The marketing landscape is no longer what it used to be 20 years ago. It has evolved over the years and is now more targeted and innovative, which means that it’s highly result-oriented.

Data is arguably a valuable resource in marketing. A lot of successful digital marketers acknowledge this, and they’re already monitoring their campaigns and gathering relevant data to improve their marketing efforts.

Regardless of what type of business you run or industry you’re in, data as reference for creating better and more targeted marketing campaigns can help your business grow. With it, there’s no longer an excuse for not knowing what your customers want. It is the future of marketing.

What is data-driven marketing?

Data-driven marketing is a strategy that collects and uses customer information to improve your digital marketing efforts. The different types of data you can collect from your market includes demographic, interests, site behaviors, and other engagements they have with your business.

Simply put, data-driven marketing is about translating those insights to get to know your audience and using the findings to optimize your marketing processes. When you gather all the relevant data from your audience, you can anticipate their needs better, create personalized marketing messages, and provide a satisfying customer experience.

This customer-centric approach to marketing allows more room for customization. It also maximizes marketing efforts and drives significant ROIs. Are you still on the fence about data-driven marketing? Here are some interesting stats that prove how powerful and valuable it is:

• Businesses that utilize data-driven personalization generated 5–8 times the ROI on marketing spend.
• About 88% of marketers use data collected by third parties to improve their understanding of their customers.
• Two out of three marketers state data-based decisions are more effective than gut instincts.
• Data-driven marketing is a high priority for marketing leaders, with 40% of organizations seeking to increase data-driven marketing budgets.
• Meanwhile, 64% of marketing leaders report that data-based strategies are crucial in today’s economy. The top usages being in customer journey mapping or analysis, A/B testing, website personalization, and segmentation.

Now that you know the importance of data marketing to businesses and marketing leaders, and how much it can help you in gaining a deeper understanding of your customers’ wants, let’s look at some of the advantages of implementing data-driven marketing into your strategy.

4 benefits of data-driven marketing

1. Allows businesses to reach the right audience

No matter how many campaigns you launch, if it’s not targeting the right audience, your efforts go to waste. Data-driven marketing helps businesses tap the right people with the help of the data collected, allowing them to develop relevant and useful content that customers are more likely to click. With data analysis, you can tailor your marketing messages directly to the right audience

2. Delivers a better experience for your audience

Customers don’t want to be seen as just another addition to the company’s sales or just another customer. You need to find ways to create more personalized campaigns that will attract them instead of sticking with generic messages.

Since you get a better grasp of your target audience’s likes, dislikes, interests, and needs with data-driven marketing, you can provide a personalized experience that caters to these factors. Moreover, it allows you to spot problems with your content and fine-tune the bumps for more effective campaigns.

3. Helps you create better products and services

Before you create a new product or service, you must know and listen to your target market’s needs. Understanding your client’s needs, wants, and expectations are one way to tell if your offerings will work.

Data-driven marketing provides valuable insights about your target audience, such as their interests, purchasing habits, and search behavior. This gives you a chance to assess if they’re likely to support your new product or service. It helps you avoid product failures and lets you focus on developing products or services that will sell and suit your audience.

4. The multi-channel experience

These days, customers are using more than one platform, and they’re getting more demanding than ever. Naturally, they expect brands to be present in more than one channel, as well. More than that, they are on the lookout for timely and relevant content.

For businesses, it’s important to be where your customers are, and that includes providing relevant content across multiple channels. Not only will this allow you more reach but also help you acquire better insights and deliver personalized experiences to your audience.

Tips for implementing data-driven marketing into your campaigns

• Identify your goals

Before you start gathering data, determine what your goal is first to know which data is worth collecting. This way, you get to work on and focus on information that has a bearing on your marketing strategy and leave out what won’t be useful.

• Gather your data

Some of the most crucial data you should consider collecting are marketing and social media analytics, customer data (personas, behavior, online activity, transactions, social network activity, etc.), prospect data (which is the same as customer data), and target market data.

You can use a heat map tool to help you understand how your visitors engage with your site to help improve your conversion rates. Meanwhile, a survey tool that also allows you to create polls, quizzes, and surveys can provide you with valuable information to enhance your marketing strategies.

• Assess your findings and take action

Now that you have gathered enough necessary information to help with your marketing, it’s time to evaluate the data against your KPIs.

During this process, you can refine your content marketing strategy accordingly, consider creating a new submarket for your business offerings, look into alternative marketing channels, and eliminate any bumps your potential customers encounter during the sales process.

• Don’t stop testing

Finally, you must continuously translate the findings from your data analysis and test your marketing efforts to make more informed decisions. Data-driven marketing doesn’t start and stop when you achieve success. You should continue to build out and test campaigns. The more data you analyze and test, the more effective and better informed your marketing strategies will be.

Final thoughts

Trusting the valuable information from your research and analysis is an essential aspect of building data culture. Data-driven marketing is more than just measuring your bounce rates or social media analytics. It encourages you to use tools and technologies to reach out to your audience, helping you create campaigns better tailored to their needs.

If you want results, consider implementing this to your digital marketing strategy.

Author Bio. :- Eliza Espino is an Online PR Specialist for Spiralytics. She recently began her professional career in digital marketing and is continuously learning about the field. One of her goals is to help grow businesses from different industries. Eliza spends her free time exploring films and series that can make her smile, think, laugh, or cry.