Four Steps to Better Data-driven Marketing

The new age of technology and social media has allowed data retrieval to become substantially simpler to acquire. Data-driven marketing has set the foundation for success in the business realm. This marketing technique gives you the ability to market yourself to reach and entice your key demographic. The data allows you to create a sense of community within your business and keeps customers attracted with more personalised campaigns. When conducting data-driven marketing, it is critical to recognise who your target audience is and what content to create to catch their attention. Below are four ways you can optimise your digital marketing operation and boost your profits.

1. Form Audience Segments

When creating a marketing plan, it is essential to identify what audience you’re trying to capture. Forming audience segments – based on common demographics – will aid in the process of dividing and categorising them appropriately. Every identified subgroup will grant you the ability to tailor your content according to their:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Common Interests
• Consumption Habits
• Behaviour
• Engagement Level.

Instead of presenting a uniform, generic brand message to your customers, audience segmentation designs more personalised messages that have more reach. The goal of this approach is to clearly define and organise the needs of each subgroup. Doing so allows tailored email campaigns or messages to be created that best suit each subgroup. However, it is important to note that subgroups shouldn’t be too narrow or too specific. Narrow segmentation ends up wasting precious time and energy or reaches very few people. When done right, this strategy reaps its rewards in the form of maintaining your audience’s attention and loyalty. It refines your marketing approach to strategically give every subgroup what they are looking for.

1. Simplify Data Analysis

Retrieving analytical data has become easily accessible as the popularity of different media platforms has risen. Analyzing simple data is a useful resource when forming a marketing plan. It allows you to examine the strengths, weaknesses, progresses, or regressions of your business. Compiling data from multiple different platforms can easily become confusing, so using a web analytics tool can help consolidate all of the data into one simple analysis. When analyzing your data, it is important to keep a few questions in mind:

• What are your objectives and goals? 
• From the given data, how can you improve customer relations?
• How are your current marketing strategies faring in your business?
• Are your competitors marketing their business more efficiently and effectively?
• Can you change your marketing approach to render it more fruitful?
• Are your resources being utilised efficiently?

Being cognisant of these questions will help improve the marketing techniques that are being used in your company. It puts into perspective the outcome of your past actions, the current market, and to predict the future market. It is essential to act on the data that is recovered and analysed from your simplified data analysis. Solutions and improvement techniques can be created or re-formatted according to the collected data. When new ideas are implemented to respond to your customer’s wants or needs, it gets reflected in your business’s success.

1. Personalise Content

Customers want to feel appreciated and welcomed by a business. Establishing a strong connection with your customer through personalised content will create a fruitful relationship for both parties. The customer will feel no desire to go window shopping for your competitor’s services, and you will have acquired a recurring customer. There are a few ways that you can easily personalise your content to build that bond between the customer and your business:

• Attempt to address your customer by their name – this technique has been shown to increase open rates of emails by 14%!
• Use insight-driven marketing to create personalised messages for your customers – taking advantage of data analysis’ insights can help direct what messages should be sent to different subgroups.
• Try offering personalised offers – an increase in brand engagement is observed when customers receive unique offers.

With such an overly-saturated market, customers are looking to receive a unique and customised experience when visiting your business. Relevant and personalised content has become a critical marketing strategy in data-driven marketing. When delivering your services to customers across different platforms, it is key to perform this tactic to keep their loyalty and engagement.

1. Create Gripping Taglines

Capturing a potential customer’s attention is done over a matter of seconds. You have a limited amount of time or characters to draw them in. First impressions are arguably the most critical step in acquiring a customer. The taglines in your email or message have to pique their attention and make them interested in seeing your content for fear of missing out. A sense of exigency must be instilled while still delivering a personalised message. The tagline must remain relevant to them. Any applicable information should be mentioned in the tagline to make them want to click on the email and respond to it. Mentioning the personal interests of the customer makes a huge difference in gripping their attention. The more personalised, the better!

These key strategies are the baseline of data-driven marketing. When implemented correctly, they can skyrocket your customer activity and create meaningful relationships that result in higher revenue and traction for your business. The goal of a business is to provide the finest treatment and service to its valued customer. The multitude of different media platforms offers valuable information about your customers that should not be overlooked. Use this data to improve, accentuate, and adjust your business to service your customer to the best of your ability.