Are marketers seeing benefits from running ads on Facebook? Recent evidence indicates they are. In an Ad Age survey of 701 marketers and media executives, 61 percent of respondents say they're running ads, and close to 80 percent say they're somewhat or very satisfied with their return on marketing investment. 

Where businesses fall short, however, is in their ability to translate marketing returns into quantifiable business value. According to technology writer Erik Sherman, companies say that their "Sponsored Posts" marketing initiatives are successful in their ability to quickly generate tens of thousands of likes.

"The problem is that few of these companies had a concrete way of determining the value of these likes," Sherman wrote in an article for Inc. "How did they ultimately translate into sales, improved conversion rates, or some other metric that would indicate a tangible benefit to the business?"

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These three tips will help you hone your approach to data and distill exactly what you need without all the noise. 

1. Know the Data That Matters Most

Your data should be specific to your online business model. For example, if you're running a professional services firm, your profitability depends on leads generated and new contracts signed. If you're running an e-commerce business, your success depends on incremental product sales.

Your top-line metrics are where you need to start developing your data strategy. Examine what ultimately influences your profits—costs and revenue. These are the numbers that will matter most. 

A good place to start? The cost of bringing people to your website and business."Your [customer acquisition cost] is loosely defined as the cost of all your sales and marketing expenses over a given period of time, divided by the number of customers acquired in that window," wrote Onboardly co-founder Renee Warren for the KISSmetrics Blog. 

As a next step, contextualize your costs with revenue and sales. For every new user that your marketing efforts brought in, how much incremental revenue and how many additional sales did you generate? A simple revenue to costs ratio can function as a baseline measure of efficiency—position your strategy as one that increases revenue while decreasing costs, and monitor change over time. 

2. Learn the Pitfalls of Vanity Metrics

Data is plentiful in online marketing, and it's a creative discipline where art meets science. It's easy to become swept away in superficial "success" metrics like tweets and shares, but "pretty" numbers can be as dangerous as they are enticing.

Lean Startup author Eric Ries refers to superficial numbers as vanity metrics—data points that fail to translate into actionable business value.

"They look great in a press release, but what do they accomplish?" wrote Ries in a Harvard Business Review blog post. "As humans, we're hard-wired to infer causality from correlation: when the numbers go up, we tend to take credit. But when the numbers go down, we tend to blame someone or something else."

Stay away from this trap, Ries says."I recommend you follow the three A's of metrics: All metrics should be actionable, accessible, and auditable."

RELATED: Decoding Google Analytics 

3. Realize Good Data is an Investment

Every metric you monitor should have the potential to influence your profits. Compare click-through rates on different colored "submit" buttons, for instance, to see which generate more leads. As another example, you could compare purchase rates between video- and text-based product descriptions. "Techniques like split-testing, where discrete groups of customers see different versions of the product, are the gold-standard here," Ries wrote.

Think of your data strategy as a function of time. Businesses all understand that time equals money, so every moment you spend looking at data should translate directly into dollars saved or earned. Your data is an investment into your business's success—be in a position to translate what you learn into a clear directional strategy.

"The feedback loop between taking an action and seeing the results should be as short as possible," wrote Ries. 

Read more about marketing strategy.

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