If your marketing isn’t data-driven already, you may be missing a lot of opportunities. There are plenty of reasons why data-driven marketing is the best marketing today.
When you and your team create a marketing strategy, how much time do you spend on gathering data first? More importantly, how much time do you invest in understanding the data and turning it into actionable marketing steps? If your answer is not “We spend a lot of time on gathering and analyzing data,” you need to reconsider your ways of promoting your business.
Here’s the thing. No matter how much it may scare us or how much some people deny it, today’s world is already data-driven. Behind almost every decision, especially in the online world, there is a huge amount of data.
Now, it’s your choice whether or not you know how to make good use of all this data that exists today. And, trust us, if you’re not using it for marketing, you’re not making good use of it at all. In fact, you may be missing a lot of opportunities.
Read these reasons why your marketing efforts should be driven by the data you collect to find out what you may be losing if you don’t leverage data in the right way.
1. It helps you get to the right people
As a marketer or business owner, you should know that any business needs a target audience.
This target audience is formed from people that are ideal potential buyers. In other words, people may be interested in paying a business money for its products or services.
So far, so good, right?
The real question is: do you know exactly who your target audience is? What’s more, do you know who those people are that will not only buy once but also remain loyal and come back? Plus, do you know who are those customers who love your brand so much that they act as your personal brand ambassadors to their peers? We’re hoping that you don’t have a negative answer to these questions. But, just in case you do, find out that this is what is stopping your business from selling more.
This is precisely what data-driven marketing can help you with, finding that exact “ideal” customer that buys is loyal and engages in word-of-mouth marketing for your brand.
2. It gives you an idea of what works and what doesn’t
Ever happened for your marketing team to deploy certain tactics that didn’t work, but you still have no idea why? Or maybe it happened for the exact strategy you thought won’t do anything to bring you the best results?
If you can relate to any of these scenarios, it means that you are not entirely sure where to focus your resources better. Once again, this means that you’re missing out on sales opportunities.
Well, this wouldn’t be the case if your marketing would be driven by data. You’d know exactly what works and what doesn’t and why. By analyzing the way your target audience interacts and responds to certain marketing efforts, you’ll know exactly which strategy is worth investing in and which isn’t.
3. Tell you where to promote
You may know who to promote to. But if you are not sure where these people are hanging out, it may be impossible to reach them.
Think about it: would your marketing efforts be worth it if you would, say, promote on Facebook while all your potential customers spend most of their online time on YouTube? No, they would not be worth it.
So, that’s why a leading market research company will always tell you that it is crucial to know exactly where you can find your target audience so that you focus all your resources on promoting in those places, be it social media, website, offline, or email.
Data can help you find precisely this: where your target audience spends time online and where it prefers most to be reached out to by brands. This way, you won’t be wasting time, money, and other resources in promoting content that your target audience won’t even see or interact with.
4. Your competitors use data too
This is perhaps one of the best reasons why you should make sure that your marketing is driven by data.
What do we mean by “your competitors use data too” is that if you fail to have your marketing data-driven, you’re doomed to stay behind your industry rivals who have a clear competitive advantage against you.
Since your competitors use data to promote their businesses, they know everything from what consumers want to the best marketing practices. If you don’t use the same advantage that data gives you, it’s only natural that you won’t be able to stand ahead of your industry rivals.
So, if you want to have a chance in the marketing game, make sure you use data to create your strategy.
5. You learn customer pain points and how to solve them
Another great reason to use data is that it allows you to identify the problems that consumers deal with and how they would want you to solve them. Whether it’s an issue about a certain product or service sold in your industry or about marketing tactics that consumers are fed up with, knowing what’s bothering them allows you to change that issue.
More often than not, by gathering data, you won’t only learn the problem but also how customers see the solutions for them. This way, you’ll gain a competitive advantage and attract customers and make them loyal because your brand shows that you really care about their pain points and find solutions for them.
6. Your marketing will be more personalized
Personalization is really important these days when it comes to marketing. Today’s consumers are fed up with generic ads and content that often makes them feel like brands don’t really care about them but only about their money.
When you personalize content for your target audience, you show that you actually care about it and the real people who come to buy from your brand. So, use data gathering to have the information needed to personalize your marketing.
