Data-driven marketing is an essential part of many businesses’ marketing strategy. This term refers to the process of pulling information on consumer behavior and using it to inform how you sell products and present your brand to your target audience.
If your company is not utilizing data-driven marketing yet, here are a few things that you should know:
1. It Creates a Competitive Edge
According to a study done by Forbes, 64% of executives strongly agree that data-driven marketing is essential to a successful marketing strategy today. It helps provide an edge so that you are better able to stand out from your competition.
The targeted ads that you are able to create based on customer data are much more effective than the ads from non-data-driven competitors. Zeroing in on what your audience wants, where you can find them, and how to capture their interest will all make a huge difference in the success of your marketing campaigns.
If you aren’t using data-driven marketing strategies, you are passing up on a wealth of information that your competitor may have in their hands. At the end of the day, you know less about your audience and their needs than the other guys. That’s a problem.
2. It Helps You Reach Your Audience in the Most Effective Way
Today, ads aren’t a one-size-fits-all sort of deal. Gone are the days of creating a single, blanket ad campaign for your entire audience. Ads are now hyper-targeted to reach specific demographics at a specific time of day on the specific platforms that they favor.
For instance, brands that a consumer has never heard of will be able to create first contact by displaying an ad for a relevant product on a social media platform. Where before this business would have had a much harder time contacting a consumer that had never visited their site before, they are now able to put their ads in the hands of those people with data-driven marketing.
This helps to create more traffic and more meaningful traffic. The people who are seeing these ads have likely already shown an interest in similar products from competing companies. Because of data-driven marketing, you already know that this customer is interested.
Beyond ad reach, data-driven marketing will also help you understand the kind of content that would interest your audience. According to Digital Authority Partners “…top performers spend a lot of time crafting content that not only aligns with their mission, but also is what their audience is looking for.”
By tailoring the ad content specifically to the interests of your would-be-buyers, you will receive a higher return on investment for your campaign.
3. It Can Help with Product Development
According to Combo App, data-driven marketing can also help ensure that your latest product or service won’t flop. With the data you collect on your audience, you will be better able to understand what it is that they want from the product and what they are not getting from their competitors.
When you have this information in the early stages of production, you can work those consumer needs into the creative process. If you find out after production, or after a revenue drop, that the features of your product are unimportant to your buyer, it may be too late to make any significant changes.
Prioritizing your audience’s needs will also help you to stand out from the competition and earn the trust of consumers. If they feel like their opinion matters to you, they will be more satisfied and more loyal to your brand.
4. Not All Data that You Find is Relevant
Collecting consumer data will provide you with a lot of information that you will never have any use for. Just because you learned something new about your audience does not mean that you can use it to sell your product. In order to successfully implement data-driven marketing, you have to do more than just collect data. You have to know how to use it.
To make sure that you’re not blinded by irrelevant data, carefully choose what kind of information you want to have on your audience. A good place to start is to find out how you can reach them best. Is your audience on Instagram? Twitter? Would they engage more with direct emails than social media posts?
Think about your product and the kind of people that you expect to be interested in it. Search out information based on their interests and go from there. Casting too wide of a net will make it much harder for you to decide what information is relevant down the road.
5. Retargeting Customers Can Make a Big Difference
Retargeting a customer means that you target ads toward someone who was on your site and viewing your products previously. Maybe they left something in their cart but weren’t able to complete the purchase. Data-driven marketing tactics like retargeting give you an opportunity to draw that customer back to your site.
According to Invesp, the number of people who click on links in retargeted ads is ten times higher than the number of people who click on links in regular ads. About 8.7% of people will revisit the website and an additional 7.4% of people will respond if there is a special offer included in the ad. These visitors are also 70% more likely to make a purchase than a first-time visitor is.
Retargeting reminds interested consumers of your product and will encourage them to complete their purchase. Investing heavily in the consumers who have shown enough interest to visit your site is a great way to make sure that those visits are turning into sales.
Conclusion
Many businesses rely on data-driven marketing to create an effective and positive customer experience. These businesses are using any information available to them to make sure that potential buyers know who they are. If you are not taking advantage of this information, it may be time to reconsider your marketing strategy.
This article comes from Codrin Arsene, CEO @ Digital Authority Partners