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What Is Data-Driven Marketing?

Data-driven marketing is a fundamental part of advertising and business strategy. Data-driven marketing refers to strategies built on insights pulled from data sources. For small and mid-size businesses that means Google Analytics, Google Search Console and CRM. For enterprise companies, it’s usually culled from large data sources called big data. Data collected from consumer interactions and engagements help form predictions about future behaviors. Analytics, for example, can tell us how long a website visitor watched a video. A website visitor who watches a video in its entirety is more engaged than someone who watches for five seconds. Using the data involves understanding the data you already have and the data you can get. How the data’s organized, analyzed and applied can lead to better marketing efforts.
A big reason companies use data-driven marketing is to enhance and personalize the customer experience. The following provides some of the benefits and challenges of data-driven marketing.

Data-Driven Marketing Benefits

Personalization. The ability to personalize data is a huge marketing benefit. Personalization allows companies to deliver the right message, to the right persona, at the right time. Data-driven marketing allows brands to create personalized campaigns. Those campaigns boost lead conversion through a deeper understanding of the customer profile. Marketers can sift through data to learn what is the most accurate and actionable customer information.
Multi-Channel Experience. Marketers can leverage data to reach customers and prospects across multiple networks. Paid campaigns are more consistent, aligned, and timely.
Improved Customer Experience. A customer experience shopping on Amazon becomes the baseline expected customer experience. Small and mid-sized business can now use data-driven marketing to enhance the customer experience. By knowing that the customer also shops on Amazon we as know free and or two-day shipping is part of a great customer experience. Online surveys are another way pinpoint specific areas for improvement.

Challenges of Data-Driven Marketing

There are challenges to successful data-driven marketing. Here are a few:
The Right Team: Finding the skills required to do the job can be challenging. While talent on the creative side of marketing is robust, it may be a good idea for your company to learn more about being a data-driven organization.
Departmental Silos: Data-driven marketing’s success is dependent on having high-quality and integrated data. Data can be spread across different departments with contradictory goals resulting in data silos.
Integration: Departmental silo integration is necessary to extend the benefits. Gathering the right data needed for a complete customer view. Without it, a data-driven marketing strategy falls apart. Retail companies and e-commerce websites are challenged to collect and analyze data. Data integrations are necessary between CRMs, websites, social media and mobile devices.
Commitment: A company can say it has a data-driven marketing strategy. It doesn’t mean much without an internal champion committed to its success.

A Data-Driven Approach to Marketing

How does data-driven marketing strategy fit into your business strategy? Here are several areas that should provide inspiration:
Retargeting: Retargeting is important for all digital marketers. If someone has purchased from your e-commerce site, or shown significant interest, why not look for them again? Imagine someone fitting your target audience is a travel enthusiast who recently booked a weekend ski trip in Utah. From this data, you can automatically offer relevant deals. That site visitor would see ads on airfare, ski fashion, lessons, and related vacation ideas that appeal to that target audience.
Dynamic Advertising: Use social media to your advantage by creating ads across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Make sure the social channels you use are appropriate for your target audience. Engage your audience by allowing them to sign up and receive more information with just one click. Turn your social media channels into two-way communication channels that feed data directly into your CRM.
Optimized Paid Search: Take time to analyze your preferred customers based on the keywords they use to search. It pays to review what the competition is targeting too.
Targeted Email Campaigns: Email marketing likely a part of your existing digital strategy. Tagging your target audience is a great data-driven approach to email campaigns. Once tagged, the data will allow for automation and personalized messages.
Moving to a data-driven marketing approach takes time and planning. Start small and improve your process along the way. Don’t hesitate to get help.

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