In order to build a successful marketing campaign in these days of IOT, data-driven approach is absolutely too important to be ignored. The only twist is that based on the large amounts of data available and the technologies required to analyze them, the job can be overly intimidating.
According to reports, data is growing faster than ever before and by the year 2020, about 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created every second for every human being on the planet. But rather, unfortunately, less than 0.5 percent of all data is analyzed and used.
Consumers are very much aware of the fact that marketers have access to an avalanche of information about them and have decided not to take matters lying low, they are researching the market landscape like never before. The scenario can be likened to what is good for the geese is good for the gander.
This has incidentally made the path-to-purchase journey more complex as consumers have evolved more ways to research before they buy than ever before. Marketers, therefore, need to base their campaigns more on a data-driven approach than ever before.
According to KPMG’s 2017 study “The Truth About Online Consumers, there are four stages in the path-to-purchase journey:
Stage 1 — Awareness: triggers and influencers
Stage 2 — Consideration: product and company research
Stage 3 — Conversion: deciding where and when to buy
Stage 4 — Evaluation: experience and feedback
Throughout these stages, consumers now have the opportunity to access information and research products ahead of their purchase.
Retail Dive on the other hand reports that more than 65 percent of consumers conduct online product research before stepping foot in a store. Also, SiriusDecisions says that 67 percent of the buyer’s journey is complete before a buyer ever reaches out to sales, all these information go on to amplify the need for marketers to optimize digital experiences as well as embark on data-driven approach in their campaigns.
The apt question to ask at this juncture is, how do you apply the data-driven strategy to your marketing campaigns?
1. Format the consumer’s journey
Marketers have basically relied on research methods, such as surveys, focus groups, and interviews, to learn how customers interact with their brand before making a purchase. With the data-driven approach, however, you can use tools such as CRM and marketing automation, to gain very valuable behavior profile of the consumers’ buying processes long before they ever become your actual customers.
You have all the information to determine how to get your customers, how to make them glued to your product, and what can make them stop patronizing you. You are armed with a potential visibility into the behavior of your prospects.
For example, the popular belief is that the youngest shoppers ( 18 – 24) year olds conduct more product research online but the reality on ground is that 57 percent of the slightly older (24 – 34) year olds say they always conduct online pre-shopping research.
2. Buyer personas
Marketers are used to knowing and understanding buyer persona but the difference is that with a data-driven approach, you are able to determine what each persona actually responds to. You can then use the principle of segmentation to homogenize them based on the data at your disposal.
This affords you the opportunity to learn how to interact with your prospects, and realize what makes their different groupings distinct from one another. You are then able to create content that best reaches each of your buyer personas.
Your business is to make available to each group what they want since you must have garnered the information from their data.
3. Determining your best customers
You don’t need to have just customers you can determine your best customers through a data-driven approach. Using data like recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) can help you see who returns to your website, how often and how much they spend, which will help you better target that customer and others like them.
This information lets you know where you’re being the most successful and who’s responding best both to your company’s services and your inside sales efforts. You can go as far as to score your customer base.
This helps you to better understand those customers’ commitment to your product and services and help you to prioritize them. This a good ground for account-based marketing if your brand wishes to embark on that.
4. Project life-time value ( LTV)
Marketers were known to project and maximize the next transaction which is extremely short-sighted with the availability of data and the technology to harness it. A data-driven approach leverages data into marketing campaigns thereby, modelling the potential Life-Time Value of each customer.
Specific actions that will maximize the LTV throughout the journey are then identified and employees in direct contact to the customers are made to generate specific next-best actions for each customer, making decisions based on the long-term value of that customer.
You definitely would invest time and technology in order to use data-driven approach to learn who your customers are, how they behave, and how best to talk to them. You, however, have amazingly armed yourself for better success in the long term and with the right analysis, you will net better, more successful marketing efforts, in less time.
