You’ve got data. That’s good.

You know how people use your app. Or maybe you know what articles they enjoy on your website. Or the levels in your online game they like playing the most.

But now you want to do more with that data. Maybe you’re Instagram, and want to increase engagement on live video. Or you’re the Washington Post, and want to get articles about “Game of Thrones” in front of people who like the show. Or you’re an auto dealership and want to turn some of your website users into car buyers.

Whatever the case may be, you need good data. Then you need to build audiences around this data.

This will give you the opportunity to increase sales, engagement, foot traffic to your business — whatever. Here’s how to do it.

1. First, you need to know your audience segments

Examples of segments are “college students,” “gamers,” and “parents.”

Your data will break people into categories, so you can better understand what these categories are doing. If a ton of millennial women are consuming your content, you can approach brands who want to advertise to that segment with a compelling story.

2. Signals help paint a picture

Details such as the kind of car a user drives, whether they have Bluetooth connectivity on their devices, and the types of products that they’re interested in are all “signals.”

These help build out those segments we mentioned and give you more info about the people who use your app/website/service.

3. Enrichment makes the picture more vivid

You’ve got your segments. You’ve got your signals. Now you’re ready to dive deeper.

Let’s say that you have a segment of fitness enthusiasts. You know which of these enthusiasts are looking to join a new gym, but you don’t know where they are.

If you’re a fitness app that promotes local meetups, you need to know this last part. You’d enrich your existing data with location-based data.

4. You can then create lookalike audiences to get even more users

Once you’ve developed an audience of people who use your app/read your articles/use your service, you need to look for more people just like them. This is where the creation of lookalike audiences comes into play.

Using existing data, a data marketing company can generate lists of people with similar characteristics to the users you already have. You can then market effectively to those users.

So let’s say you’re ESPN, and you’re seeing a rise in millennial women who are consuming your content. You’re getting interest from brands like Dove to run major ad campaigns, and you want to further build out this audience. You’d create these “lookalike” audiences, full of real people who — just like your existing audience segment — is millennial, female, and wants your content.

This leads to a growing readership, and new revenue coming from brands that may not have been on your radar before.

5. Make sure you choose a partner who sources their own data, and does so honestly

Look for partners that collect their own data, and do it ethically. If a company works with third-party data sources, they may end up providing inaccurate information — or, worse, using stolen data as part of their database.

A particularly useful partner feature is offering a wide range of pre-defined audience segments. You can quickly build up a list of prospects when so much of the work is done for you.

When you’ve fully enriched your data, you can get new users, attract new advertisers, or sell more of your product. You can also tell a story.

Whether that story is to advertisers, investors, or to the people you want to attract to your business, it will be a valuable one.