Data-driven marketing is a term that’s thrown around a lot in the industry. It’s a technique that’s adopted by many marketers to improve their campaigns, but what exactly does it mean?
What is Data-Driven Marketing?
Well, data-driven marketing refers to the process of building your marketing campaigns based on your data. It’s about using all the in-depth data you’ve collected about your customers to predict their future behaviours, and make more precise and informed decisions about your marketing campaigns.
This involves deep analysis and understanding of the data you have collected, as well as how to organise your data, considering what more data you can collect, and applying it.
Benefits of Data-Driven Marketing
Personalised Marketing
For marketing to work, businesses must convey the right message, to the right audience, at the right time. Being able to analyse data about your customers gives you the knowledge to personalise your marketing campaigns through a deeper understanding of the customer, which is likely to drive better results.
Basing Decisions on Numbers
Deciding to adopt a data-driven approach means you can make more informed decisions which are based on concrete data. Your data can tell you who to market to, what kind of content performs the best, what is the best time of day to release content and much more. But, when you have the numbers to back up your marketing plans, it becomes easier to make choices about designing your campaigns and where to put your focus.
Understanding the Customer Journey
Especially in digital marketing, understanding the customer journey is complex. People might see many different forms of digital advertising before they decide to make a purchase, and using data from your digital marketing campaigns will help you to understand your customer’s journey. This means your marketing efforts can become more focused, as you learn how someone becomes a customer.
How Can Marketers Be More Data-Driven?
The majority of marketers use data to an extent, to inform their marketing decisions. However, sometimes just looking at your data isn’t enough. It’s applying that data that’s the key. So, there are a few ways that marketers can be more data-driven, and here are a few of them:
Keep Your Data Up-to-Date
One thing you must do while using data-driven marketing is to ensure that the data you’re using is up to date and correct. It’s no good basing your marketing decisions on inaccurate data, so making sure your tracking is correct and you’re collecting the right data should be at the top of your list.
Integrate Data From Multiple Channels
Combining search data, social media, web and email data will help you evaluate channels as a whole, giving you more in-depth insights into the behaviour of your customers.
Make Sure You Apply It
Don’t only use your data to look at how things have performed in the past. You should also always be using it for your future marketing. As I mentioned earlier, just looking and reporting data isn’t enough, it must be applied for it to be used most effectively.
If you need help with your digital marketing efforts whether it’s PPC, SEO, email marketing or social media, be sure to get in touch with the team at Colewood today, to see how we can help you.
