Marketing has taken on a new dimension that promises more effective results based on quantifiable metrics. Rather than the “shot in the dark” mode of marketing, experts have realized the need to incorporate data analytics to help accurately target audiences based on their specific criteria.
Data-driven marketing is more efficient at driving leads than traditional marketing approaches. Data-driven marketing has also become standard practice across the marketing industry. Let’s take a look at data analytics’ role in a data-driven marketing approach. We’ll also dive into how it can help companies more accurately target and access their audiences.
Focus your marketing on customer data or get left out. It doesn’t matter if you’re a B2B marketer or a B2C marketer. Data drives our ability to connect brands with people. The better your data, the better your chances are that you will be able to connect with the right people at the right time who want to buy.
Data Analytics In Marketing and Why It Trumps Conventional Marketing Systems
Data is the primary weapon wielded by marketing analytics companies. Data is what helps uncover vital information and giving insight into customers’ common trends and habits. The knowledge companies obtain about consumer behaviors form the basis of a brand’s marketing strategy. This knowledge should contain both qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative marketing data can includes things like customer feedback, employees’ industry knowledge, and insights gleaned from direct interaction with customers. Many marketers lean on this qualitative experience and knowledge to guide their marketing decisions. Quantitative data, however, is much more rare in marketing.
The data-driven marketing cycle begins by accurately capturing customer information which helps these marketers gain clarity about their target audience. Marketers typically leverage various CRM tools to collect this type of data, and the process may involve surveys, observations, questionnaires, and other data collection channels.
Then using modern marketing analytics tools that perform data sorting, aggregation, presentation, and analysis, marketers feed their collected data into a series of algorithms that can effectively identify patterns among the customer base. These patterns could be as simple as shared geographies and interests, or as complicated as your customers’ psychographic data describing their motivational drivers. Marketers in turn use these insights to make informed decisions and guide their new and prospective customers down the sales funnel.
Unlike marketing executed with exclusively qualitative information, data-driven marketing companies use data insights to better personalize their marketing materials, singling out pain points of customers, which can then be transformed into a targeted marketing ad.
Benefits of a data-driven marketing approach
The extra effort marketers take to understand an audience and their consumer demographics through data-driven marketing helps advance their audience targeting and ultimately drive more success in their outbound campaigns. Using data to target these audiences can help companies make effective marketing decisions by positioning themselves in front of the right audience based on quantifiable information.
In marketing analytics, the best tools are used to analyze behavioral data and can help predict the actions of a customer. The process of leveraging thes analytics also involves keyword optimization, where marketers identify and in turn publish content featuring keywords that are popular among their consumers to gain extended reach and drive more traffic to your brand online. The other main benefit of leveraging data analytics in marketing is that marketers is measuring performance. Marketers are data-driven in figuring out what’s working and what should be eliminated.
The result of a data-driven marketing approach using analysis and insights from collected data is unlocking higher returns on your marketing investments, because you’re acting on something you know and can fact check rather than something you assume. While it may seem cumbersome to think about onboarding a host of analytics tools to guide marketing efforts, this process can help significantly improve brand communication in accordance with customer information while also eliminating marketing trial and error, thereby saving brands from needlessly high marketing costs.
Use data-driven marketing
Don’t get left behind the curve. It’s time to start collecting, analyzing and acting upon your own first-party customer data. If you are with a startup, make sure you’re at least collecting the basic information from your customers. This is the simple things. You want their name, address, email and phone number.
Once you graduate from a spreadsheet, get a good CRM. There are lots of CRMs out there. Some of the big ones are Salesforce, HubSpot, and you can find more on G2.
Once you have some customer data, get it enriched with BDEX. By enriching it, you can learn more about your existing customers. You can also upload a CSV of your customers to Omni IQ to get complimentary analytics on the customer. Learn about the gender, household income and birth year without a credit card. Keep your account indefinitely and use the data clean room.
To learn more about embracing a data-driven marketing approach and how much bad data may be costing you, dive deep into data on our website.
