’s really happening — from first touch through to lead, sale and lifetime value. That means tracking that works,


integrations that talk to each other and an agreed view of the numbers that matter. Without this, even the best creative and media plans are still making educated guesses.


FIX YOUR FOUNDATIONS In many organisations, tracking has grown organically. Different teams and agencies have added tools. Some tags are broken, some events are missing and some headline metrics


don’t mean what people think they do. The result is a lot of data, but not always much signal. That’s a problem when budgets


are under pressure and every line is scrutinised. Campaigns can become ‘hit and hope’ — a burst of effort, followed by a debate about whether it really worked. A different approach starts with


a simple idea: make data decide. Treat data as an asset that underpins the marketing strategy, rather than a by-product of it. In practical terms, that looks like


fixing the foundations first, ensuring tracking is accurate and compliant, agreeing on the metrics that truly


matter and making sure every channel is measured against clear commercial outcomes. With that in place, conversations at board level become less about opinions and more about evidence.


THE RIGHT EXPERTISE, ALL IN ONE PLACE Delivering this is now a specialist discipline. From analytics and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) to marketing automation and performance media, it’s difficult for a single generalist or small team to cover everything. For many leadership teams, a structured review of existing tracking and reporting


is the fastest way to see where the gaps and opportunities really are. Modern partnerships increasingly


bring together distributed teams and specialist talent, wherever they’re based, so strategy, data and execution stay joined up. The goal isn’t to be cheaper; it’s to give brands access to the right expertise at the right moment, so data, strategy and execution stay aligned and more of the budget goes into work that genuinely moves the needle. This is the work Mr Digital


does every day. In recent years, Mr Digital has helped multi-site hospitality groups, professional services firms and ecommerce


complimentary data & performance review by scanning the QR code below


Get the foundations right, let the numbers guide the strategy and turn marketing from a cost centre into a measurable driver of growth


brands turn fragmented data into confident decisions and more measurable returns on marketing investment. Acting as an extension of in-house teams, Mr Digital brings together global talent across strategy, tracking, optimisation and campaign delivery so that every channel has a clear role — and a clear result. For brands that suspect they’re


sitting on untapped potential in data, the opportunity is straightforward: get the foundations right, let the numbers guide the strategy and turn marketing from a cost centre into a measurable driver of growth.


For further information


T: 01273 942 329 Visit: mr-digital.co.uk


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