Why Companies Must Adopt a Data Driven Marketing Strategy for 2018
The rise and presence of data has led to increased growth in marketing technology, from creative production to email automation. These innovative bounds in MarTech allow for a more personalized approach to marketing and helps calibrate each customer’s touchpoint with the business to be fluid. This is a goldmine for companies who wish to get an edge on their competitors. As big data gets larger every second, there is huge amounts of unsorted data about consumers which we can learn about to increase sales and generate revenue. A data driven marketing strategy will allow us to take the guesswork out of marketing and replace it with cold, hard data.
Definition:
Data-driven marketing refers to the marketing insights and decisions that arise from the analysis of data about or from consumers
Benefits of Data driven marketing for decision making:
Businesses and Consumers can both benefit from a personalized, data driven approach to marketing.
Personalized Marketing
Companies must be able to broadcast the right message to the right audience at the right time in order to ensure the highest chance of conversion. By understanding user behavior through data analysis, marketing campaigns become more effective and personalized by pushing out relevant messages at specific points in the customer journey.
Clear Cut Clarity
With a data driven approach, it becomes much easier to segment and target audiences than before. There is no more guessing demographic/psychographic profiles of consumers and developing buyer personas becomes easier as well.
Multi-Channel Experience
Marketing across multiple channels through data driven techniques will create a message which is consistent and aligned among all channels and reaches each recipient at the right time.
Refined Customer Experience
Customer experience is crucial to a brand’s success and data driven marketing allows brand to analyze customer interactions with the brand and make improvements where necessary.
Better Product Development
As companies get a more comprehensive understanding of their target market, they are better able to understand their pain points and create products which serve the consumers better.
Challenges of Data driven marketing:
Data driven marketing doesn’t come without its challenges.
The Right Team
Managing immense amounts of data is hard and attracting the right type of talent for this job may be difficult. Most brands will need a staff which specializes in predictive analysis, data science, etc
Departmental Silos
Data driven marketing success is dependent on having high quality and integrated data. Different departments may have different goals with the data acquired which could lead to internal problems if the goals contradict each other
Commitment
Many companies attempt to utilize a data driven approach but will give up some way through it, yielding no tangible results. Brands taking a data driven approach must be committed throughout the process to reap the full benefits.
How to develop a data driven approach to marketing:
Implement an organization-wide data strategy
The organization must be aligned completely in terms of data accumulation, organization, use, and analysis. A strategy in place will help the business understand how the data will be collected, used, and managed across all silos.
Restructure the organization
For data driven marketing to be effective, different departments must be able to cooperate and share data among each other. Essentially, silos must be broken down especially between IT and Marketing. IT is a vital partner for the Marketing department as it plays a critical role in helping connect the touch points throughout the business, and supports data collection and integration.
Create a cross-functional team
One effective way to break down silos is to have organizations develop a cross-functional team, which may include marketers and IT. It is important for the CMO and CIO to work together to leverage Big Data and marketing strategy to holistically create a data driven marketing strategy.
Integrate data
Companies will need to integrate data from various sources in order to be able to use it. Marketers need to create a single, actionable, and flexible view of their customers and prospects.
Leverage Analytics
With integrated data, marketers can make more informed decisions about their consumer personas. Businesses can utilize analytics to deliver actionable insights and guide decision-makers. By delving deeper into customer insights, many departments, such as finance, management, marketing, etc can benefit from it.
Thanks for reading the Marketing & Growth Hacking Publication.
We are sponsored by Falcon.io.
Falcon is the platform for every kind of social media marketer. Falcon helps you manage all social channels and teams on one collaborative platform, create quality content with an easy-to-use editorial content calendarand social media calendar, and so much more.
