Our Insights

Turning Raw Data into Actionable Insights for Marketing Success

In marketing analytics, it’s easy to take clean, polished dashboards for granted. Data just appears at your fingertips, right? Not quite. Behind every number and graph is a lot of hard work from data engineers, whose job is to ingest, clean, and prepare data so that it’s ready for analysis. At Lewis Media, our team of marketing data analysts spends countless hours ensuring the data our clients see is accurate, reliable, and actionable. Here’s a look behind the scenes at how we turn messy data into marketing gold.

What is Data Ingestion and Why Should You Care?

Data ingestion is the process of gathering data from multiple sources and bringing it into a single system where it can be organized and analyzed. Think of it like collecting ingredients from different grocery stores for a big meal. Without a well-structured data ingestion framework, you’d have a chaotic mess of information stored in different places, making it impossible to get a full picture of what’s happening.

In marketing, data comes from various sources — Google Ads, Meta, The Trade Desk, Campaign Manager, CRM systems, and website analytics just to name a few. Our job as data engineers is to bring it into a single system where it can be analyzed. At LMP, that’s Domo, a world-class business intelligence tool.

We take advantage of Domo’s built-in connectors, but our team often takes it a step further by creating custom solutions. We create our own data ingestion pipelines using SQL and Python scripts housed in Google Cloud. It gives us the flexibility to handle complex data sources and tailor workflows to meet the unique needs of our clients. This approach allows us to ingest data that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible and combine multiple sources to create a holistic view of performance.

The Art and Science of Cleaning Data

Imagine you’ve gathered all the ingredients for a meal, but some are expired, others are mislabeled, and a few are missing entirely. That’s what raw data is like. Cleaning it is a crucial part of the process to make sure it’s accurate and consistent. Using effective data cleaning methods ensures that errors and inconsistencies are identified and resolved before analysis begins.

Common data cleaning methods include:

• Standardizing formats (e.g., ensuring dates and currencies are consistent)
• Handling missing or incomplete data
• Removing duplicate records
• Ensuring consistency across data sources

For example, if one data source uses “US Dollars” while another uses “$,” that can create problems when combining reports. Small inconsistencies can lead to major errors in analysis. Clean data, refined through structured data cleaning methods, is the backbone of accurate reporting.

From Raw Data to Actionable Insights

With clean data in hand, we transform it into actionable insights. This is where the magic happens. We build marketing analytics dashboards in Domo that tell a story. The right data, organized in the right way, allows both our buyers and our clients to monitor performance, optimize campaigns, and identify new opportunities in real time.

Our clean, well-structured data ingestion pipelines enable us to build custom metrics to track how different marketing channels drive conversions. We can break down performance by channel, audience segment, time periods, or campaign objective — giving businesses the clarity they need to leverage our insights and make smarter strategic decisions.

Why This Matters for Your Marketing Strategy

Data should be at the core of every successful marketing strategy. When used effectively, data should inform decisions on where to allocate budget, which audiences to target, and how to measure success. Clean reliable data ensures these decisions are based on fact, not guesswork.

Without a proper data ingestion framework and data cleaning methods, you risk making decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information, which can hurt your bottom line.

What Sets Lewis Media Apart

At Lewis Media, we go beyond simply ingesting data. Our marketing data analysts have deep expertise in data engineering and use Domo to turn raw data into powerful business insights. Whether we’re using Domo’s native connectors or writing custom SQL and Python scripts in Google Cloud, we tailor every solution to meet our clients’ unique data needs.

We don’t just deliver dashboards — we deliver clarity and confidence in your data.

Ready to Take Control of Your Data?

Reach out to our analytics team at Lewis Media to learn how our marketing analytics services can help you transform your data into actionable insights that fuel business growth.