Nowadays, marketing is evolving, and customer data is critical for marketers these days. Unfortunately, many people struggle to understand data-driven methods because they are unable to view, compare, or interpret the data.
Today, we will examine data-driven marketing, how your organization may profit from big data, the most typical data difficulties that marketers encounter, some examples of data-driven campaigns, and a brief lesson on establishing a data-driven marketing plan and implementing appropriate technology.
Data-Driven Marketing: In a Nutshell
Data-driven marketing may appear terrifying at first glance, but you should not be. Many of its tactics are expected to be intelligible even without the use of language.
The use of customer data in marketing aids in the effectiveness of brand communications. Marketers who use data predict their customers’ demands, desires, and future activities. This makes it easier to create personalized marketing strategies with the maximum possible return on investment (ROI).
Traditional Marketing vs. Data-Driven Marketing
Traditional marketing and data-driven marketing are now two very contrasting concepts. To better appreciate the differences, we must first consider the origins of marketing.
Marketing serves two key functions. Find out what your customers desire first. Following that, give the customers what they want.
In practice, this has always entailed the following steps: first, gaining a thorough understanding of the target audience; second, identifying and anticipating client desires; and third, developing strategies to manufacture products that promise to meet those expectations.
Traditional marketing teams used market research and assumptions about the target demographic to achieve their objectives. As a result, we had to learn by trial and error. Businesses tried a variety of tactics before settling on one that proved to be successful.
Customers are reached at the most convenient time through data-driven marketing. Data use is not restricted to simply boosting communications. Marketing teams today leverage consumer data to personalize customer experiences, target certain marketing categories, and gain new customers. With data, brands can review, analyze, and enhance their approaches.
What You Can Get from Big Data Marketing
Big data enables marketers to make more informed decisions. These decisions lead to outcomes that are both superior and more quickly achieved.
In these modern times, at least two-thirds of powerful marketers believe that data-driven judgments are superior to gut reactions. Data can be useful to marketers in a variety of other ways, such as:
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Improved Audience Comprehension
When it comes to targeting audiences, marketers can use any information they can gather about their customers. Marketers can use customer behaviour data from CRM systems to forecast customer behaviour. This guarantees that marketing campaigns get out to clients at the best possible time.
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Improved Consumer Interactions
The utilization of data assists marketers in developing stronger relationships with their target audiences. They have the ability to function on a massive scale.
For example, real-time campaign data would allow a marketer to tailor a campaign to a customer’s participation in the campaign. In order for them to constantly generate campaigns that meet the expectations of their target audiences.
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Discover Effective Advertising
Data can be used to learn more than just the preferences of viewers. Furthermore, it may illustrate how a company might engage its audience both now and in the future.
This may help them place the message in a location where the intended audience is currently present or will be in the future.
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Customization and Personalization
According to studies, 74% of customers find irrelevant marketing material to be extremely unpleasant. If an offer is not tailored, 79% of consumers will not even consider taking advantage of it.
Marketing messages that are overly generic are bound to turn off today’s consumers. As such, personalizing a customer’s experience with a firm makes them feel more appreciated.
Indeed, data is useful as it offers a more comprehensive picture of the target demographic. It identifies the sources of discomfort for potential clients.
When marketing is tailored, the return on investment can increase by five to eight times.
Data-Driven Marketing Decisions and Company Performance
Putting data first leads to massive revenues. The data-driven strategy has the ability to improve customer happiness, client retention, and client acquisition.
Data-driven marketing, according to ZoomInfo, boosts the number of leads turned into customers while also increasing client acquisition. Meanwhile, Forbes’ research has claimed that analytics benefited 66% of marketing leaders in getting new clients.
Data-Driven Marketing: Challenges and Common Issues
As previously mentioned, some marketers struggle with data-driven marketing. According to Campaign Monitor research, the vast majority of marketers believe that executing a data-driven strategy is exceedingly difficult.
