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How To Use Data To Build Powerful Marketing Campaigns

It’s a data-driven world. Analytics will continue to play a pivotal role for marketers. Here's a look at three ways you can work smarter with data.


Photo: Parker Davis, CEO of Answer 1; Source: Courtesy Photo
Photo: Parker Davis, CEO of Answer 1; Source: Courtesy Photo

Entrepreneurs and marketers alike are always looking for ways to reach their ideal customers. One surefire way to make sure your hard work will pay off is to use data to focus your digital marketing plan.

By tracking keywords, leveraging data tagging (tagging links to tracking campaigns), and using online tools you can effectively measure your return on investment (ROI) and cost per acquisition (CPA). Knowing marketing metrics and key performance indicators (KPI’s) like these will help your company create a more effective strategy.

Using this data will help you target the right audience with higher degrees of personalization, market saturation, and media versatility.

Today’s marketers have to not only be adept at creating creative and powerful campaigns across multiple channels, but also be well-versed in understanding the data science that drives their results.

Data has undoubtedly transformed the role of marketers. So, “How do you take data and transform it into actionable insight? The consequence of this is that the increased amount and substantially better quality of data makes the marketer’s job more complex,” says Forbes Contributor Kimberly A. Whitler.

Even if it is more complex, it doesn’t have to be horribly difficult. Once you’ve gathered data intelligence, here are some tips to enhance your digital marketing campaigns.

 

1. Take time to understand your data

In the not-so-distant past, demographics in data research were pretty straight forward. Campaigns were designed with the marketer’s knowledge of neighborhoods, the eye test of who employees guage are interested in certain products, and the usual tracking of promotions and sales.

The Internet changed everything, especially for purchasing and data gathering. Now, your customer can be halfway across the world and seek out your product. In fact, that is exactly who you’re looking for. You need to find that target audience and make sure you gather all the data you need to make them happy.

The American Marketing Association reports that you can tell the difference between a casual browsing session and an online search with intent to purchase, all based on browsing and search patterns.

Keep an eye out on how online visitors interact with your site. Use heatmaps, visitor recordings, conversion funnels, form analysis, feedback polls, surveys and recruit test users to gather data. Online tools like Hotjar, Mouseflow, Fullstory, and Helio  (to name a few) can help you learn deeper insights about your customer’s digital experience.

Actionable and data-driven insights are incredibly valuable. Data intelligence will show you how people use your website, peak times to share new promotions, how to manage marketing efforts across different time zones, and who exactly is researching your products and services.

 

2. Create a compelling story with data-driven and custom content

Now that you’ve gathered some solid data, it’s time to create your marketing message and narrative. Go the extra step and create customized sales stories. Today they are widely used and even expected by your customers.

 

Photo: Rawpixel.com, Pexels
Photo: Rawpixel.com, YFS Magazine

A recent Salesforce study found that 52% of customers are extremely or somewhat likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t make an effort to personalize their communications with them.

Use data to drive more personalization. If you try to speak to everyone, your message will reach no one. “One of the most important steps you can take to create exceptional customer experiences is to fully understand and know your target audience,” says Answer 1. So go that extra step. It’ll make all the difference for your customers, and your business.

 

3. Earn the report card

Now that you fully understand your data, and have created a narrative around it, it’s time to track your results.

Qualified leads and click to open rate (CTOR) are two typical metrics used by marketers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Qualified leads are the first step on the path to sales, while CTOR is a more effective and qualified email marketing metric than the traditional click-through rate (CTR).

The click to open rate (CTOR) is a ratio that compares the number of unique clicks and unique opens. This metric indicates how effective an email message performed and if it created a level of interest by the recipient to click-through to learn more.

There are a lot of marketing metrics you can use to measure success. Beyond CTOR, social media engagement, conversion rate optimization, and qualified sales leads are all worth looking at. The important thing is to track each type of data set, optimize along the way, and track what works.

 

Work smarter with data-driven marketing

When you effectively create campaigns with data-driven outcomes in mind, you will find yourself running more effective programs. Using data to tell your story and find overlaps within the customer journey will ensure that no matter what metric you choose to define success, it will be effective.

It’s a data-driven world. The analytics industry is only going to become more important. The quicker you are able to use data to your advantage in marketing, the better your business will be.

 

Parker Davis is the CEO of Answer 1, a leader in the virtual receptionist and technology-enabled answering services industry. Since 2015, Parker has been responsible for Answer 1’s strategic vision, senior level management, and equity creation. He believes that the application of data analytics, investment in technology, and fostering a positive company culture together create highly efficient and scalable growth companies. He has an M.B.A from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Notre Dame. Connect with @answer1 on Twitter.

 

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