Marketing strategies are becoming smarter and more efficient—all thanks to data. In fact, a study by eConsultancy and Adobe revealed that data-driven marketing has become a top priority for 55% of marketers. This is because it helps with segmenting and targeting their audiences. So, it’s no surprise that 45% of brands already have data-driven marketing strategies in place, while 32% of marketers are working on creating them. After all, by gathering information about their consumers, businesses can optimize their customer journey and improve their conversion rates. If you’re interested in doing the same, here’s what you need to know about data-driven marketing:
Data-Driven Marketing and Its Importance
Data-driven marketing is a business approach wherein customer data is utilized to create more successful marketing campaigns. This involves the collection of customer data, its analysis, followed by the creation of an informed marketing strategy that engages its target audience. However, Philips’ SVP Head of Digital Marketing & E-Commerce Blake Cahill emphasizes that simply collecting data isn’t enough. While it certainly is a means of staying ahead of the competition, incorporating data into decision-making requires discernment. Just because data is everywhere online doesn’t mean it’s all useful. Thus, Cahill stresses that the key is to nurture customer trust. By being transparent with gathered data and ensuring security, businesses can continually leverage consumer information. This then allows them to acquire valuable insights that they can use to improve their marketing strategies. With all that said, how can businesses start with data-driven marketing?
How to Create a Data-Driven Marketing Strategy
Collect and Manage Your Customer Data
The sheer amount of data available today can be overwhelming. So, to make this process easier and more efficient for your business, identify your goals for the next campaign. These goals will serve as a guideline in identifying the kind of data you need. After recognizing your goals, you can leverage data-as-a-service (DaaS) solutions to collect, analyze, and display specific information regarding your consumers. With the help of these software solutions, you can gather information about your target audience and derive actionable insights.
Streamline Your Data Collection Process
Data collection is not a one-stop process, especially if you want to remain relevant to your consumers. After all, consumer trends can change from day to day, so you need to get ahead of your competitors by monitoring your customers’ behavior. As such, you’ll need a continuous stream of up-to-date information so that you can create the most relevant marketing campaigns for your consumers. To accomplish this, your data acquisition system needs to be able to run unhindered for long periods of time. This ensures the device’s signal integrity, meaning it can gather and present a continuous stream of consumer data. By lowering the likelihood of signal errors and device failures, you can get access to relevant customer data in real-time.
Create Personalized Marketing Campaigns
Finally, you need to utilize the relevant customer data to guide you in your marketing campaigns. This data provides a closer look into your customers’ interests, preferences, and even dislikes. With this information, you can create marketing campaigns specifically targeted for them. But the work doesn’t end after creating a campaign. After launching, be sure to monitor its success by using an analytics tool to calculate site traffic, conversion rates, and bounce rates. These metrics will help you gauge whether you were successful in targeting your consumers or not. Otherwise, you will need to revisit old data sets to create more targeted campaigns. Businesses are becoming more customer-centric, which is why you need to gather and examine data regarding your target audience. By using the right technological tools, you can easily collect data, streamline your data management process, and craft effective marketing campaigns