Here are the challenges and common issues that marketers face with data-driven marketing:
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Data Gathering
New data-driven marketers feel overwhelmed by the ever-increasing amount of data received from clients. After all, knowledge can be so overpowering at times that it causes people to freeze. As a result, data-driven campaigns have become nasty.
You most likely have access to the majority of the data, but it is tough to manage.
Customer insights are available from a range of sources, including customer relationship management (CRM), internet analytics, eCommerce and advertising tools, enterprise resource planning software, social networking applications, and others. Data is acquired from profiles, internet activity, and interactions with adverts and products.
Additional information is required in order to make an informed decision. When there is a dramatic shift in a target group’s interests.
Using prior sales data as a basis for judgment is a smart place to start, but if you can gather more information, you should.
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Putting Together All Data Gathered
If you want to get the most out of your data, it should be as current as possible. If feasible, use real-time data. Otherwise, the data should be updated on a regular basis. The most that can be accomplished in a single day or week.
Manually updating the data takes a long time. This is especially true when the data is manually imported.
A solution for this is a dashboard for marketing where all of your data can be combined on the marketing analytics and visualization platform. The dashboard keeps data from many marketing channels in sync. Real-time. It displays the information in the order that I specified, allowing me to view all of the statistics for my campaign at the same time.
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Overcoming Data Silos for Data Comprehension
Only 8% of businesses maintain every piece of data they have in a warehouse. 69% of businesses lack a unified perspective of their clients due to fragmented data. As a result, a marketing team’s capacity to understand its audience and the performance of its efforts suffers.
For the majority of businesses, removing data silos is a difficult undertaking. Implementing universal data standards, reorienting the culture surrounding data exchange, and putting in place a marketing analytics platform are all common operations.
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Forming an Internal Data Team
Data processing may necessitate collaborative efforts between departments on occasion.
Form data teams depending on the models you’ve created. The centre of excellence has singled out a data specialist for particular honour. This person is in charge of creating processing policies as well as documentation.
The concept of dispersed data teams entails embedding a data expert within critical teams or departments throughout a company.
The hub-and-spoke design combines both of these ideas. It provides a centralized location for data administration and individually contributes to the success of critical teams.
Budgeting Based on Data
Large corporations’ marketing teams spend millions of dollars each year. However, many people are unable to provide precise expenditure estimations. This is partly because different departments, such as finance and accounting, as well as marketing, analyze spending differently. Their information is also dispersed in other locations. Some people utilize Excel spreadsheets; meanwhile, others use the materials that are available online.
When it seems impossible to undertake an accurate evaluation of marketing expenses, bring two different sorts of data together. A lot of marketing analytics solutions are capable of integrating data from various packages with distinct labelling.
Building a Data-Driven Marketing Strategy: A Quick Guide
The concept of a data-driven plan can cover a lot of ground. Enough to fill a whole handbook. Nonetheless, you must adhere to the procedure.
Here are the steps for putting together a data-driven marketing strategy:
First, establish data objectives. Before you begin collecting data, you must first establish your objectives. You, like the other firms mentioned above, must have a well-defined data aim. Why? Because accomplishing our objectives directs our activities. You will obtain reliable information. Source. How to determine your degree of comprehension.
Second, gather relevant information. After the objectives have been set, the data to be collected must be selected. Consider your desired outcomes and the facts that will assist you in achieving them. The following step is to locate the data.
Third, collect and organize data. There are two tasks that must be completed. The first step is to choose a data platform for storing and organizing the data. The second step is to collect data from diverse sources.
Fourth, develop your skills both inside and internationally. Depending on your objectives, you may require a team to deploy and review the data.
Fifth, obtain organizational backing. Before engaging in data-driven marketing for the first time, it’s possible that consent from many stakeholders is required.
Sixth, track and document progress. Finally, you should monitor the success of your campaign. This allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your actions and distribute information to the appropriate persons.
Your Tools for a Data-Driven Marketing Stack
The use of data in marketing is a broad topic. When marketers have access to the relevant data, they may anticipate customer behaviour, recognize patterns of consumer spending, forecast consumer interests, recognize future trends, and so on.
