Marketers today have a wealth of information at their fingertips. We can find out where our prospects are coming from, what interests them and what influences their buying process. However, quantity does not always equal quality. With how marketing campaigns have become so reliant on data-driven strategies, we wanted to offer some tips and tricks for data-driven marketing based on our experience.
Here are 4 of the most common misconceptions and solutions for modern data-driven marketing.
But first, what is data-driven marketing?
It wouldn’t make much sense to talk about how to improve your data-driven marketing without a basic understanding of what it is in the first place. If words like soft data, channel performance, and attribution tracking sound more sci-fi than science, you should start here.
Data-driven marketing is an approach to marketing that uses data acquired through customer interactions and third-party sources to improve and optimize a marketing campaign. The information collected is used to better understand your ideal customer, their motivations, preferences and behaviors.
Essentially, data-driven marketing helps companies optimize the performance of their marketing channels by improving their customer experience based on verifiable and configurable data points.
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The problem with data-driven marketing
So, we understand that data-driven marketing is about using data and matching it to your marketing so you know what you can change to have a positive effect on your marketing efforts. With the almost unlimited access to data we have today, you would think we are in an ideal position to implement the best campaigns.
Unfortunately, the opposite is true. With so much access to data, many marketers end up feeling overwhelmed or focusing entirely on the wrong data. In this blog post, we’ll try to point you in the right direction with four common misconceptions and solutions to help you succeed with your data-driven marketing initiatives.
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1. Misconception: To get results, you have to change everything.
Truth: Singular, incremental changes are best.
Many organizations want to change as much as possible, with the goal of quickly accomplishing radical transformation. They often turn to data-driven processes to highlight areas they need to optimize and start changing almost everything about it.
While this might make marketers feel like they’re being productive, they might actually be introducing counterproductive metrics to their campaigns, and they’re certainly introducing less certainty. When you change several aspects of your marketing approach, you cannot be sure which changes were at the heart of the new changes observed. If you don’t understand the underlying causes, you have no real way to remedy or capitalize on the solution.
This is why singular and incremental changes are a clean approach to data-driven marketing. Simply changing one aspect of your campaign or using A/B testing to see impact will help you identify changes that affect your marketing results. Once you have that, you know what you can focus on to increase your success or mitigate your weaker aspects.
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2. Misconception: The goal of data-driven marketing is to say the right message at the right time and in the right place.
Truth: Data-driven marketing is about linking hardware data to software data.
Ever since the introduction of marketing automation, the idea of reaching your customers “with the right message, at the right time, in the right place” has dominated all digital marketing conversations. However, in practice, it means very little if you don’t understand your customers’ hardware and software data.
Data-driven marketing is not about capitalizing on a marketing phrase, it’s about learning more about your customers. It allows you to uncover the hard data (who your customers are) and the soft data (what do they do and why) of your ideal customers. This allows you to make smart, informed decisions about how you position your marketing and what solutions help you get there rather than a buzz phrase of the past.
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3. Misconception: Getting as much data as possible is essential for data-driven marketing.
Truth: Data-driven marketing is most effective when it focuses on generating insights, not data.
As we mentioned earlier, today we have so many options when it comes to generating data. Collecting large amounts of data is easy. Getting useful insights and insights from this data is not so easy.
Having large amounts of data is not enough to have a successful data-driven marketing strategy. Data-driven marketing relies on using information to make better marketing decisions. Therefore, you should always have a good reason for generating data and linking it to marketing KPI reports. This way you create actionable insights rather than unrefined data.
4. Myth: Data-driven marketing is about optimizing the customer journey.
Truth: Customer experience should always take precedence over the customer journey.
Optimizing your customer journey is a beneficial business, and data-driven marketing can help you achieve this goal. However, this is not the only area where data-driven marketing shines. The main aspect where this marketing approach is best suited is the customer experience.
As highlighted above, data-driven marketing helps you discover who your customers are and why they interact with your business. With this information, you can create amazing customer experiences that delight and surprise your audience.
For example, if you understand why your customers interact with your brand, you can focus on those aspects and personalize their experience for them. If you understand who your customers are, you can address their challenges, allay their fears, and speak in a way they find engaging. All this allows for a better customer experience before even considering the customer journey.
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Take your data-driven marketing seriously
A marketing strategy is only as good as the people, processes and tools behind it. In many ways, this is especially true for a data-driven marketing approach. If you’re ready to get involved and start generating actionable, transformative data that will take your business to the next level, consider Engagement Factory to guide you in the right direction.
As an experienced digital marketing consultancy, we can help you plan and implement marketing strategies and tactics to the full potential of your business. Contact us today and discuss your marketing challenges with one of our expert consultants, or download this handy resource to help you get started.
