Consumer demands are evolving quickly, and many marketers are turning to insights-driven marketing to stay ahead. This technique provides a new way for marketers to utilize insights from data analysis, collected through consumer interactions, to drive business performance, and optimize their overall digital marketing efforts.
According to the Altimeter’s 2019 State of Digital Marketing report, many businesses are aiming to improve their data-driven marketing – 41% of companies report data analysis as the most-desired skill for new digital marketing hires.
It’s clear why so many businesses are looking to leverage insights-driven marketing. A survey by Forrester Consulting shows that nearly half of the respondents who use marketing intelligence experienced improved customer satisfaction, and almost as many saw enhanced customer loyalty and retention.
However, insights-driven marketing isn’t possible without having useful data. Marketers need to first understand their existing data, the data they can get, and how to organize, analyze, and apply such insights to improve their marketing efforts.
Prepare data for insights-driven marketing
Your data must be clean and organized, yes, but marketers also need to look to more complex data sources, which go beyond consumer contact information.
It’s crucial to look for detailed customer information, such as demographics, education, interests, lifestyle, social profiles, and professional experience. Complete data files can help marketers improve their marketing strategy and curate engaging content.
Marketers can consolidate consumer data by adding a robust data management platform (DMP) to their marketing technology toolkit. A DMP is a central platform where marketers can collect, organize, and activate first, second, and third-party audience data from any source, including online, offline, and mobile.
Lotame, Clearbit, and Oracle Data Cloud are examples of data management platforms marketers can use to implement insights-driven marketing. Once marketers have harnessed data collection and preparation, there are numerous opportunities for them to utilize insights-driven marketing.
Improve the customer experience
Research from PwC reports that excellent customer experience can result in up to a 16% premium on products and services, plus increased loyalty. And by 2020, Walker predicts that customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
Data-driven marketing is an excellent way to improve the customer experience. For example, marketers can use data to distribute ads and marketing campaigns across channels effectively. Instead of guessing during media planning and buying, marketers can leverage data to produce targeted marketing campaigns which are consistent and aligned with consumers.
Data-driven campaigns help marketers analyze their customers, and identify any areas of improvement to enhance customer experience.