Marketing hasn’t always had the best transparency for high ROI and organizations of all sizes have struggled to understand the impact marketing has on their sales and overall growth. But the insurgence of data analytics, and penetration in the marketing space, may soon render this ambiguity a thing of the past.
Data-driven marketing builds on insights derived from the analysis of big data –from consumer interactions and engagements – to better forecast future behavior. This approach requires understanding specifically:
- The data you have
- The data you can get
- The organization, analysis and application of data to optimize your marketing efforts
There are considerable benefits to a data-driven marketing strategy. See how you can build one for your enterprise.
Set goals for your data-driven marketing strategy
Organizations that haven’t leveraged data are inhibiting their marketing departments and a recent Teradata report shows 87% of marketers believe data is their most underused asset.
Marketers should start by defining the goals they want to accomplish with a data-driven strategy. You might consider the following when charting your enterprises goals:
- A greater understanding of the customers your company attracts and retains
- Delivering more personalized experiences to drive sales
- Insight into the content, offers and campaigns generating the highest ROI
Each of these goals requires a different data set. Data on campaign spending probably won’t help you better understand existing customers. Defining your goals at the onset is hugely important and it keeps employees from collecting everything they can, which can lead to data surplus and time wasted on unnecessary analyses.
Build a plan around your goals
With your marketing goals in place, it’s time to create your plans for achieving them. This includes:
Pulling in the right people
Data analysis requires skills foreign to most marketers, and data-driven strategies, regardless of department, require the help of data scientists and other related professionals. Data experts are necessary for:
- Pulling the right data and formatting it in ways that will be of use to your marketing team
- Training your marketing team on the basics of data analysis
- Recommending the best marketing analytics tools for your team
Choosing relevant data to track your goals
We can’t overstate how important it is to pinpoint what type of data you’ll need to track the goals identified by your organization. In the beginning it might help for your team to remain focused on these metrics, as it will help them understand the value of data-driven analytics, and in record time.
Your team should consider the following types data when deciding what sets are appropriate for achieving your goals:
- Target market data
- Competitor data
- Customer data
- Prospect data
- Qualitative data
- Marketing & social media analytics (click-throughs, impressions, conversions, etc.)
Finding the right tools
Does your marketing team have an established tech stack? Introducing data analytics tools into it requires in-depth research so that you can answer the following questions:
- Which preferred marketing analytics tools can fit into our existing tech stack?
- If there aren’t any, how can we adjust the tech stack we have to accommodate new analytics tools?
- Once integrated, are any of our other tools incompatible with this new stack? How do we replace them?
Your team won’t be able to answer these questions alone, but data analytics experts can guide you through your technology landscape.
Be thorough about your goals and needs when searching for potential partners. They should be able to speak to their capabilities, and let you know what additional tools or trainings are required for them to get started.
The value of a data-driven marketing strategy
Despite the many moving pieces required to establish a data-driven marketing strategy, the benefits likely outweigh the cost when you take the following into consideration:
- Users that have had a negative brand experience on their mobile device are 62% less likely to purchase from the brand going forward
- Remarketing PPC campaigns drive higher conversion rates than traditional PPC
- 62% of customers are fine with receiving personalized offers based on their purchasing history
Addressing each of these points with your improved data-driven strategy might generate your best ROI to date!
See how Antuit is helping marketing leaders unlock growth and transform business performance.
