“Data is the new oil”
– Clive Humby, entrepreneur and mathematician
Data, in contemporary times, has begun to permeate almost all business spaces. Not only is it being used as a tool to generate new leads and trigger customer conversions, but it is also being employed to identify sales trends and predict consumer behavior. As a result, data, on its own, has turned into a wealthy and valuable resource which harbors the innate potential to improve business performance, facilitate strategic decisions, revamp routine operations and most importantly, strengthen marketing efforts. So much so, that over 64% of marketers across the world have started using data as the primary instrument of beefing up their digital marketing funnels!
However, when it comes to deploying data for marketing purposes, activities like defining strategies, segmenting audiences, tracking metrics and securing information, can often prove to be quite tricky. This is because data driven marketing requires the collation, collection, aggregation and analysis of data in such a manner that personalized customer experiences can be delivered without any glitch. The most ideal way to do this is by formulating a detailed data driven marketing strategy, which focuses on both customer needs and business requirements.
As a thriving organization, if you too are looking to use data driven marketing to accomplish any of the objectives above, here are a few simple ways to help you create a comprehensive and practical data driven marketing strategy.
Build a Good Team
Creating an effective data driven marketing strategy is not a one-man job. It requires skill, expertise and technique, which has to be assembled from all organizational departments. For example, someone from the sales department who is familiar with data driven marketing can’t be randomly paired with someone from IT, who has no knowledge about data driven digital marketing. Instead, you need people who are competent, knowledgeable and experienced to chip in, irrespective of which department they currently belong to.
Determine Plans and Objectives
Once an interdisciplinary team preferably headed by a data scientist, has been created, you need to start getting it to meet frequently. These recurrent meetings must have a clear agenda which aims to chalk out your data driven marketing plans and objectives, in grave detail. Furthermore, this team should also devise a time and resource plan that focuses on preparing data driven content, formulating data collection techniques, determining data measurement KPIs and thus, developing a data driven marketing strategy.
Sharpen Your Digital Marketing Skills
Collect Data
The primary foundation of an efficient data driven marketing plan is the collection, collation and accumulation of data. To begin with, find out what type of data you need to collect. Most organizations who are successfully using data driven digital marketing gather data chunks like:
- Competitor analysis: Brand profiling, financial scanning, customer base, distribution channels, marketing strategies
- Social media details: Conversion rates, lead generation, CTRs, impressions, audience growth rate
- Customer data: Transactional data, purchase behavior, social media activity, persona building, demographics
Apart from those above, other forms of qualitative data sets like target market, brand value and promoter scores, etc. can also be collected and consumed for data driven marketing. Once you know which type of data would prove to be most useful to you, start collecting it in a systematic way.
Optimize and Evaluate Data
The actual work of devising a data driven marketing strategy begins at the phase of data evaluation and optimization. Figure out which data sets you specifically need to assist you in formulating a marketing strategy and separate them from other forms of data. Use this separated data for creating tools, generating frameworks and conceiving well-thought-out marketing campaigns. After the campaign is launched, measure and optimize its results consistently. Doing so won’t just help you target the right audiences, but it would also enable you to influence buy-ins, step up ROI and thereby meet, your campaign goals.
Sharpen Your Digital Marketing Skills
Stay Up-to-Date
When it comes to data driven marketing, staying up-to-date can prove to be highly beneficial. Being familiar with the latest market trends, coupled with state-of-the-art technology, will empower you to use your data driven content in a unique and meaningful manner. For instance, if you are aware of the campaigns that your competitors are running, you will exactly know which trend is working or not working for them. You will also be able to find ways of integrating such patterns or learnings within your own data driven marketing strategy so that its reach can be enhanced and its impact can be improved.
Integrate and Automate
Even the most meticulous data driven marketing campaigns will not be successful if they are not backed by the power of integration and automation. This is because dealing with a high volume of structured and unstructured sets of data can often be quite complex and tedious. This data has to be broken down into simpler chunks so that a unified customer view can be easily created. Moreover, it also has to be integrated with other technological measures like automation and mechanization to analyze and process it constructively. The tools and techniques of integration and automation, therefore, can serve as the basic enablers of a data driven marketing strategy which is multi-pronged and innovative.
Wrapping Up
At present, almost 87% of marketers believe that data is their company’s most underutilized asset. However, with changing times, organizations worldwide will have to start relying on data driven marketing, out of need – not just choice. They will be required to learn more about their customers and build their personas based on location, gender, demography and behavior. AI, big data and predictive intelligence will further give their marketing efforts, a much sought after boost. As a result, consumer-specific and highly concentrated data driven marketing strategies will begin to be devised in a precise and proficient way.
In such a scenario, it would become imperative upon most organizations to learn data utilization and marketing strategies from an appropriate institute. One such platform which can easily help you jumpstart your data driven digital marketing career is Shaw Academy. The academy’s ‘Professional diploma in digital marketing’ won’t just help you increase your knowledge while enabling you to gain valuable marketing skills; it would also assist you in attaining significant returns on your marketing investments.
So, what are you waiting for? Register here and get started with learning the intricacies of data driven marketing now!
