What is Data-Driven Marketing?

• Personalised Content Experiences – Online platforms increasingly use data about user preferences and past interactions to suggest new experiences. For media platforms such as Netflix or Spotify this could be recommendations of new shows or music. This ensures users find content they are likely to enjoy, increasing engagement and time spent on the platform or for increase conversions.
• Personalised Marketing Campaigns – Businesses utilise user interactions data and behavioural analytics to tailor their campaigns. For instance, if a user has shown interest in a particular product but hasn’t made a purchase, the business might enter a user into an automation flow to send follow-up comms with a special offer or related product.
• Behavioural Ad Targeting – Digital platforms like Google Ads and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) allow advertisers to target users based on their online behaviours. For instance, if a user has searched for hiking boots, they might then see ads for hiking equipment on other websites they visit.

• Dynamic Pricing – It’s possible to adjust prices based on user behaviour and demand. For instance, a flight booking website might offer discounted prices to a user who has repeatedly checked the price of a specific flight.
• Chatbots and Virtual Assistants – Use of chatbots is increasingly common to answer user queries. These bots often utilise user data and past interactions to provide more accurate and personalised responses, improving the user experience.
• Location-based Promotions – Geolocation data can be utilised to offer promotions. For instance, for example a coffee shop might send a discount coupon to a user’s phone when they are near one of their outlets.

Key differences

While traditional marketing methods still have their place, especially in building broad brand awareness, data-driven marketing offers precision, adaptability, and direct measurability. By leveraging the power of data, businesses can more effectively engage their audience, ensuring both relevancy and higher ROI.

Navigating the Data Deluge

Many budding data-driven marketers find themselves overwhelmed when faced with the task of collecting and interpreting customer data. The common questions looming are:

• Where should they find this data?
• How do they manage the sheer volume of information available?

This uncertainty often leads to hesitation or even complete avoidance of initiating data-driven campaigns. The good news? Most businesses are already sitting on a goldmine of data; it’s just a matter of tapping into it effectively.

Your Existing Data Sources:

• CRM Systems – These platforms often hold valuable customer profiles and interaction histories.
• Website and Social Media Analytics – Understand user behaviour, site visits, brand engagement, audience demographics, and sentiment analysis.
• E-commerce Platforms – Track purchase histories, cart abandonment rates, and user preferences.
• Advertising Tools – Gauge the effectiveness of ad campaigns, user engagement, and more.

Striving for Comprehensive Insights

Relying solely on historical sales data or isolated datasets can provide a skewed perspective. It’s essential to constantly update and broaden data sources, especially in today’s dynamic market where consumer interests and behaviours shift rapidly.

While initiating with data from past years is commendable, a truly effective data-driven strategy demands a holistic view. Therefore, we recommend always aim for larger, more comprehensive enriched datasets that can offer a panoramic view of the market and customer behaviours.

Using Data to Tell Your Story

Navigating the digital age, marketers are privy to vast amounts of data. The challenge lies not just in collection but in efficient aggregation and real-time utilisation.

Staying Updated

For data to be impactful, its freshness is paramount. Real-time information is the gold standard, but if that’s unattainable, updating data frequently – daily or weekly – is crucial. Yet, the task of manually aggregating and refreshing this data, especially if you’re resorting to manual spreadsheet entries, can be tedious and prone to errors.

Modern Solutions for Data Aggregation

One way to circumvent this challenge is to employ a marketing dashboard. Advanced analytics and visualisation tools, like Power BI, Tableau and Looker Studio, are designed to seamlessly integrate with various data sources. Strive for a unified view of all campaign data, ensuring that marketers have a holistic perspective at their fingertips.

The Power of Data Warehousing

However, for organisations dealing with vast data volumes spanning multiple departments, simple dashboards might not suffice. This is where advanced solutions like Enterprise Data Platforms (EDP) and Data Warehousing come into play. They don’t just aggregate; they store, process, and manage data from varied sources, ensuring that marketers have a consolidated and structured data repository. With such tools, marketers can delve deeper, uncovering patterns and insights that can be pivotal in crafting compelling narratives.

Creating a Data-Driven Marketing Strategy

Creating a data-driven marketing strategy doesn’t simply mean looking at numbers and making decisions based on them. It’s a systematic process that requires integrating data insights into every stage of your strategy. Below is a step-by-step guide to help you formulate a compelling, data-backed marketing strategy.