Data driven marketing – definition
Data-driven marketing is an approach of collecting data and then using it in marketing activities. Data-driven marketing can be used during any type of campaign, but also earlier – at the stage of identifying a target audience or identifying trends. One of the pillars of data-driven marketing is to analyze the effects of campaigns, draw conclusions, and then apply them directly to subsequent marketing activities (optimization).
Although data-driven marketing has been in use for many years, today – as never before – this approach is available to almost every company. The tools for capturing and analyzing data, and then automating and optimizing activities, are plentiful. Just think of Google’s free tools, which are barely the (quite large) tip of the iceberg.
Is it enough to have a nose for marketing?
One of the guiding principles of the Internet is that a headline ending in a question mark is always answered in the negative. This is also the case here – although there are stories in which, by complete chance, something unexpected happened and the whole world heard about a brand, it is often just a product of luck and circumstance – creating marketing based on the hope that “maybe it will work” is – in 2024 – a road to nowhere. However, there’s more to it than that.
Lack of information is a big risk
If you do marketing “blindly,” you also risk a lot. One example is “cold-calls” and “cold-mails,” that is, phone calls and messages sent to recipients who were not expecting anything and did not agree to anything. These techniques were extremely popular not so long ago. Today they are not only illegal (RODO), but also ineffective. Every email inbox is already inundated with unwanted or somewhat just wanted emails. Let’s take a look, for example, at the newsletters we receive because of that one discount earned in 2018 and somehow we don’t have time to unsubscribe. Sending another message to this avalanche of emails – without any plan – will be ignored at best, reported at worst.
However, this is only part of the problem. After all, the ban doesn’t apply to advertising – on social networks, for example. Any META (Facebook, Instagram) or Google business account holder can – for a fee – publish advertising content that will reach a selected target audience of Facebook, Instagram users or visitors to one of the hundreds of thousands of websites that display Google ads. In this way, an entrepreneur can reach hundreds, thousands or even millions of recipients with his offer. In this case, however, ignoring key audience data can only lead to one thing – burning through the advertising budget.
Lack of target audience selection means that your brand’s message will overwhelmingly reach uninterested people. Trying to execute an online marketing strategy (including paid promotions, SEO efforts, content or remarketing) without using data is therefore extremely ineffective.
5 benefits of using data in marketing
Data are the ally of every marketer. With them, we can:
- Increase the effectiveness of ongoing marketing activities,
- optimize the budget,
- better select the target group,
- improve brand communication,
- Create reliable forecasts for the future.
Impact of data on performance
Data-driven marketing puts in your hands not biased opinions or emotion-based judgments, but concrete numbers. You can use them to identify marketing areas where your brand is doing well, as well as those that need significant improvement.
Data-driven marketing is all about using the information collected. However, it’s not just about the preparation stage of a campaign. Also during and after the campaign, you need to make use of the data. Adequate preparation will save resources that a company would otherwise spend on promotion without being able to expect good results. Monitoring the results of a campaign on an ongoing basis makes it possible to halt activities when something goes wrong or optimize them without having to stop the campaign. The data collected and, based on them, the conclusions drawn after the campaign will in turn be used to prepare the next promotional campaign – the experience gained will make creating an even better campaign within reach.
Budget optimization using data
With data in hand on the effectiveness of specific marketing activities, you simultaneously get the chance to plan precise marketing activities. One that won’t ruin your promotion budget. The more detailed data you have, the less you will spend on ill-considered marketing decisions. Instead of paying for a social media ad that will be seen by people in the 18-40 age group, you can launch a campaign targeting a much narrower but more specific group, so you reach people among whom the chance of conversion is much higher.
Example:
The Knurów-based hobby store is holding events to accompany its 10th. Birthday of the company. Promotions, contests with prizes and free gadgets – all this will be available on site throughout the week. Wanting to advertise the event online, company representatives will be able to use customer data they already have.
Knowing that most of their customers are men aged 18-40 and knowing their interests, they will be able to set just such criteria in the ad manager, supplementing the filter list with location – Knurów and towns up to 50 km away.
Better targeted groups
It is through the use of data that we can make our marketing message go where it needs to go. An example is Google Analytics. It’s a powerful and feature-loaded system, whose indisputable advantage is that you don’t have to pay to use it. The disadvantage – that it is a complex tool that you need to learn. It is not enough to enter a few data and count on Google itself to find the best customers for our company.
Selecting the right target audience with the tool is possible, but it requires commitment. The results you will get, however, are worth it – they will significantly reduce the chance of wasted advertising funds and allow you to reach an audience that truly expresses interest in the offer you have for them.
Also, audience segmentation is possible precisely because of data. Segmenting the target audience by age, gender, place of residence or interests is fundamental in creating and improving the communication strategy for a brand.
Consistent and personalized brand communication
Data-driven marketing also includes analyzing audience reactions to your brand’s communications. It is extremely important to know how potential customers perceive the way you communicate with them. This will help you avoid making mistakes that have happened to your brand in the past and create consistent communications that are in line with your company’s values and image.
Data-driven online marketing also allows you to personalize the messages you send to consumers – in emails, in chats (for example, on social media or in your online store). By having precise information about your customers, you are more likely to tailor content to narrow groups, and by using automation, even to the individual people you are targeting with messages.
Reliable forecasts for the future
Data driven marketing also allows you to meticulously analyze data during and after your marketing campaigns. By measuring the effects of activities throughout the campaign, you gain valuable insights that you can use in future campaigns.
Mistakes made during the current campaign, audience reactions, conclusions of those working on the project – all these elements are worth collecting in detailed reports. Once the campaign is over, the data from the reports will be useful in preparing for the next one, and can even point out the imperfections of the promoted products or services and influence the process of developing them.
How to use data-driven marketing effectively?
We already know that the collected and analyzed data can help your company choose the right communication strategy, segment customers and even develop products. However, that’s not all.
Test and optimize
With the acquired data, we can use features such as A/B tests. In them, we can try out different marketing messages or targeting the same-sounding message to two different target groups. The results obtained can simply be compared and the variant that achieved better results can be applied on a wider scale.
In doing so, it is worth remembering the guiding principle of comparative testing – during each test you should change no more than one thing. Only in this way will we be able to identify exactly which element of the campaign affects its effectiveness.
Use the right tools
In the world of data-driven marketing, the real art is to find tools that can process information and realistically improve the work of the marketing team in your company. It is not easy to point out the best applications, as much depends on the profile and preferences of the company in which they will be used. That being said, we will give you some examples that are worth checking out:
- Analytical tools: Google Analytics, Woopra, Hotjar.
- CRM tools: HubSpot, Zendesk, Salesforce.
- Content creation tools: Ahrefs, Semrush, Contadu.
These are just a few suggestions – there are hundreds of software solutions on the market today that enable or support the use of data as part of marketing activities.
Automate your marketing efforts
Everything we have described so far may appear to be potentially effective, but requires commitment and a fair amount of work. This is indeed the case. Acquiring large data sets, analyzing them in depth, and then using them effectively – all of this can prove too cumbersome, especially for small companies. The solution to at least some of these problems is marketing automation.
It is the ability to integrate the collected data and use it to shorten processes (e.g., sending emails or – more generally – customer service) that makes your company’s marketing efforts more effective and efficient.
Summary
Planning and executing data-driven marketing campaigns is the most effective way to achieve success today – especially, but not only, on the Internet. With the development of technology and the ever-increasing opportunities it brings, it’s not just your company that is getting the tools to work. Using hard data in marketing is also the only way not to fall behind the rushing competition.
