In today’s digital age, data is king. In fact, a vast majority of blue-chip companies currently invest in data initiatives, with a good number also having a dedicated Chief Data Officer (CDO) to oversee data management functions. These businesses use data to analyze consumer behaviors, efficiently reduce costs, and make better business decisions overall.
Most, if not all, businesses also use data to develop and improve their digital marketing efforts across platforms. For instance, marketers can pull up data from Google Analytics to see which times their audience visits their website, where their web traffic comes from, and more. This allows them to create targeted and more personalized campaigns and quickly meet their business goals.
Just as data is helpful to other businesses, it can be valuable to yours as well. However, data-driven marketing is not an easy subject to understand. This article will provide you with all the information you need to know about the role of data analytics in marketing and how you can use it to improve different marketing efforts.
5 Benefits of Data-Driven Marketing
1. It provides customer behavior analysis
Data allows businesses to know who their audiences are, what content attracts their attention, what their pain points are, and more. By conducting data-backed customer behavior analysis, marketers can personalize their campaigns according to their target audience’s preferences to reach them faster and relate to them better.
If you use HubSpot, you know that the software developing and marketing company believes customer behavior analysis also allows businesses to engage audiences in their preferred channels and reduce customer churn.
2. It allows for campaign optimization
As consumer behaviors evolve, so do marketing practices. This means that without the right data, some marketing campaigns will inevitably fail to reach target audiences and deliver a profitable return on investment. By contrast, data enables businesses to pinpoint the campaigns that don’t work and reinforce those that do.
One way that some businesses can optimize their campaigns with data is by running A/B tests. More and more companies are using A/B testing, as effective A/B testing can vastly increase the average revenue per unique visitor for e-commerce sites and more.
3. It provides intel for every stage of the buyer’s journey
Contrary to popular belief, not all marketing campaigns are suitable for every step of the buyer’s journey. For example, customers in the awareness stage may be more attuned to content that introduces them to a subject matter they are curious about. On the other hand, customers in the delight stage may not want to consume the information they already know.
With the help of data analytics, businesses can determine consumer behaviors at every stage of the buyer’s journey and develop content accordingly. Data can also help businesses reduce friction in problematic areas in the customer acquisition process.
4. It offers insight into the cost of acquisition
With every marketing campaign, marketers ensure that their efforts perform well to ultimately generate a return on investment and revenue for their business. After all, nobody wants to spend more on marketing campaigns that do not guarantee success.
With data analytics, marketers can track the performance of all their campaigns and identify strategies, products, and demographics with the lowest cost per acquisition (CPA). If you have a low CPA, this indicates that your marketing campaign is performing well.
While there is no universal benchmark for a low CPA, you can still base your calculation on your industry’s standards.
5. It primes businesses for future marketing practices
In today’s fast-paced world, businesses need to constantly keep up with changing trends and consumer behaviors to survive and thrive. By adopting a data-driven approach in marketing, businesses can stay ahead of trends, quickly adapt to change, and expand their marketing capabilities.
With a robust marketing team as well—one that can now include data analysts and digital specialists—businesses can prime themselves for success.
How Data Can Enhance Different Marketing Tactics
If your marketing campaigns are failing to take flight, this is your opportunity to use data and see which tactics work and those that don’t. Below are some marketing tactics that can prove successful with the help of data analytics.
1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is all about data. Search engines regularly change their algorithms to make more useful and relevant content available to searchers and prevent people from manipulating their rank placements. To keep up with these changes, you need to look into certain data points that can help you optimize your SEO performance.
Some of these essential data points include the bounce rate, keyword relevancy, and conversion rate. In most cases, keyword relevancy and bounce rate intertwine; If your web pages have a high bounce rate, it means you are likely using keywords wrong.
To solve this problem, make sure to use keywords according to the type of content that fits them. For example, if you plan to rank high for the key phrase “what is content marketing,” you should use it in a blog as this content type is compatible with the searcher’s intent.
On the other hand, the conversion rate can be influenced by several factors such as page load speed, ease of navigation, and accessibility. If all of these perform poorly, you will likely have fewer chances of converting readers to customers and ranking high in search engine result pages.
2. Email marketing
Marketers often use email marketing to interact with customers in the engage and delight stages of the buyer’s journey. However, email marketing can only be successful when you extract the right data and analyze your subscribers’ preferences.
Some of the email marketing data points you need to look into are subscriber demographics and behaviors, email frequency preferences, and email opens and click-throughs. You should also set clearly defined goals when launching email marketing campaigns, as they provide value to the data you are extracting.
By considering these data points, you can create personalized emails that can generate high open and click-through rates, encourage email forwards or shares, and more.
3. SMS marketing
SMS marketing is one of the best ways to send targeted and relevant messages to your customers. Similar to email marketing, SMS marketing can help you retain your customers by looking into their preferences. These include the optimal time they want to receive your messages, the length of your text, and the relevancy of your calls-to-action.
Some businesses simultaneously run SMS and email marketing strategies to engage their customers. However, this does not necessarily mean that it will work for others as well. To gauge what works for your business, consider weighing the pros and cons of email and SMS marketing first. You can also use data to check if both or only one channel works better for your business.
With data, you can also see which channel helps you reach your target audience faster, determine how to engage them better, and more.
Take a Data-Driven Approach to Marketing Today
Indeed, data offers you the chance to look into your target customers and personalize marketing campaigns to cater to your target audiences’ behaviors and preferences.
More importantly, with data, you no longer need to take risks when launching new marketing campaigns. You can simply extract the necessary information to create more targeted efforts, reach your audience in their preferred channels, and reinforce campaigns that have proven to successfully push customers down the sales funnel.
Ultimately, data lets you save on costs and meet your overall goals in a streamlined and efficient manner.