Are you a marketer who is trying to tailor your messaging to your future customers? Is your brand lacking the appeal you thought it had? Do you want to see more clicks on your site and more customers buying your products or services? Have you heard of data driven marketing, without knowing exactly what it is?
If you answered yes, then read on to learn everything you need to know more about data driven marketing. Below you can also learn how to use it to inform your marketing communications strategy. Let’s get started!
What Is Data Driven Marketing?
Data driven marketing is a term used to describe the choices you make as a brand marketer to entice and guide your potential customers on your products. It means you look at the data to inform your decisions. You’re also nimble enough to shift strategies when the data doesn’t add up anymore.
Many companies don’t have the staff or the capacity to really devote to data driven marketing — and that’s when a data marketing company can really help. You almost need a team of people working on your data so that you can make the best decisions for your brand.
Who Uses Data Driven Marketing?
Data driven marketing is used by the biggest brands in the world to try to better understand consumer behavior and to predict how they will act in the future. In addition, data driven marketing can actually influence what kinds of products and services make it to market — such as that new flavor of potato chips or soft drinks.
Often data is crunched by a consultant data company or by a devoted in-house team. Then, it makes recommendations to the marketing and brand strategy leaders of the company to tweak communications and marketing channels and messaging. Data can be so precise and predictive that it can shift a brand’s strategy dramatically in just a few weeks.
Ways in Which Data Driven Marketing Can Help Your Business?
There are several important ways that data driven marketing can help your company find new customers and become an even better brand. Among them are the following:
- Learn what your customers prefer in a product or service;
- Learn what will make your customers click and buy;
- Learn why your customers add items to your cart and then abandon them;
- Discover new ways to draw in new customers;
- Experiment with new products and services;
- Find out how and why our brand is exceeding or falling short of your customers’ expectations;
- Change your brand marketing strategy entirely based on data.
3 Tips to Use Data Driven Marketing at Its Fullest
1. Track Your Customer’s Journey
The only way to give a customer exactly what she or he wants is to know where you are succeeding and failing throughout the customer journey. What stops your viewer from leaving your site without paying for a shopping cart full of goods?
What is it that you are missing in how you market your products and services? If you are tracking your customer journey, then you’re going to be able to better determine:
- Your brand is exceeding, meeting or falling below a customer’s satisfaction;
- You’re also going to be able to determine why and to get even more nuanced data. For example, how is your brand falling short of your customer’s preferences or assumptions about your brand.
If you track when your customer falls off the path, then you can determine the point at which you can get him or her back.
2. Make Sure You Are Paying for Promotion
The bottom line is that if you are marketing ads about your brand on social media, for example, and you are not paying to play — then you really are losing out. Social media platforms across the board, from Facebook to Twitter and more, are asking brands to dish out money to get ads in front of eyeballs.
So, launch your marketing campaign. But make sure your message gets read loud and clear by optimizing it with a little cash.
3. Click It or Ticket It
Don’t get punished or penalized because your website and social posts aren’t optimized with catchy headlines that make users want to click. You also need clickable content that has been hyperlinked. Make sure you are tracking the links your customers are using to access your site as well.
If you do these two things to your blog and social posts — as well as any ad copy that is on the web — then you’re miles ahead in optimizing your content. Then, you will create energy around your posts. Once a user clicks, you have a data set to track what they do next. Where do they go next on your site? Do they buy something? The entry point matters just as much as getting them to the exit. So, work on crafting clickable headlines and calls to action that create intrigue but don’t over promise.
To Sum It Up
Are you ready to change the way you do your brand’s business? If you are, then it may be time to invest in some data driven marketing that will take your business to the next level. What many brand managers and marketers don’t realize at first is that data can’t be read singularly. You need to use it to make a decision for your marketing strategy. This has to be based upon answers to many related questions that eventually point you to your specific brand goals.
If it’s time for your brand to make a shift — and a different impression with your customers — then try data driven marketing today. Start small and work your way up to bigger decisions using data. If you try some of our tips, let us know. Leave a comment below to tell us what worked — and what didn’t as you mine your own marketing data!
Images from depositphotos.com.