In today’s digital world, that information has become almost as valuable as the currency your trade-in, and the data market is one of the most fiercely fought. That’s why any company needs to focus some of its marketing energy on data-based insights, and that’s where data-driven marketing comes in.
What is data-driven marketing?
Every time a customer carries out an online transaction, they leave a little of themselves behind, kind of like a data footprint. That little nugget of information may tell you what brands they like, give you an indication of their age, the device they use or even their browsing journey. Gathering that sort of data will provide you with insights into your customers – or potential customers – and how you use that data to target specific groups or individuals is the basis of data-driven marketing.
Companies will construct strategies based on the analysis of the data they collect through countless customer engagements. Everything from browsing and purchasing behaviour to customer reviews can be used to develop insights.
How can it help with planning media strategies?
Planning effective media strategies require direction and focus. Insights gained by data-driven marketing can help shape the focus of a campaign. In addition, careful studying and analysis of trends can allow marketing companies to predict future behaviour based on past engagements.
How you use the data to drive your campaign will depend on the campaign’s ultimate goal. For example, are you seeking to boost sales or raise initial awareness of your brand? Data insights will steer you in the right direction and mean you are not wasting your time and energy working off inaccurate analysis and information.
With data-driven marketing, you should be able to quantify what success represents. For example, insights will tell you the potential outreach of a campaign, and your acquired data should allow you to measure what percentage of that total outreach needs to engage for you to deem the campaign a success. In addition, it will be able to tell you if the market you are concentrating on is a narrow one and, as such, you will be hoping for a relatively high hit rate.
Data-based insights will give you a much clearer and accurate analysis of what goals you can set and what a realistic measure of success is.
How does it help target the right customers?
Using knowledge as a tool to target customers, however, is the key to data-driven marketing. Data insights tell us that not everyone is the same, but many people fall into specific broad categories. Therefore, marketing campaigns cannot be aimed at everyone. That’s why it is always prudent to know your audience before starting a data-driven campaign is the best way to go about that.
First, you need to understand your audience. Insights can provide demographic and, most importantly, behavioural data. The latter are the ones that can lead you to successful targeting and ROI. So, for example, if you are seeking a sales bump, you’ll want to zero on people who show a regular purchasing pattern instead of the eternal browsers.
Sure, you might hook a long-term browser into a sales-focused campaign, but by concentrating on those who have shown a healthy history of buying, you will be better able to target the right customers.
What are the other benefits of data-driven marketing?
Data-driven marketing isn’t just about finding out as much you can learn about potential customers. You can also boost your return on investment (ROI) by paying attention to seasonal trends – for example, People will buy warmer clothes in the winter. Still, if a close eye on the weather forecasts may tell you that it’s going to get colder earlier this year, so you might want to consider time a campaign to mitigate this.
You should also keep a close eye on popular trends in popular culture, music and sports as these can also inform browsing and purchasing trends. For example, you may find that a particular fashion accessory becomes popular due to its worn by a famous actor, singer or social media influencer. By keeping a close eye on the data associated with social media followers of specific accounts, you can predict where to direct marketing campaigns to maximize ROI.
