Today marketers have more access to data than ever before. However, while this access to data provides businesses with a wealth of information, it has also made it increasingly difficult to distinguish between useful and useless data. Businesses need to have an understanding of data and the important factor it plays in the overall marketing efforts of an organisation.
Data Sources
Data comes from a range of different sources, with each source providing a different level of information. For instance, newsletter sign ups can provide businesses with specific personal information such as age, name and contact details. Whereas a Facebook page provides data on the number of likes on the page and the average interaction rate on posts. While both of these sources produce vastly different information it’s crucial businesses conduct reviews of all sets of data regularly, not only to be sure the data being collected is accurate, but so that the data remains usable.
Get The Most Out of Your Data
To get the most of your data-driven marketing it is crucial your data is effectively maintained and utilised before and while running any campaign. If data isn’t effectively managed, it can have detrimental effects on your businesses marketing efforts.
General Data Tips
Review and Clean Data
Unfortunately data is a time sensitive resource. What can be reliable and actionable information one month can become obsolete the next. Be sure to regularly check the data your business collects is up to date. It is also important to check the data you’re receiving is 100% correct. If you are showing 100 customer conversions on your Google Analytics, but you only have 50 Contact Us forms coming through, there likely something wrong with how your goals are set up.
Segment and Maintain Your Audiences
Consistently review the audience data you receive and segment your target market. This will allow for more highly targeted online marketing campaigns to be carried out. It will also mean that potential new audiences and target markets can be discovered based on common customer behaviours, patterns or interests.
Track the Right Metrics (Avoid Vanity Metrics)
Businesses can get caught up in how many likes, shares or comments their posts can have. While on the surface these all seem to be positive metrics, in most cases these interactions don’t necessarily translate to conversion. Check the metrics you’re measuring link to a strong ROI for your business.
Pre-Campaign Data Tips
Review Previous Campaigns Data
Reviewing the data from previous campaigns will allow you to gain a strong understanding of why they were successful or fell short, which will allow for more effective campaigns moving forward. It can also provide insights into the the best audiences to target and channels to utilise.
Look at Current Audience Behaviour (Combining of Data/Metrics)
With so much data, it can be difficult to decipher the most effective marketing strategy for your business. One way is through combining data from various sources to provide an effective data overview. An example of this is the utilisation of dashboards that provides views from multiple data sources which when combined, provide an overall story of typical audience behaviour and ultimately campaign performance.
Through the correct management and review of data, it is easy for any business to effectively run a host of marketing campaigns targeting the right audiences through the right channels, at the right time. There are also a host of advanced and new exciting prospects that have become more prominent in the area of data and marketing.
Advanced Data-Driven Marketing Options
Marketing Automation, AI & Programmatic Marketing
While many of us are probably thinking that marketing automation is quite basic, as “I have already setup to have a newsletter to be sent out every week to my email list”. The marketing automation we are referring to becomes far more complex than simple scheduling, especially with the increasing influence of AI and Programmatic Marketing.
AI or Artificial Intelligence is allowing companies to gain deeper insights into their target audiences and point them in the right direction of potential new opportunities with their customers, all through data. With the marriage of AI and Automation, companies are able to carry out multiple marketing efforts with greater speed and effect while reducing the chance of human-error.
Programmatic Marketing on the other hand is in itself an automation tool as it allows companies to automatically buy advertising space. As defined by Smart Insights it is:
“Automated bidding on advertising inventory in real time, for the opportunity to show an ad to a specific customer, in a specific context.”
This not only allows for the buying and selling of advertising space to be conducted far more efficiently but, allows for more effective targeting of specific customers, products/services.
Omni-Channel Marketing
Previously Redline has looked at Omni-channel marketing and the benefits it brings, including the fact that automation can play a large part in allowing for seamless marketing integration across multiple devices and platforms. Omni-channel marketing focuses on utilizing customer behaviour data to personalise a customer’s purchase experience. Multiple businesses have already started to look to incorporate this new data-centric technology, with many producing highly profitable results.
Customer Data Platforms
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) allows for more effective collation of customer data. CDPs collect both offline and online first-person data allowing for specific customer profiles to be created for each user. These customer profiles can then be later segmented to produce more targeted and specific marketing efforts. Reducing overall marketing spend while maximising ROI.
Data is and always has been crucial to marketing efforts. Today companies are able to more efficiently utilise data than ever before to specifically target audiences. To make the most of your data-driven marketing efforts, talk to the team at Redline Digital today.