Businesses that use analytics and data effectively in their marketing strategies demonstrate higher productivity and profitability rates (up to 5-6% higher than those who don’t!).
Data marketing has been shown to have a positive impact on:
- Marketing budget management
- Competitive advantage
- Focus on the user experience
- A More Personalized Lead Nurturing Process
- Creating Better Buyer Personas
- Providing better content
- Number of marketing opportunities
- Audience knowledge and understanding
Having a data driven approach at the heart of your digital marketing strategy can increase your chances of overall success.
So how do you utilise data to your advantage, and where do you source this data from?
External vs internal data
There is usually a rather strong focus on data sourced from external sources such as audience and consumer feedback and surveys to implement into digital marketing strategies, however the importance of internally sourced data should never be downplayed.
Most staff in your agency will already have expert knowledge which they regularly provide to clients, so realistically you should benefit from consulting them for your own business. No one knows your business better than in-house staff, so they can provide extremely valuable insights to inform their marketing strategy. In this sense, feedback from your staff can be as valuable as that of consumers.
With all the knowledge and expertise right within reach, you don’t need to look too far for quality data.
Step 1: Identify goals
The first step to any successful strategy is setting out goals. Ensure your goals meet the SMART criteria (specific, measurable, actionable, relevant and time-bound) so you don’t waste any time with goals that are irrelevant or too difficult to achieve.
Without first knowing your goals, you won’t know what kind of data you will need in order to be helpful to your digital marketing strategy. It’s also really important that every individual in your team is clear on these goals.
Step 2: Identify what kind of data you need
Depending on what your goals are, the type of data you need would vary from business to business, however there are 5 types of data you should fundamentally be focusing on in market research:
- The target market
- Strengths and weakness of competition
- The development of pricing strategy
- Similar products or services
- Best platform/location for your product/service
Based on your individual strategy, this could serve as either a starting point or an expansion of the kind of data you will be gathering from the expertise of your team members.
Step 3: Identify the expertise in the room
Now that you have established your goals, you should ask yourself what kind of knowledge is already at your disposal.
For example, If the goal is to increase customer satisfaction, then you want to have exhaustive information about the consumer’s behaviour and experience. First party data collected from consumers through online experience surveys is often used to provide high quality insights into consumer behaviour. However this data can also be obtained through team members with expertise in audience research. They might already have some pre-existing knowledge about your audience, based on data they have collected and they could have some really valuable prior experience.
Is there any data you can source from your team that you can’t find anywhere else? The answer is: most likely. Every business is different, and no one knows yours better than those who work in it. That’s some insightful data that no consumer survey will be able to give you.
Step 4: Interact with your team
Just like you should be open and interactive with an audience, there is a lot to be gained by just having a chat with your team. As experts in their field, they should know better than anyone what issues are arising and what they think should be improved, so make sure you’re open to feedback.
It’s always a good idea to have a good channel of communication with your team. If your team is feeling more important and involved in your processes, they’re more likely to be more willing to provide positive input.
Step 5: Rework your goals and strategy
Now that you have collected all the data from your team, you can begin to rework your digital marketing strategy. This probably means that you also need to change your KPIs to suit the extra information you’re incorporating into the strategy.
Step 6: Continue to improve
A great digital marketing strategy is an ongoing process, and there will always be something you need to change and improve.
Get your team members to regularly review their own digital marketing experience, brainstorming ideas for future digital marketing strategies.
Stay on top by ensuring communication with your team is always open, so there will always be an abundant supply of data for future strategies.
Make a plan, but never set anything in stone. The digital world is constantly evolving, and so should your strategy!
This was brought to you by Matter Solutions. Matter Solutions are experts in digital marketing with over 15 years of experience in SEO and Web design.