Collecting data is crucial for every business, and it’s not surprising that most organizations in the digital environment have been doing a good job of it. When it comes to using data as a primary tool to guide decision making, shape customer experience, drive campaigns, and gauge ROI, however, we are dealing with a whole new playing field.
According to Datorama, a global leader in marketing analytics innovation, fewer than 15% of executives surveyed could say that their businesses currently have the integrated tools for planning and analysis in place to mine the data they’ve collected for critically important marketing insights. Meanwhile, the same business leaders nevertheless identified data-driven marketing as an essential tool for business success, by a two-to-one margin. That’s a discrepancy that is not lost on the respondents. Still, nearly three-fourths of the executives queried acknowledged that their organizations continue to pay more attention to collecting data than to turning it into actionable information.
Advanced technology has transformed data hoarding into data mining
Not too long ago putting data to work in a data-driven marketing strategy would have been an impossible dream. Traditional marketing solutions were necessarily more about intuition than about concrete, data-derived insights. The difference between then and now is the emergence of cutting-edge holistic technology solutions that make it possible for marketers to optimize and visualize their overall marketing performance. Today’s systems support every aspect of the marketing cycle, from aggregating data from disparate channels to real-time analytics to zeroing in on precise, previously unattainable ROI metrics.
Data-driven marketing can be more than marketing tactics
The benefits of data-driven marketing for an organization also extend well beyond specific marketing applications, as the Datorama article explores. In fact, data-driven marketing, when implemented effectively and grounded in the right integrated tech solutions, can form the basis for an overarching business strategy.
Not only does it improve marketing effectiveness significantly and quantifiably, but it also leads to other efficiencies that make for a healthier bottom line. One way this happens is it necessitates the aggregation and sharing of data across the numerous channels and devices that now combine to make up the total digital landscape. At the same time, it makes it possible to regularize the all-important customer experience to avoid jarring disruptions. Together, these become powerful incentives for organizations to break down the silos that often form in a business, so that, by definition, everyone is rowing in the same direction, on the same team.
For another thing, the bottom line of a data-driven business strategy is the bottom line. This central focus on hard-edged metrics to inform decision-making and assess campaign outcomes and ROI can only lead to greater marketing efficiency, and that translates directly into greater profitability through wiser spending and enhanced marketing impact.
Putting the customer in the forefront
If there’s one thing marketers agree on these days it is that customer-centricity is an essential characteristic of any successful business in the digital domain. With every new device and every technological advance, customers become more insistent that the advances also add up to an improved customer experience for them.
Data-driven marketing makes that happen, in any number of ways. It provides marketers with the actionable data they need in order to identify and address the customer’s specific preferences, delivering to them the right message at the right time – a clear win-win. And it allows marketers to smooth out all of the rough edges as customers move through various channels and touchpoints, as today’s consumer is bound to do, ensuring a seamless and satisfying customer experience every time, regardless of how, when, or where the customer connects. Overall, it’s a clear expression of just why so many executives are eager to embrace a data-driven marketing strategy.
