Marketing strategy has evolved from mass marketing to direct marketing. Not so long ago, we ushered in digital marketing, which is slowly being replaced by data-driven marketing.
In conjunction with these changes, marketing resources shift, customer loyalty changes and more consumers opt to protect their privacy by using tools and devices, such as ad blockers.
Generally speaking, customers have become more sophisticated and have higher expectations, so if you are not prepared or planning to meet them, things can get complicated. In addition, there is a competitor out there who will meet their expectations, so what are you left with?
To get a clear picture of what would happen, Forrester Analytics state that fifty-four percent of businesses are ready to experiment and adapt to these changes. For any business to survive, new marketing strategies have to be put in place. This article looks at how businesses can get leverage on the new marketing strategy of data-driven marketing.
What Is Data-Driven Marketing?
This is a strategy built from the insights of the analysis of big data. Normally collected through engagements and interactions with the consumers to make predictions about their future trends and behavior. It aims to appreciate and understand the data that is already in your hands, know what is needed, and figure out how it can be obtained, organized, analyzed and applied to enhance your marketing efforts. The main aim of a data-driven marketing strategy is to enhance and customize the consumer experience. We no longer need to make guesses about what people need; we only need to know where to look. That is where data-driven marketing comes in.
Knowing your target audience’s goals, behavior, challenges, and other personal aspects helps you to develop marketing campaigns aimed at meeting their specific needs. Browsing trends, social media activities, online trade behavior, and other metrics can be very useful when constituting a marketing effort that works. This means that to survive in the current environment, you need to collect as much information on your target market as you can. The data collected will be paramount for a successful marketing strategy.
How Do You Make Your Marketing Campaign Data-Driven?
With big data, you need to use it well to create a targeted data-driven campaign. Most businesses find it hard to institute a data-driven marketing strategy; here are some tips on how you can go about it.
Using contextual and precision marketing tactics, you can do it better. Contextual marketing involves focusing on location, time, language, device, and performance. For instance, a local store may want to use the location data as a way to attract customers from the vicinity. On a similar note, a hospitality business may take advantage of occasion-oriented contexts such as Mother’s Day, Christmas, among others. It is clear from the examples above that the tactic is personalized since it focuses more on understanding the customer than on pushing them to buy or use particular goods and services.
Precision marketing allows marketers to get a better understanding of the needs, interests, and patterns of their consumers; with this, it is easy to gear promotions that fit personal preferences. For instance, when a customer has shown some interest in a given product, a marketer can hyper-target throw showing them similar products they can get from the same business.
Analyze data carefully to personalize your marketing campaigns. With timeliness accuracy, you are likely to strike an emotional chord with the targeted audience and ultimately encourage positive engagement.
Enhance customer experience; this can be done by conducting surveys and understanding how they feel about your product. Also, you need to identify areas where improvement is required. Data-driven marketing provides businesses with an omnichannel service that helps in improving customer experiences by making them consistent.
Optimize multiple channels; it is important to understand that leads generated from a variety of channels will respond differently. This means that marketers need to create a marketing strategy based on the channels where the leads are coming from if they are to optimize the conversion rates. With big data capability, it is possible to identify effective channels. This also makes it possible to identify the messages which evoke the desired behavior.
Boost customer engagement; this will help in building greater brand trust and with it an enhanced perception, something that ultimately yields increased sales and more loyalty and advocacy. The same should apply to content quality. Constant improvement should be made in terms of completeness, accuracy, integrity, standardization, and consistency.
Data-driven marketing is the new marketing strategy that will define how businesses perform in the era of big data. Play along, and you will see greater results and get a competitive advantage in your industry.