Customer and traffic insights are more important than ever in shaping your sales growth and brand performance. Marketers have an opportunity to become more data-focused. With more customer data at your disposal, you can forecast the future needs of your business with more precision. This will allow you to adapt your digital marketing strategy to meet your goals.
As a small business owner, how exactly can you use the customer data? In what way can you make this data meaningful? And, how can data-driven marketing decisions benefit your business and measure ROI?
Let’s take a closer look at how you can use data-driven marketing in your business to make better business decisions moving forward.
What Is Data Driven-Marketing?
As the old saying goes “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” This means gathering data about your business to gain an understanding of how the business is performing. Data-driven marketing requires the identification, generation, and analysis of performance metrics. Access to this data will lead to improved marketing results.
Data-driven marketing focuses on the customer. This allows for more accurate targeting of your customer’s specific interests and behaviors.
Examples Of Data-Driven Marketing Strategies
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Retargeting Audiences
When potential customers browse your website you can use data-driven marketing to re-target them. Even if they have moved onto another page of your site or to a competitor’s site you can use re-targeting strategies. Using retargeting ads is an essential component of any data-driven marketing campaign.
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Data-Driven Advertising
Through data insights and various marketing tools, you can build a targeted ad campaign to reach even the most niche market. With hyper-targeted ads, you will have higher conversion rates and a better ROI from your campaign as a result.
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Data-Driven Email Marketing
By focusing on data, you can ensure that your email marketing campaign is as personalized as possible for each of your customers. Deliver content tailored to your customer behaviors and interests to increase your email open rate.
Best Practices For Data-driven Marketing
Get the best possible ROI with the following data-driven marketing best practices.
Understand Your Audience
The accuracy of your customer data is essential in the success of your marketing campaigns. Having a thorough understanding of your audience will help you to gather the most relevant and appropriate data on your clients. With this data, you can make more informed marketing decisions moving forward.
Data Management
As you collect more data, your marketing strategies will develop and evolve. Data management is vital to you getting the best ROI from your marketing campaigns. This data is crucial in creating effective marketing plans tailored to your customer’s needs and interests.
Be sure to analyze your data so that you are always up-to-date with the latest developments. There is a range of data management tools available that can help you improve your data quality and management processes.
Privacy and Security Compliance
There has been more of a focus on data security and privacy in recent years. You need to ensure that you are compliant in both your collection and usage of any data you collect. Businesses should respect their customer’s privacy, follow local laws, and take measures to be compliant.
Different countries and global organizations put laws in place in recent years such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Ensure that you stay compliant to avoid any penalties down the line.
Data-based Marketing Decisions And ROI
To increase revenue, you need to have a clear picture of who your customers are and what they want, and what problems you can help them solve. Gather quantitative data such as audience demographics, usage metrics, and behavioral analytics. This data will help you to create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.
The more targeted and accurate your marketing campaigns are, the better a response they will get. This leads to more conversion, sales, and an increase in your company revenue. Targeted and Data-driven marketing allows you to create targeted marketing campaigns that will provide the best ROI.
How To Get Started With Data-Driven Marketing
There are some great free tools that can help you to gather, analyze, manage, and apply the customer data you accumulate. These tools are a great starting point for small business owners who want to move forward with a data-driven marketing approach.
Below are two tools you should consider trying: to help you get off to the right start with your data-driven marketing efforts.
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Google Analytics
As one of the leading tools in the industry, Google Analytics is an absolute must for any business owner. This comprehensive tool allows you to track user behaviors on your website to gain more insight into your customers.
In October 2020, Google announced an expansion and rebranding of Google’s analytics platform; Google Analytics 4. This most recent version of the platform offers website owners and marketers:
- more detailed predictive insights
- further integration with Google Ads
- the ability to track users cross-device
- improved granular data controls
The new Google Analytics 4 property provides a comprehensive cross-channel consumer behavior view. This gives marketers an opportunity to act on these new insights.
To learn more about the new Google Analytics, check out this post from the Google team.
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Marketing Automation Tools
Marketing automation platforms like Hubspot, Marketo, and Sharpspring help marketers to find and nurture high-quality leads. Consumers are spending more time online nowadays or researching their options before committing to a sale. As a result, inbound marketing has become a valuable tool for marketers.
By analyzing your prospect’s buying journey, you can provide them with targeted information when they need it the most. You can engage with them across different mediums such as your blog, website, social media channels, and email. To find out more, visit our Lead Generation & Nurturing service page.
Get The Help Of An Experienced, Dedicated Digital Marketing Agency
For the most efficient return on your investment, however, it’s always best to seek out the help of an experienced, reputable digital marketing firm. Here at Mikesell Digital Consulting, we offer a comprehensive range of results-driven marketing services to help you achieve your targets. Our digital marketing services have been perfected over time so that our clients effectively reach their goals and maximize ROI on marketing spend. Get in touch with our team at Mikesell Digital Consulting today to find out how we can help you experience the power of data-driven marketing.
