The buzzword data driven marketing has been around for quite a while but has seen an increase in usage again over the past few months as Covid-19 showed how important marketing based on actual numbers is now that everybody is more aware of what they spend money on. Therefore it makes sense to know the term, understand what it is, and look at some best cases / examples to find some inspiration in regards to how to use it.
What is Data Driven Marketing
Data Driven Marketing, quite simply, is the approach of optimizing brand communication based on customer information. Ideally you would use as much customer information as you can get to deliver the best possible messages to your potential audience. This means you would use customer data to predict needs, desires, and future behaviors of your audience. This leads to a more personalized approach to marketing which, in return, will increase relatability and, eventually, conversions.
Differences between Data Driven Marketing and traditional marketing
To understand how data driven marketing can really help us, we have to understand the difference to traditional marketing. When looking at marketing per se the objectives it has are a) discover customers’ needs and desires and b) use that insight to delivery what customers wanted to buy.
So the basic approach has always been to 1.) understand the target audience, 2.) identify and anticipate the customer needs and 3.) design strategies to deliver good/services that promise to solve the identified needs.
In order achieve those three steps you usually had to do conduct market studies and make generalized assumptions of your target audience. This still seems like quite a lot of guess work
In contrary to this approach, data driven marketing aims to help you to connect with cutomers at the right time
In contrast, data-driven marketing allows marketers to connect with customers at the right time. And with the right offering, at that.
In order to really improve from data driven marketing you don’t only collect the data but also try to
- Personalise the customer experience,
- Target well-defined marketing segments, and
- Get new customers.
- With the data, brands can also measure and improve their strategies in real time.
Now that we discussed all the ‘what ifs’ here a few more specific concepts in regards to what data can actually do for you.
Data helps to gain better clarity about the target audience.
The more you know, the better your messaging can be. It’s a simple as that. So if you are able to use smart data collection and make sense of the data that you collect, you will be a step ahead of those who can’t. More personal messaging means higher chance of engagement and in return a better conversion rate. And that’s what we’re all about, right?
Data offers the ability to build stronger connections with potential customers
Not only will the messaging be better, but also the connection you maintain with your audience will be stronger. You can adjust your strategy on the fly while analyzing audience reaction which will prevent you from failing or enable you to increase and build upon the achieved interaction.
Uncover the best channels for promotion
Besides knowing the preference of your audience better data can also help understanding where those audiences interact the most. Are they more active on Facebook, IG, TikTok? At what times should you post to which channel? Data helps!
Personalisation
I talked about personalization to no extend before so I’ll just leave those two numbers here to make that point one more time:
- 74% of customers feel frustrated by seeing irrelevant content from brands.
- 79% of them won’t consider an offer unless a brand personalises it to their previous interactions.
So what you gonna do? Right, personalize! Now.
Business specific advantages
Data does not only affect your revenue directly though. Research from Forbes suggests the payoff from focusing on data is huge. Some of those advantages in the survey are as follows:
- Greater customer loyalty,
- Acquiring more new customers,
- Increased customer satisfaction and more.
Looking at even more statsAccording to ZoomInfo, 78% of organisations say data-driven marketing increases lead conversion and customer acquisition. Another study from Forbes reveals that, for 66% of marketing leaders, data lead to an increase in customer acquisition.
Now we understand that data is important. Then why isn’t everybody doing it? Well. To be honest, there are a few challenges when it comes to implementing a data-driven approach to your marketing.
THE MOST COMMON DATA-DRIVEN MARKETING CHALLENGES
According to Campaign Monitor, 81% of marketers consider implementing a data-driven strategy to be extremely complicated. Well, and they are right 😉
Challenge #1. Gathering the Data
As there’s so much data to be collected many of us will feel overwhelmed by the idea of how to collect it, where to do so, and what to do with it.
Hence we have to understand how to overcome this fear.
Quite likely you will have access to lots of data already via your CRM, website analytics, social media interactions, and so on.
You’ll most likely have access to the majority of data already – however it is not easy to work with this mostly isolated data.
That’s good. But we also need to be aware that just having data doesn’t work.
Challenge #2. Pulling the Data Together
In order to make data work you gotta update frequently and, of course, find a way to pull it together. This could be rather tedious, especially if you don’t have a dedicated data team.
In order to overcome that you could create a specific marketing dashboard that synchronises data from various channels into one platform. This might take a while to set-up and requires some budget but will definitely be worth it.
Challenge #3. Overcoming the Data Silos
Stats say that only around 8% of companies store all their data in one place (data warehouse). The rest has data distributed between different teams, locations, departments, and so on. That makes using the data in a meaningful way rather difficult of course.
This means you probably only run basic data analytics without utilizing all the potential you have stored inside your huge amount of data.
The sooner you change that, the faster you can make a change. This can be inconvenient at first, but will lead to a much better understanding of the data that you’re storing and in return lead to more qualified audiences and marketing messages.
Challenge #4: Building In-House Data Team
This, also, requires budget but I think it goes without saying that having dedicated teams to take care of data analytics would be a huge plus to every company that collects and aims to utilize said data.
How to use data-driven marketing
Just a few examples of what you could use data-driven marketing for to make you consider all the points mentioned above.
- You could use weather data to predict customer buying patterns
- Use demographic data to improve ad performance
- Use trends from one marketing channel to inform another
- Measure success as a series of smaller steps
- Use PPC to get more from your email marketing
- Assess the impact of industry changes on your campaign
- And more will be discussed in our videos, so check them out! 😉
How to build a data-driven strategy
We compiled a quick cheat-sheet for you to send, share, carry around when aiming to building a data-driven marketing strategy. You’re welcome.
Conclusion: Data-driven marketing helps
And it helps with the following (details and discussion, of course, in our videos 🙂 ).
- Data-Driven Marketing Helps You Reach the Right People
- Data-Driven Marketing is the Future of Marketing
- Data-Driven Marketing Helps You See What Works and What Doesn’t
- Data-Driven Marketing Tells You Where Your Customers Are
- Data-Driven Marketing Can Communicate Your Team’s Value
- Data-Driven marketing leads to Personalized, Highly-Targeted Campaigns
- Data-Driven marketing leads to More Consistent Messaging
- Data-Driven marketing helps you to Know What’s Working and What’s Not
- Data-Driven marketing helps you to Segment Your Audience
- Data-Driven marketing helps you to Know Your Customers Beforehand
- Data-Driven marketing helps you to Create Buzz
- Data-Driven marketing helps you to Improve Your Product Development
- Data-Driven marketing helps you to Have More Personalized Marketing
- Data-Driven marketing helps you to Provide a Better Experience for Your Customers
- Data-Driven marketing helps you toIncreases Opportunities for Cross-Selling and Up-Selling
So, what are you waiting for? Start your data-driven marketing campaign today and reach out to us if you need any kind of help!
