Data is the fuel of modern marketing. This is not a new concept, it already eveloved in recent years. It helps you as marketer to understand your customers, target them effectively, measure performance and improve the result of their marketing effort.
Data-driven marketing 2.0 takes your marketing efforts to the next level by using data to inform your decisions and customize marketing and communications strategy. Based on customer and prospect information, habits, and tendencies.
Here’s how data-driven 2.0 works:
1. Activating Your Data
Traditionally, relying on data collected by each ad platform was sufficient. However, due to new laws and people’s worries about privacy, using more than just platform data is now essential. If you depend only on these tools, achieving good results becomes more difficult. That means you must spend more time and energy gathering your first-party data.
This data is generated from your tools, back-office systems (customer and contact data), and marketing tools, like HubSpot or Google Analytics. Or, if you are a software company, data from your products and apps.
However, data alone is not enough. You will only get value from the data if you activate it. Data activation is the process of transforming data into meaningful information and using this in your marketing communication. Broadly speaking, data activation involves four steps:
- Data collection: Defining your data collection strategy.
- Data analysis: Deep dive into your data. What can you learn based on previous campaigns and marketing activity?
- Data insight: In data analytics, look for untapped potential in your data. If you know something worked, are there other places to apply this? Anything to inform and guide your marketing decisions and actions.
- Data action: Apply the insights to your marketing efforts. This part requires good data integration and structure. Automation tools that enable data orchestration and communication across multiple channels and touchpoints. Ensuring that the data activation is automated so that you can harvest the value of your data.
Marketers who can activate their data effectively will have a competitive edge over those who can’t. A recent study states that companies that use data to inform their marketing decisions are six times more likely to achieve their marketing goal.
2. Rising the Power of AI
There has been a revolution in the latest year in addressing all the challenges above. Most marketing tools have built-in functionality to support staying within laws and regulations. The marked-for data automation and optimization tools for streamlining your marketing tasks, such as segmentation, targeting, personalization, testing, measurement, and reporting, are pretty mature.
In addition, built-in AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools are godsent and are already being implemented as a valuable asset in many marketing departments. According to a survey, over 80% of marketers believe AI will stir up the industry in the coming years.
AI is used in various ways, from automating repetitive tasks to analyzing a large amount of data, providing insights into customer behavior, and now even producing content.
3. No gains without challenges
Activating your data is more important than ever as the digital landscape becomes increasingly competitive. And while the benefits can be great, there are several challenges to consider.
- Firstly, the importance of privacy and ethic should be considered. With the rise of data protection regulations, such as GDPR, and the growing awareness of consumers about their data rights. Marketers will need to ensure that they collect, store, and use data transparently and securely.
- Quality and accuracy become increasingly important when you collect, intergrade, and merge data from several sources. To avoid building a data swamp that you drown in, you need to implement good data governance and quality management.
- Staying on top of the ever-increasing complexity and diversity of marketing channels and platforms is challenging. You must integrate and automate your marketing processes to achieve efficiency and effectiveness.
- With the increasing competition, it is essential to be innovative and allows oneself to experiment with data-driven marketing strategies, all to gain a competitive edge.
Conclusion
In summary, data-driven marketing 2.0 is a powerful tool for businesses seeking to enhance your marketing efforts. It enables personalized experiences and improved outcomes by leveraging data and actionable insights.
However, businesses must handle personal data responsibly and prioritize customer privacy. Implementing a robust privacy policy builds trust, demonstrating a commitment to safeguarding customer data.
By doing so, businesses can harness the potential of data-driven marketing 2.0 to deliver exceptional personalized experiences and achieve optimal results.