Data-driven marketing is the approach of optimising brand communications based on customer information. Data-driven marketers use customer data to predict their needs, desires and future behaviours. Such insight helps develop personalised marketing strategies for the highest possible return on investment (ROI).
In its simplest form, marketing has always focused on two objectives. First, to discover customers’ needs and desires. And then, using that insight to deliver what customers wanted to buy.
In practical terms, this has always meant:
Gaining a deep understanding of the target audience first, then,
Identifying and anticipating customer needs, and finally,
Designing strategies to deliver goods promising to solve those needs.
Traditional marketing teams used a combination of two factors to achieve those objectives:
Market studies available at the time, and
Their assumptions about the target audience.
Unfortunately, this approach often meant trial and error. Companies had to launch many strategies to find the one capable of achieving their goals.
In contrast, data-driven marketing allows marketers to connect with customers at the right time. And with the right offering, at that.
But the benefits of using the data go beyond just improving communications. Modern marketing teams use customer insights to:
Personalise the customer experience,
Target well-defined marketing segments, and
Get new customers.
With the data, brands can also measure and improve their strategies in real time.
The benefits of using Data-Driven marketing
#1. Data helps to gain better clarity about the target audience.
Any information about customers allows marketers to gain a laser-sharp understanding of their target audience. Insights from the CRM, for example, can increase a marketer’s ability to predict customer behaviour further.
The result? Marketing campaigns that guarantee reaching customers with the right message at the right time.
#2. Data offers the ability to build stronger connections with potential customers
With data, marketers can build much better connections with their audience. What’s more, they can do so at a scale too.
As Tom Benton, the CEO of the Data and Marketing Association Points out in his forbes article:
“The sheer amount of data from a near-infinite combination of media, devices, platforms and channels allows marketers the opportunity to deliver 1-to-1 customer experiences at a massive scale. If these are leveraged adeptly, a business with a million customers can deliver an experience just as tailored as a business with a dozen customers.”
For example. A real-time campaign data would help a marketer adjust it to match a customer’s engagement.
As a result, they could deliver a campaign that matches the audience’s expectations continuously.
#3. Uncover the best channels for promotion
Data could reveal not only a target audience’s preferences. It could also suggest what channels a brand should use to engage their audience now and in the future.
Such insight, in turn, could help them position the message where its target audience is or is going to be soon.
