[Tried and Tested] Easy ways to fortify Digital Marketing campaigns with Data

With limited marketing budgets, the primary focus revolved around the creatives and research for the last decade. However, if we closely observe the past couple of quarters, the rise in data-driven marketing is unmistakably visible; with numerous tools now available at just our fingertips. Brands across industries, including healthcare, education, non-profits, and others are trying the strategy of AB testing in a tailspin situation, relying on data makes all the more sense.

With digital marketing tools getting better - efficient, predictive, and strategic, marketers can rely on full-stack data-driven marketing in critical situations. Here are three easy ways to leverage data to fortify your marketing campaigns:

Omnichannel behaviour

Humanize data sets by integrating data to enrich customer profiles with a 360-degree view of different channels across categories. Channel preferences and predictive behaviour go hand in hand to gauge a clear picture. The more you understand your customer from a human lens, the better you can nurture the relationship to maximize reach.

Master customer cycles

For a long time, analysts have been leveraging data to pinpoint the ultimate drop in the Call to Action (CTA) or buying process. Sometimes, looking at the past, present, and future prediction graphs can be very helpful to draw insightful patterns. These, in turn, provide so much helpful data that can make your campaign game stronger rather than relying on data belonging to different time frames in silos.

Hyper-Personalization

Behind an uninterrupted series of 0s and 1s lies the secret to hyper-personalization to optimize campaigns from strategy to success. To keep up with the ever-changing customer needs and preferences, analyze data resources to craft a '2D2P' model, i.e., Descriptive, Diagnostic, Predictive, and Prescriptive. This approach can assist you in further strengthening your personalisation game and, in turn, maximising the impact of your marketing campaigns.

The pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated the expected change from traditional advertising channels to digital advertising. As a result, even for traditional brick and mortar stores, 21 out of 28 user journey touchpoints are digital now. In this highly innovative phase, brands will give their all to explore different channels and media to engage with their customers. Data-driven marketing empowers brands to look beyond the smokescreen of hyperactivity and pave their way towards a focused media mix.

Data in Digital Marketing is not limited to media planning but can be applied to a wide range of organisational growth objectives.

Let’s look at some applications of data collected during marketing efforts and how it can be used for enhancing future strategies:

Market Segment Transformation

For most brands, traditionally researched marketing personas define market segmentation for decades to come. However, data collected digitally at a granular level like pin code wise sales, most used keywords in a location, social signals from an interest group can elucidate emerging or untapped markets. Brands can harness this bird’s eye view to derive new personas and transform their market segments as well as strategies altogether.

A recent example of this is from the brand Lamborghini. They hosted an event on the mobile gaming platform Asphalt 9: Legends. This is where they reached out to the millennial audiences worldwide on their mobile devices and enriched their brand identity by reaching out to a new audience segment.

Determining Market Approach

Data analytics not only determines market segment but can also comment on the pool size for brands to prioritize their marketing efforts. On careful analysis of the behaviour patterns, brands can come up with creative ways to reach out to the newly formed segments. Eg: The pandemic saw an emerging segment of people who wanted to learn simple, low-intensity fitness activities like Yoga and Pilates from the safety of their homes. This forced the strictly offline instructors to start online academies and sessions. The instructors also had to package their classes to fit the online setup, preferred timings, and type of audiences.

With data, brands can find such touchpoints to transform their users’ shopping experience virtually and increase sales. Other examples include online concerts, virtual avatars to try clothes and glasses, virtual property views, design your own shoes, etc.

Product/Service Extensions

Marketing data like product ratings, reviews, social signals and cart activity can be harnessed to design and deliver the right product/ service innovations. Sentiment analysis can reveal what your customers like or dislike about your product/service.

The most common example of this is the Apple watch transforming their digital watch into a fitness tracker, IoT and mobile accessory to reach out to audiences who are looking for a value for money offering over just brand value. By adjusting their offering according to reviews and market sentiment, Apple successfully converted the market’s lukewarm response to Apple Watch into a most sought-after product.

As we saw through some of the above examples, marketing data and its applications can drive overall business plans and end-to-end product/service lifecycles. All this data can be collected and analysed with the support of the right tools and analytics experts. However, the integration of data-driven strategies at any organisation requires integration at multiple levels operationally. Just like any new strategy, it needs change management efforts to bring about operational efficiency. With the right management tools and approach, data-driven marketing can yield optimum returns on investment. A strong data backing is sure to help you thrive in the “next normal”.