As a marketer, you have deliverables to hit and leads to bring into your business. What you do affects your company’s bottom line. And every campaign you run needs to be justified.
After all, there’s a reason you slave over post-campaign numbers and work to fine-tune reports. You and your superiors need to know the ROI of your financial investment and time.
These numbers, or Data, are often used in post-project deliverables. And they’re used simply to show the head-honchos your campaign’s success (or failure) before jumping into the next one.
But why is data mainly analyzed at the post-campaign stage?
Continually measuring results throughout your campaign’s lifespan – and not just once or at the end – unlocks not only campaign performance insight, but real-time changes to customer behaviour. Behaviour affected by your product, your marketing and your environment.
If you can’t yet tell, we believe in the power of data. We’re passionate about using data to drive results. To inform decisions. To boost profitability.
And we practice what we preach – our sermons given strength by the results our clients reap.
Our global colleagues also agree. A recent survey of marketers around the world echoed our sentiment, as 87% of marketers believe that data-driven marketing is the most exciting opportunity of our time.
Source: Econsultancy Survey Article 2019
Why is Data-driven Marketing Important?
With the advent of Data-driven marketing, companies can now impact their customers in more precise ways. How? By using data collected from multiple databases and sources to analyze and produce meaningful insights into customer actions, habits and purchasing patterns.
And finding data isn’t the problem. You can find data anywhere – from Google and social media to third-party providers. And while it’s great to get data from other parties, most marketers rely on their own company’s data structure to feed their analysis – 86% in fact.
And we understand why. Your company’s data is geared toward helping you achieve your own specific goals and objectives.
The difficult part is data analysis – how we continuously analyse data over time to optimize our campaigns, our returns and our impact.
And with over 40% of brands seeking to expand their data-driven marketing capabilities, it’s important to know data’s role in marketing.
Personalization and Influence
Customers can no longer be seen through the lens as one-size-fits-all. With the evolution of technology, customers seek personalization. Personalization of content. Personalization of products. Personalization of experiences.
Their experience is no longer unique to one particular period, time or standard. Your customers are forever changing, learning and growing. Every decision they make is influenced, daily. Having the ability to keep up and even predict how they will act helps you and your company understand them at their core.
Continuous Measurement of Trends and Industry Changes
If you’re able to measure buying patterns and customer trends over the course of your campaign, you’ll be able to reinforce your strategy in real time.
Imagine if you can assess the impact of industry trends on your campaigns day-to-day?
Being able to measure and capture insight along every step of the journey, you can unlock opportunities to create relevant content and, more importantly, context for your customer and their experience.
And wouldn’t you love to have a continuous dialogue with your customer as they interact with you and your product?
The benefits are there to be seen, harnessed and leveraged, if you’re willing to take it on board.
How to Implement Data into your Marketing Strategy
Initial Challenges
There are certain challenges you’ll likely encounter if you want to implement data into your marketing strategy.
- Having the right team or team member
At Synapse, we’ve recognized how important having a data analytics professional is to any campaign – someone whose sole job is to read, measure, understand and inform our team about the continuous changes within the market we serve. If you’re thinking about moving into the data-driven space, we recommend getting a data analyst or scientist on-board.
If you’re scouring the earth for that perfect data marketer, make sure they have these few skills:
- A keen ability to communicate to both marketing and sales teams.
- An obsession for data-mining. Everyday. Always.
- An ability to use multiple data-gathering tools
- An understanding of what is data and what is knowledge.
- An understanding of using real-time metrics for real time responsiveness to the market.
- Analyze and reconfigure your KPIs
Sure, your KPIs are already defined. But if you’re making a transition, it’s always good to review them.
Having KPIs which are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-oriented) will help you define your data-marketing strategy. After all, not all data is valued equally.
But in your analysis, make sure they continue to align with your big picture goals.
- Build an Integrated Marketing Platform or Process
One major challenge we’ve experienced, and a common theme within most large organizations, is the cross-departmental segmentation of data.
If you’ve ever been in charge of gathering data, you know the drill. There are so many people, gatekeepers and places you need to tap to get relevant data and access. It’s a chore. For smaller organizations, you may be lucky.
But regardless, gathering data from multiple sources can be painstaking. If you can create a centralized hub to collect, access, read, measure and analyze your data, you can quickly inform your marketing campaigns to optimize for the best campaign results.
- Remove Cultural Roadblocks with Positive Proof
There obviously are hurdles outside your control. From inadequate budgets, senior-level support and team buy-in to cultural risk-aversion to change and poor foundations to collect data. Recognize those hurdles early on, and you’ll be more adept to making the shift.
The amazing thing about data is the ability to show unquestionable results. Use your initial positive results to show how powerful accurate and timely data can be.
Whether you’re testing it in one part of your campaign or doing it as a side project, use your initial data to continuously measure results along the way.
Results help to change minds. They help change cultures and open the door to more exploration.
Over to You
If you’re a believer like we are and thinking about your next solution to your marketing problem or stirring to create deeper and more meaningful relationships with your customers, using data in your marketing strategy can unlock potential opportunities to explore. It will not only improve your brand and customer experience but help you understand how your product impacts lives.
Thinking about testing out a data-driven marketing approach? Wondering how to get started? Give us a shout here and we can show you how to get started.