3 Ways Data Can Enhance Your Marketing Efforts

There’s a lot of talk in the marketing world about data these days — and for a good reason! Data is transforming how marketers are meeting and exceeding their customer’s needs. Every time a user visits your site or interacts with your content, you’re learning about them, if you’re leveraging the right tools. These interactions are all touchpoints that you can use for future retargeting and marketing campaigns.

Unlike traditional marketing, which can rely on a one-size-fits-all approach, data-driven marketing is more tailored to individual customers. This is incredibly beneficial because in today’s world, consumers are seeking brands that see them as unique individuals. A personalized approach can create a stronger connection with customers, thereby increasing engagement and brand loyalty.

Need more proof that data can boost your strategy? Here are three ways data can enhance your marketing efforts.

1. Consumer Insights and 365-Degree Customer View

How can you sell to customers if you don’t really know them? Data can provide consumer insights, revealing their wants and behavioral habits. These details can be used to refine your product or service offerings. From a marketing perspective, consumer insights can be used to develop audience personas and uncover cultural drivers that may influence purchase decisions.

Consumer insights can also be leveraged to build a 365-degree customer view — a method of understanding consumers by combining data from various touchpoints. This can include everything from website activity to survey responses to customer service interactions. Putting these data points together, brands can paint a fuller picture of their audiences and utilize them to better understand their needs. This 365-degree customer view will also identify important characteristics, such as user behavior and brand preferences.

Once you have a 365-degree customer view, you can create materials that will resonate best with your intended audiences. You can take these insights and go to an outside agency to help you optimize your current website or revamp your SEO strategy. If you’re in a niche industry, such as law, choose a law firm digital marketing agency that understands your unique set of challenges. They will have the expertise you’re looking for to create advertising solutions that work.

2. Targeting and Segmentation

Every individual is unique. What one person wants another may despise or find unnecessary. Therefore, it would be a waste of money if your ad campaign for women’s yoga leggings targeted older men on X, formerly known as Twitter. Instead, you want to tailor your campaigns so the right audience receives them across the platforms they’re utilizing the most.

Marketers who rely on data can tap into specific targeting segments. These segments can be quite granular, such as women aged 30 to 45 with a $100,000+ income interested in health. The data used for this segment is a mix of demographic and psychographic information. These types of data can be obtained through a mix of first-person and third-party sources. First-party is anything that your company owns, such as customer surveys while third-party data is anything obtained elsewhere.

Data-based targeting can enhance your marketing efforts as you’ll reach a more narrow audience pool than you would without any targeting. Depending on how niche you want to be, you can target users who are most likely to convert. This type of targeting can be particularly helpful for more specialized industries that are looking for very specific audiences. Adding in geographic targeting, for example, can further narrow the funnel of leads.

3. Informed Decision Making

Lastly, data allows you to make informed decisions and follow data-driven tactics. Before, you may have been relying too heavily on gut instinct. While you may have been guessing correctly some of the time, chances are you weren’t always hitting the nail on the head. This could have led to inefficient campaigns, targeting individuals who were unreceptive to your brand.

With data, you can optimize and refine your campaigns based on current and past performance metrics. If you found the conversion rate was higher on Instagram than on Google Ads, then you may decide to put more effort into the social platform. Alternatively, if you tested two ad creatives via A/B testing and saw that one had a higher click-through rate, you’d decide to keep using that one. And calculating cost per click would show you how effective your banners are performing as a whole.

For future campaigns, take a look at your past learnings. This isn’t to say you should follow the same campaign strategy to a T, but it can help you solidify what resonates most for your target audience. Also, remember that your strategy may need to change based on your campaign goals. Campaigns for brand awareness, product education, or leads will differ in terms of ad creative, targeting, and platforms. So make informed decisions, but don’t be afraid to test and try out new tactics to learn even more about what works well and what should be put to bed.

Conclusion

Having all of this data can be advantageous, but also a tad overwhelming. Instead of running away from it and ignoring it altogether, try to break it down. Every user interaction is a unique data point. Individually, they may not say much, but combined they can lead to deeper customer understanding, improved targeting, and more informed decision-making.