Many people are having problems accessing information. Data-driven marketing solutions can aid in this situation. Data marketers make use of tools like this one.
Making the Most Out Of Your Data-Driven Marketing Strategy
When establishing data-driven marketing strategies, keep the following in mind, especially in light of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). You can make the most out of your data-driven marketing strategy when you:
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Add Value
The purpose of data-driven marketing is to improve the overall consumer experience by extracting insights from acquired data. The customer’s contentment is critical. Customers must know what’s in it for them in every data-driven marketing attempt.
The creation of a product sheet will not boost the number of downloads. Take into mind the user’s requirements, difficulties, and desires based on data and statistics. Then, you can determine which of your contributions will be most beneficial.
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Highlight Advantages
Customers are more likely to submit personal information when they believe a business will provide them with better deals or more value. Customers should be informed that the information they supply will be used to create user profiles. This might be in the form of a newsletter or personalized product recommendations. Marketers should emphasize the benefits that clients can obtain.
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Offer Honesty and Transparency
A great number of people have expressed concerns about how corporations use their data, ranging from unsolicited mailings to breaches in network security. Marketing teams must be transparent about the data they acquire, how it will be used, and how it will be handled and safeguarded.
Allow your customers to update their information or deactivate their accounts. This is required under both the GDPR and the CCPA. The ability of marketing teams to monitor and alter client information is enabled by keeping data visible.
What You Can Achieve with Data-driven Marketing
Data-driven marketing strategies can be utilized to inform both short-term and long-term attempts to develop a brand. What can marketing departments do with the data they collect? Here’s what you can achieve:
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Enhanced Branding
When marketing teams collect and analyze data, they are better able to evaluate the efforts being made to develop brands. Branding methods give organizations visibility into their customers’ values. It is not always possible to demonstrate ROI to stakeholders because brand identification and commitment may not always translate into a direct and verifiable sale. They are, nonetheless, required for long-term profitability and the maintenance of consumer connections.
When leading indicators are used, marketing teams can learn which aspects of the company customers like and which areas of the brand’s health need to be improved.
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Improved Targeted Messaging
The attribution data will show your team which kind of messages are most effective in attracting the attention of your target audience. This information is used to create user profiles, such as “enjoys funny advertising.” Platforms driven by AI can offer the right content to the right customer at the right moment, allowing for the construction of a personalized experience.
Data-Driven Marketing: The Channels of Communication
As a marketer, one of the most vital aspects of your role is to identify your target audience accurately. This means that you must know if they spend their free time watching TV or utilizing social media platforms. You must also know other information, such as the publications aimed toward senior citizens, such as journals or periodicals.
To get the most out of your media budget, you must understand which channels are effective for reaching specific demographics. This will help you reach the largest amount of engagements with the fewest expenditures–an ideal method for marketers on a budget!
Using attribution data, marketing teams may determine how frequently an advertisement or asset was interacted with, as well as how far up the sales funnel the prospect travelled as a result of their engagement with the advertisement or asset.
Data-Driven Marketing: The Time
Statistics and analytics should be used to plan the timeline for your campaign. The value of customizing messaging to clients and finding cost-cutting opportunities cannot be emphasized.
For example, you must know when your consumers are most likely to see an advertisement. This might be during business hours for a business-to-business (B2B) corporation, as this is when customers are looking for solutions to their business concerns. This might be the weekend before the commencement of the holiday shopping season, sometimes known as Black Friday.
Remember, you can more successfully target clients who are potentially interested in making a purchase if you know when they are most responsive to being sold to.
Conclusion
Data-driven marketing is becoming increasingly important as consumer expectations rise along with the number of channels, apps, and devices. If you implement these tactics, you will be able to use your data to create personalized experiences for your customers, save money, and increase your return on investment.
New Digital Marketing Agency is an esteemed digital agency in Toronto. We are your modern-day marketers that focus on data-driven strategies. Work with us today!
